Life’s too short for lacklustre customer service at 40.
Barry has reached the time of life where he can’t be bothered with customer service wrestling
A few things dawn on a man when his progress bar reaches 40, as mine did recently. First, there is the realisation that your targeted internet ads are suddenly concerned with pensions, cruises and prostate cancer. Then there’s the wince-inducing moment when you realise you’re now among the veterans in the veterans’ football team you play for. And finally comes the conclusion that your threescore and ten is flashing by so swiftly, you haven’t got time to sod around with companies that don’t treat their customers properly.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from Spotify, telling me about some of the new great features available to me as a family account holder. Jolly decent of them, obviously, except that I didn’t realise I was a family account holder. I remember Spotify offering me a free trial of a family account about a year ago, and maybe even adding my partner’s details in for the 30-day trial, but I know she never used it.
Lo and behold, when I went back through my credit card statements, Spotify had been charging me an extra fiver a month for something I’d never used and had (wrongly, of course) assumed was a free trial that would expire at the end of the trial month. I know, I know: I’ve been in this game long enough not to be that naïve and should check my bank statements more closely.
I went to Spotify support with a mea culpa. I explained I’d been lulled in by the free trial, didn’t realise I’d be charged at the end of it, that their logs would show I’d never used it, and could I have my money back please? “I’ve taken a look backstage and can see that we haven’t offered a trial for the Premium for Family plan,” a chat assistant replied, and in any case, they couldn’t refund me because the payment was more than 14 days old.
My blood pressure rising to dangerous levels for a man of my age, I slammed the chat window shut, dug out the offer of a “free trial” from my Gmail inbox (isn’t Gmail search wonderful?) and presented exhibit A to chat assistant 2. This chap accepted that this previously fictional trial did indeed exist, and offered me a two-month credit on my account. Make it six, I said, and you’ll have effectively refunded me for the family account I didn’t use. He shuffled “backstage” and eventually agreed to the six-month freebie, although there’s an hour of my rapidly dwindling time on Earth that I’m not getting back.
An equally frustrating situation arose with the company that provides the WordPress template for a website I run. Our free support had expired and they offered us a sizeable discount to extend it, but only if we replied within 14 days. Being a journalist, I obviously left it right to the deadline, upon which I clicked on the link in the email. I couldn’t find the option to renew the support anywhere on the link they sent out, so again I contacted the support desk.
The support chap responded a day later with a ridiculously long set of steps you must go through to unlock this magical discount, but of course the offer has now expired. I write back, asking them to honour the discount price, given that I’d had gone to renew and had contacted support within the deadline, but couldn’t find the right link. Computer said no. “I understand that it may not feel fair on your end and I sympathise,” the Envato rep replied, unsympathetically. “Please take note that these types of incidents are not isolated with you and there are others who have had similar requests but were also declined.” Ah, so you’re screwing over loads of us, not only me? Yes, that makes me feel much better. Stick your support where the servers don’t shine.
Given my battles with The Man, you might think that I wouldn’t have much sympathy for a company that publicly lambasts one of its customers for sticking precisely to the terms of their agreement. The company in question is AAISP, an internet provider that has the finest set of Ts & Cs ever written, such as the line: “If we screw up, the most you can get is your money back. Some of our services are very cheap and some are even free of charge, so this is not a lot of compensation.” In short: it very much tells it as it is.
So, it wasn’t shockingly out of character when AAISP’s head honcho took to his blog recently to slate a customer who said “he would deliberately download stuff, and not even save it or watch it, just to make sure he uses up all of his 1TB allowance each month”. That, Adrian Kennard declared, was “being a dick”, like leaving taps running just because you’re not on a water meter.
I agree. Mindlessly ploughing through data just to get your notional money’s worth is petty, even if you are still within the stated limits of the account. If we want companies to behave reasonably, to not try and trip us up or punish us for our mistakes, then we should behave reasonably, too. Life’s too short for the aggro, after all.
If we want companies to behave reasonably, to not try and trip us up... then we should behave reasonably, too