Customer Service

[j4]

The Fantasy and SF Book Club suck. We cancelled membership via the "Contact us" section of their website as instructed, and they did absolutely nothing about it. I tried to phone a few times but it's like trying to get the proverbial dromedary through the needle's eye, mistranslations notwithstanding. Anyway, after about 20 minutes on hold I finally managed to speak to a human being today, and she said "No, your cancellation hasn't gone through... there's been a bit of a backlog. Would you like me to cancel it now?" Well, yes, I would, that's why we ASKED YOU TO CANCEL THE FUCKING MEMBERSHIP. And if she can do the cancellation in ten seconds like that, why is there a fucking five-week backlog? Eh? Eh? Still, at least we're out of it now.

play.com just baffle me. They've now sent me the wrong CD three times -- the same wrong one each time -- and yeah, okay, it's a limited edition that I'm after and they're sending me the standard edition, so it's an easy enough mistake to make, but ... three times? The people I've spoken to on the phone have been extremely apologetic and helpful, though, and I still don't think I'd disrecommend them because they've been good every other time I've used them and they don't charge for postage. (And yes, they're refunding me when I'm sending these wrong CDs back to them.)

PayPal are Evil On Toast. I thought I could pay for an item on eBay via PayPal if I had a credit card and ten minutes to do the setup, but no! I have to pay $2 to raise my maximum money-sending capacity before I can raise it above zero, and then I can only activate this by typing in the four-digit number which appears on my credit-card statement when the payment goes through. I was already paying 3 times the value of the item in postage, and now I'm paying nearly its value again in PayPal admin costs. I want it, though (it's a present for somebody), and I can only get it in the US, and I'd have paid the total cost of item+postage+PayPal if that's what it had cost in the shops here, so ... <sigh>

Comments

[songster.livejournal.com]

F&SF seemed superb with me - I used the online site, they cancelled the membership no problem straight off.

They did mail back offering to keep sending me the catalogue without sending me the editor's choice every month, which actually suited me fine, since I'll probably carry on buying a book or two every year if they're on offer. So technically I got suckered into staying with them, but since it's not costing me anything, I'm happy with it.