Dear National Review:
1) Your Android app no longer works. I click on ‘magazine’, which brings up images of covers of past and present issues. If I click on any past issue, everything is fine. If I click on the current issue, all I see is a list (in red capital letters): SECTIONS, ARTICLES, FEATURES, etc. — but none of these are clickable and the content is not accessible.
2) I thought this might be because my subscription had expired, so I clicked on ‘Subscribe’ and paid for an extended subscription. I see that you still have my expiration date as September 2022, so apparently you took my money but did not extend the subscription.
3) I clicked on subscription help, got back an email telling me to try a few obvious things like “log out and log back in again”, responded by saying I’d already tried those things and none of them worked, and then never heard another word from you. I emailed again, asking what to do next. After several days I’ve heard absolutely nothing.
4) I went to your customer care website, typed in the above, and was told I could not submit the above message because it is “too long”.
5) I called your customer service number (which took some digging to find because it does not appear on your website) and spent twenty minutes talking to a representative who insisted that I re-try everything I’ve already tried, none of which worked. She finally connected me to a supervisor. The supervisor came on the line and said “I understand you’re having trouble logging into our app”. I said that I’m logged in just fine; the app just doesn’t work. The call suddenly ended.
6) I called back, explained I’d been in the middle of a call with a supervisor that got cut off, and was connected to a new supervisor. I started to explain the problem, and the call ended.
7) I am now on hold trying for a THIRD time to reach a supervisor.
8) Here is what I need from you: First, fix your app and/or tell me how to make it work. Second, extend my subscription consistent with the money I just sent you, or refund the money. Third, please be more responsive in the future.
9) Because this message is “too long” for you to accept on your website, I am posting it here and sending you a link to this blog post.
Everyone else can safely ignore this post.
Who do they think they are … a health insurance company?
“Everyone else can safely ignore this post.” — You might have led with this.
Jeff (#2):
No. Given the intransigence on the part of National Review, they would see that and immediately include themselves.
I am too ideologically far apart from them to give them money, but I do occasionally look at their articles to see if they happen to have made a point that I agree with. And I’m disappointed when an interesting-sounding article is behind a paywall; I know they have to make money, but if they want to persuade the largest audience possible, can’t they make exceptions for the articles that are most likely to appeal to moderates?
Atrocious customer service has become endemic.
The text between the dates is basically me complaining, but I ask an economic question after.
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OnStar claimed I never paid them, despite all evidence to the contrary. 10 hours of phone calls with numerous different agents/supervisors (all gaslighting me, as if I was living in an alternate timeline) never solved the problem.
The beauty of credit cards is the ability to dispute a charge for services not received. After providing Baptism One all the information and another three hours on the phone, they asked for proof of cancellation [I didn’t cancel], including a written letter. I detailed the entire issue from start to finish and the next day they denied my dispute. said I didn’t send any of the documents.
After another three hours on the phone with a supervisor it became apparent they had submitted my dispute as if it had been auto-renewed and I wanted a refund and not a single person actually read my letter or the documents I provided.
It eventually got fixed through Capital One, but what could’ve been solved in a few hours, if OnStar would’ve simply reviewed my last support call, instead took no fewer than ten phone calls lasting more than ten hours over an entire month between two different companies.
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All for $104.93 (or one year of an OnStar subscription that I don’t actually need and provides me very little benefit).
There’s market inefficiency.
My time is worth more than $10 an hour.
The frustration of dealing with the situation cost me far more than the situation itself ($104.93 + feeling of unfairness, OR more accurately $209.86, because I still needed the subscription).
I mostly chose this route out of duty. I wanted my money back, but, more importantly, I stubbornly couldn’t allow them to profit from their ineptitude.
Most people would have given up. How can incentives be aligned so that wronged customers are incentivized to hold companies accountable and companies feel a higher cost for such mistakes?
Market will take care of the producers. Just takes a while longer.
Is there new management here? This used to be a sometimes insightful blog about economics. Now it seems to be the rantings of an old man shaking his fist at a cloud.