Customer service
1) T got an email a few weeks ago from Netflix, notifiying us that we were eligible to participate in a settlement of a class action lawsuit. The suit alleges that Netflix made misleading claims of "unlimited DVDs" and "one-day turnaround" and the settlement provides for a one month upgrade to the next level of service plan. T commented that his inclination was to decline the upgrade, as he thinks Netflix has provided us with exactly what they promised.
2) As some of you may have noticed if you tried to comment last Tuesday, Typepad has been having some service issues. Monday, they sent out an email apologizing for the outages, and offering compensation. The interesting twist was that they are letting users pick what level of compensation they think is appropriate:
"We are all aware that you pay for TypePad and expect to receive superior service and performance in return. At times last month, we did not provide that type of experience to all our customers and apologies are not good enough.
We also know that some customers have been more heavily impacted than others. If you often use the service on weekdays between 7:00 am and 1:00 pm Pacific Time you may have experienced one or even many periods when you had problems with TypePad’s speed and responsiveness. If you use the service at other times, you may not have experienced any problems at all. After wrestling with these facts and wanting to be fair to all our users we have decided that the only option is to allow you to choose how Six Apart should compensate you.
By default, you will receive a credit for 15 free days of TypePad service. To get this credit you don’t have to do anything; we will just credit your account.
That said, we recognize that customers have had different experiences with the service, so we want to give you the opportunity to choose more, or even less compensation."
Users can choose between 15, 30 and 45 days of free service, or reply "I really wasn’t affected and feel I got the great service I paid for last month. Thank you for the offer, but please don’t credit my account."
I’m fascinated by the choices, and would be very interested in seeing the distribution of responses. My guess is that most people will pick 15 days, and that more people will pick "no credit" than 45 days.
3) Yesterday, I came home to a nice surprise — a check for almost $200 from Olympus cameras, refunding what I had paid earlier in the year for them to fix my camera. They’ve issued a service advisory that covers faulty CCDs, and proactively identified my repair as one that should have been covered. Hence the unexpected check in my mailbox.
November 17th, 2005 at 11:09 am
I also ignored the Netflix class action, as they have always given me exactly the service promised. I thought it was interesting to get that email, and then decide to ignore it. I actually wouldn’t want more movies anyway, it would be too much pressure to watch them.
November 17th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
I thought long and hard before picking the 30 day option. I love Typepad, and the fact that they even gave us options is one reason why I’m so impressed by the service. But their biggest problems were happening when I usually update my site, and a few people complained to me about comments that never went through. I could have gone with either 15 or 30, but I took their offer sincerely and made my choice with the same sincerity.
November 17th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
I applaud Typepad’s approach. I would like to think that given the choice, most people would gratefully choose to do the right thing.
Let’s hope Typepad and I are right!
November 17th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
I use Blockbuster Online and was just notified that I recieved an extra dvd (4 instead of 3 at a time) because of slow service. I didn’t even notice a difference. I am actually always telling everyone how great it is to have the dvd’s come to my house and that Blockbuster has sent out new dvd’s it seems as soon as they get the other one’s I sent back. I didn’t get an option, but thought it was a nice gesture to their customers. For the record, if I was offered the extra dvd, I probably would have declined.