First Angry FeedDigest Customer
After 18 months and 20,000 users, I’ve finally got my first angry e-mail from a FeedDigest customer. I figure the occasion is worth marking.
The customer (who I will not identify) was sent an e-mail one week before their account expired (which they definitely received, as I got an automated response) saying their account was due for renewal. They did not renew, so one week after the expiration, I deactivated it. Within an hour I got an e-mail containing this paragraphs:
I am totally outraged at this course of action as I received absolutely no notification whatsoever. I would like to understand what has happened and why immediately. You can be sure that I am looking for alternatives to your service and without an adequate explanation, will use our networks to make it broadly known how poorly we were treated – as a paying customer no less!
I am not a shmoozer who will bend over for customers who make threats (and nor should you be). I politely told him what happened with his expiration, I provided him with an OPML dump of his account to make his life easier, and told him to go find another solution. I just couldn’t believe he was threatening me over this.. especially since all support incidents with him had gone well and I’d had no contact with him at all for the past 6 months!
Good riddance to him. Losing customers like that helps me provide the excellent service (not my words!) that my other customers continue to enjoy.
December 8th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Absolutely right. Should never be worried about losing customers who can’t be civil and reasonable.
Hope the book is going well - almost there?
The new blog looks great! Although I only see your actual blog if I come to leave a comment. Damn RSS readers.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:33 am
I can’t say I agree with your stance mate.
I can totally understand your need to provide a top quality service to good customers, I can also totally understand your choice of action - ie. to correctly identify the customers problems, correctly prove they had been informed, and so forth. I do feel you acted correctly, so that’s not what I am disagreeing with.
However, what I do disagree with is the stance of “Good riddance to him.” It sounds rather bitter, and instead of being bitter, perhaps it is wiser to learn from this? For example, you send a warning email one week prior to expiry, how about sending a second email one MONTH before, for those people who have paid for 6 month, 1 year, etc. plans. Ie. two emails, 30 days and 7 days prior to expiry.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Mails are batched, so some people do receive them a few weeks in advance. 6-7 days is generally the minimum, however. I dare say more mails could be sent, of course, although no-one else has had a problem with this so far. I am wary of sending mails in any circumstance due to the shitty ‘you’re spamming me’ mails you sometimes get in response. Due to this, users also get a gigantic yellow box shoved in their face when they log in in the 30 days prior to renewal.
However, I think anyone who uses threats to achieve their goals is an uncivilized moron who deserves to be cut off. People who throw threats around are bullies and deserve whatever they get. I can totally understand someone being angry, and I’ll still have respect for them, because we all have bad days. If I’d got the same mail, but without the threat, I would have apologized (although still pointing out the error) and offered some sort of concession. As it was, all of my responses to him were pleasant and I wished him luck in finding alternative solutions (which he has).. but this is my blog, so I can vent here, because I didn’t want to send unprofessional angry mails in response to him.
I think it’s important, however, to kick bullies to the kerb, especially in today’s society. We shouldn’t threaten other people’s businesses by saying we’re going to spread libel about them around ‘our networks’. I feel my policy on this is akin to the ‘no violence to staff’ policies that are in place almost everywhere now. If you threaten a staff member in many places, they reserve the right to kick your ass out. If the staff want to bitch about a customer after work, that’s fine, and that’s what this blog provides for me.
December 8th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Peter, this guy sounds like a jerk, but I think you should send at least 2 emails prior to account cancellation. Sometimes spam software incorrectly filters emails which might have happened in this case.
December 8th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
That’s true, although I’m not convinced a second would have got through if the first had not, since I received an autoresponder saying that the mail was received.
Of course, more mails may help, although I feel a bit squeamish about it. I’ve already had some moronic ISP get me in hot water for spamming when it was just a bounceback of crap they were sending me. The less I get involved with e-mail, the better, it seems
December 11th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
I agree with the guy. He says he received no notification and due to his angry tone, I believe him. The reason why is irrelevant. You should have tried to keep him as a customer and apologize for the mix up. He’s quite right to pass along to as many people as possible that this happened. Thats a threat customers have to make nowadays, often it is the only way to get an issue resolved. As others have said, more emails, maybe even a phone call would not go amiss
December 12th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Rob: I completely disagree with you, but your opinion is valid. Other things in the remainder of his e-mail stated he did not want to continue to be a customer in ANY case. However, given his tone, I felt I would not have been able to provide him with good service in the future, so this was just as well. I do not have customers’ phone numbers.
At the end of the day, if you don’t pay for your account with any service provider, whether you are notified or not, you are usually cut off. This actually did NOT happen in this case. FeedDigest customers are not cut off till 1 month after non-payment. Instead, they have a small note applied to the top of their digests saying to get in touch with us. This ensures they will see the note after e-mail has (clearly) failed. So he was not even cut off.. he just had a little note added to his digests.. and that created such ire.
I think my policies are beyond fair. I don’t deactivate accounts for a month, I deal extremely fairly with the 99.9% of customers who are rational, and at the low prices charged (soon to be changed!) I feel there’s no room to start throwing emotional hissyfits at someone who’s only too happy to help mature, sensible customers.