Consumer Battles Archives - Page 2 of 5

Fandango Bucks: Not a Fan

January 15, 2010 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

Ever have to buy a gift for a person that has everything? That’s my mom. So this holiday season, I thought for a long time of what to get her. Remembering that she enjoys going to movies, I decided some movie gift certificates would be appropriate.

I decided to go to the first movie website that I thought of and see what they have to offer. That’s how I found Fandango Bucks. I saw the tag line of “Perfect for all occasions. Good for any movie, any time, on Fandango.com.”

I have to admit, I was excited. This was going to be the easiest and best gift I’ve ever sent her. It was a simple instant e-mail. I checked to make sure that Fandango had the theaters near my mom’s Boston suburb. I knew it would be a deal-breaker if she couldn’t go to the theaters that she was used to. I might as well buy her an In-N-Out Burger gift certificate (sorry, California reference). Fortunately, I saw that Fandango had all the theaters and listed all the movie times… it was a movie, at a time, listed on Fandango.com. So with piece of mind, I made my purchase.

My mother sends me an e-mail a few days later that while it was a good idea, the certificates aren’t accepted at any of the 8 theaters she goes to. They are only accepted at four theaters in Boston proper, which is not only a bit of a drive, it’s also tough parking. That didn’t seem right, so I read things a little closer and realize that the “Perfect for all occasions. Good for any movie, any time, on Fandango.com.” is pretty much an out-and-out lie. There’s some fine print that says that not all theaters accept it because they are either not partnered with Fandango or don’t have the means to accept online ticketing.

I decided to e-mail customer support and ask what’s up. Though a response was promised in 48 hours, a week later I have heard nothing (not even an acknowledgment that they have received my e-mail. I send another e-mail thinking the first one must not have gotten through. Still no response. So yesterday, I decided to call them up and see what’s going on.

The customer service representative was really, really nice. He said that they have 3000 e-mails from the holidays and their 10 person team is a little undermanned to get back to everyone in time. He understood my problem and looked into the Boston theaters and admitted that most of the theater chains there partnered with their competitors. He suggested that my mom e-mail me back the certificates and I can use them in Silicon Valley. That’s not a terrible solution, but it really doesn’t speak to the main point: They promised one thing, didn’t deliver, and now are giving me a response they might (or might not) be able to refund me the cash.

I will admit that I could have spent a little more time reading the fine print. However, shouldn’t the fine print be a clarification or further definition of what is promised and not a complete contradiction of it?

“Debt Crisis in America” & JCR Advertising are Evil

December 1, 2009 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Debt Crisis in America commercials on television or not, but when I saw them, I thought, “This is a whole new level of scummy advertising.” If you haven’t seen them, you can watch two of them here. I can’t decide which one is more scummy. Here are some tactics that I notice right off in these commercials:

Imagery of Washington D.C. landmarks including The White House – This gives an aura that this commercial is endorsed by the government when it is not. It’s hard not to see how one could get confused by this.
Scrolling News Ticker – This makes it look like a news channel like CNN, CNBC, or Bloomberg. News stations like that are generally considered reputable and typically follow the journalistic principles when reporting information.
Special Announcement! – How is that to get your attention?!?! What’s special about this announcement? There is no information in this “announcement” that I don’t see 5 to 10 times a day.
Speedy facts and figures – It’s
Credit Card and Debt Help Line = 1-800-000-0000 – Ever try dialing that number? Well I’ll get to this later on.
Transferring the “News” Coverage to Someone Else – Moving the coverage to another person in the way they do is very much like how the news transfers to a different reporter on the scene.
Call to Action – The commercial ends with a strong message that the solution is to call the number below – which seems reputable for all the reasons above.

You want to know the scummiest part of all this? The actress/fake newsperson asking you to make that call has no connection to the service they are offering. That’s because this commercial isn’t even designed for one specific company. It is made to be re-branded for any and every debt settlement company in the country, whether they are reputable or not. That’s why there is that aforementioned 1-800-000-0000 number. Just check out their sales pitch:

Higher percentage of converted calls to Leads
Higher percentage of qualified callers
Lower cost per in bound unique lead
Instant inbound Activity for your sales staff
Trackable phone number provided & routed to your location
Inbound call analysis completed & e-mailed to you daily
Score calls and evaluate sales staff

It’s pretty clear where their interests lie, isn’t it? If I wanted to buy this commercial and brand it for my company I could. Why should I be worried about these companies just trying to help consumers? Well they aren’t always out to help consumers as you can read on Wikipedia. I don’t really know how to pick a good debt settlement company, but I did find this article which seems like it could have some helpful information. I think the safest way to get out of debt is to go on an extreme savings plan. Cut out or greatly reduce the costs of everything in your life. If you go with that route, I have some tips on how to save money.

Should Pottery Barn Give Us a Refund?

October 15, 2009 by Lazy Man 20 Comments

A few weeks back our dog Jake decided to rip into some cushions on our patio furniture. They were too far gone by the time we noticed. As a result, we’ve been looking for new chaise lounge cushions. You’d think they’d be easier to find, but everything has been fairly expensive or not the right size.

We thought our prayers were answered when my wife spotted this Pottery Barn sale on Chaise Lounge Cushions. Instead of costing $250 a cushion, we could buy them for $50… what a deal, right? Sadly, there was a $100 “delivery surcharge” and $17 for shipping and processing. I really don’t understand how there’s shipping and delivery charges, but we factored it into the overall price and it was still a decent deal considering the quality.

We got the cushions and they were twice as wide as our chairs. My wife exclaimed, “This isn’t what I ordered!” So we went back to the website to see what wrong. In case the sale changes with the previous link, here’s an image (click for larger):

I’ll start off by saying that there’s enough information here to pin it on us. It does say “Double Chaise Cushion: 53″ wide x 86″ long x 2.5″ high” in the overview box. However, if you missed this piece of information, as we did, I can see where the confusion comes in.

The picture is of the single, which isn’t even available for purchase. It would be nice if they removed all references to the single when there aren’t any there. Also, we saw the “Double Stripes/Prints/Solids with Piping Chaise Cushion” and thought it meant “Double Stripes” as in the pattern. I would have expected to see a comma between Double and Stripes – or better yet use a word that is unambiguous like “two person.” Best of all would be to have two separate pages for the separate sizes, so there is no chance of confusion.

If you click in the Product Info box, the dimensions are only presented for the single size:

It does not mention that it’s a “single” or “double” or that another size other than the one we wanted exists. Shouldn’t the Product Info box be accurate for the product? If it isn’t, shouldn’t this entitle us to a refund?

There’s also this interesting return policy in the shipping information:

It clearly says that the item is final-sale and can’t be returned in italics, but the return policy on the page seems to differ. Not shown in the image is the part of the return policy that also says, “We also cannot accept returns of final-sale items which are identified by a price which ends in .99.” I realize that they probably put the same Shipping Info box on all items, but why not tailor it like they do the Product Info?

I’m really on the fence on this one. We clearly could have avoided this situation by being more careful. At the same time, Pottery Barn could have done about 5 or 6 things to have prevented the situation as well.

[Update: I must have reached the right person when I called just now, because they authorized curbside pick-up with almost no questions asked. I didn’t even have to point out the Product Info box inconsistency, though I did because they should update the website.]

Sprint Rebates Suck

March 24, 2011 by Lazy Man 27 Comments

On Friday, I came home to following letter:

This letter is in response to the Palm Pre that I bought and activated within the Sprint store – an hour after it became available. How dare they say that I haven’t activated in time? Without causing injury to other Sprint customers it would have have been impossible to activate it any faster.

Where does Sprint Rebates, who owe me money, get off sending me a letter saying that they aren’t going to pay and “no further action is required.” On a list of most obnoxious responses, I think this has to be at the top, right? I’m thinking of not paying my Sprint bill this month and instead sending in a letter that says, “You are not being paid because [insert a lie that would a valid reason if true], no further action is necessary.” I might give that a try with the copy of the rebate letter.

Nonetheless, it’s time to call up Sprint and find out what’s going on.

The first guy doesn’t know anything about rebates. He tells me that it’s another number. I realize that rebate-handling is typically outsourced, but I don’t want to talk to the third party and have them tell me that I didn’t actually by the phone and have it activated. I argued for a minute and then decided to see how the Sprint Rebate company would go.

After about 15 minutes on hold with the Sprint Rebate company, they found the problem. They had mistaken one of the digits of my phone number – entered it in as a 6 instead of a 0. Being that it was their mistake, I figured, they ‘d be rushing out a check to me right away. Not so. They said that they’d process it in the next 15 business days. I have to wait three weeks for their mistake? Here’s how the rest of the conversation went:

Me: Overnight the money.
SR: Sorry can’t do that.
Me: Overnight the money.
SR: Sorry can’t do that.
Me: I’ll have the money in my hands in the next 15 days?
SR: We’ll process it in the next 15 days.
Me: I’ll have the money in my hands in the next 15 days?
SR: We’ll process it in the next 15 days.
Me: You realize that I my money shouldn’t be delayed based on your error.
SR: Sorry there’s nothing else we can do.

I realized that there’s nothing more I can do either. I suppose I can think twice about using Sprint in the future. In fact, I’d say there’s a high likelihood I’ll do that as soon as mine and my wife’s contract is up.

That might be a little over-reacting to this incident, but they’ve taken away my grandfathered billing plan because I got a new phone (note to carriers – new phone should not equal new plan). Sprint is still the cheapest as far as I can tell, but it’s getting worse and soon I will pay more to deal with a different company.

How to Lose a Potential Customer in One Email

February 19, 2009 by Lazy Man 14 Comments

Last week, I featured a guest post of How to Lose a Loyal Customer in Three Easy Calls. This week, I’d like to post one quick way to lose a customer in a single e-mail.

Over the last month, my wife and I have been looking for places to rent on Craigslist (which lead me to this brilliant Craig’s List scam). Even looking online, it’s fairly time-consuming. The amount of properties available seems to be enormous. The economy is not only making it buyers’ market, but it seems a renting one as well.

So I went through and checked of quite a few places that I liked. I e-mailed a few of them and they responded back by telling me to call a number and talking to a person. That’s the part that just strikes me as odd. I’m living in Silicon Valley. You are advertising your product on the Internet. Why can’t a time to see the place be set up on the Internet?

I’ll admit that part of this is me being Lazy. Shooting an e-mail is quick and easy (I’m already on the Internet most of the time) – trying to sync up with someone on the phone is more difficult. I don’t do much business on the phone because I finish the conversation and there’s no record of it. Still, if you know your customer is on the Internet and using a tool that facilitates Internet communication, why risk losing the person? If you are trying to make a sale, take the path of least resistance. It’s not rocket science.