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

PayPal

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's odd, I don't remember having to pay anything to get PayPal working. I've found it a very convenient tool.

I do remember something about a code on a credit card statement, but I seem to remember I could use PayPal before that went through. Thinking about it, there may have been some kind of refundable charge on it, as a security measure. However, I am sure I could use it immediately, even if it was only in a limited capacity of some form.

Well, anyway, that was fuck-all informative use. Hethe, hand.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

The Fantasy and SF Book Club suck

IME such companies try to make it as hard as possible to get out of the schemes they run; in some cases they may as well try and just put up a sign with "Beware of the Leppard" :)

[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.

Re: PayPal

[imc.livejournal.com]

I've had a PayPal account since May 2001 so things are probably completely different these days. However, when I joined one could not make a payment without having a credit card verified, and this process involved a debit of $1 followed by entering the 4-digit number on one's credit card statement. (In fact this sounds much like the procedure that j4 describes.) After that had been successfully completed, the $1 was refunded by being credited to the PayPal account. It was this particular rigmarole that made me activate Internet Banking on my account, which was nice because I was able to complete the process in about 4 days instead of 4 weeks, and HSBC's Internet Banking site, while being infested with JavaScript, did (and still does) work on Netscape 4 on any platform rather than making absurd system requirements.

Since eBay took over PayPal and phased out their own payment system (Billpoint, which I've used once in each direction and I don't remember anything like the above hassle) I thought they had made it possible to make a payment without being a member (and thus going through the aforementioned ritual). But perhaps I was wrong. (Incidentally, when I paid using Billpoint it was a reasonably large sum of money in GB Pounds, but the final page of the transaction showed the same number in US Dollars. Although both I and the seller made complaints to Billpoint, they assured us both that the transaction had in fact gone through in pounds although they were having technical difficulties with the currency symbols on their web page. According to my credit card statement, they were wrong - but neither Billpoint nor the seller came back to me.)