Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Hey, what's that on the left?
I have been known to let my attention to detail slack. There have been times where I've forgotten a birthday or an appointment, even though it's written on my calendar. There have been times that I forget where I've put something fairly important. There have been times that involve me forgetting when a payment comes out from my account.
With that last one, though, I usually find out pretty quickly if I've forgotten something, because I look at the statements. I receive one every month from my bank on paper, and I usually check four or five times a month online. That's how I noticed the time that a $400 Visa payment came out of my account, which I thought was curious, since I don't have a Visa.
Anyway, this brings me to CaptainDetail. He called to ask why he was being billed for the service. The reason appears to be because neither he nor anyone else has ever notified us that the account shouldn't continue to be billed. It surprises some people, but we don't psychically know that they've switched to another ISP; we expect our customers to call in or email us or something if they want to cancel the account.
This happens once in a while. Most people understand that since they didn't tell us that they wanted to cancel, the service didn't cancel. Some argue that they should be entitled to a refund. For us, it's a pretty clear-cut issue.
For this guy, he didn't notice for FOUR YEARS. It was way back in 2001 when he'd first called to sign up, but he was still under contract with another ISP, so in early 2002, he started using the service. Apparently, he only used it briefly, but forgot or neglected to ever let us know that he'd stopped, and so the billing continued.
Four years!
How do you not notice something like that? Does this guy not ever look at his account balance? I can understand having it happen for a month or two, but it's been about fiftymonths for him.
Way to go, CaptainDetail!
With that last one, though, I usually find out pretty quickly if I've forgotten something, because I look at the statements. I receive one every month from my bank on paper, and I usually check four or five times a month online. That's how I noticed the time that a $400 Visa payment came out of my account, which I thought was curious, since I don't have a Visa.
Anyway, this brings me to CaptainDetail. He called to ask why he was being billed for the service. The reason appears to be because neither he nor anyone else has ever notified us that the account shouldn't continue to be billed. It surprises some people, but we don't psychically know that they've switched to another ISP; we expect our customers to call in or email us or something if they want to cancel the account.
This happens once in a while. Most people understand that since they didn't tell us that they wanted to cancel, the service didn't cancel. Some argue that they should be entitled to a refund. For us, it's a pretty clear-cut issue.
For this guy, he didn't notice for FOUR YEARS. It was way back in 2001 when he'd first called to sign up, but he was still under contract with another ISP, so in early 2002, he started using the service. Apparently, he only used it briefly, but forgot or neglected to ever let us know that he'd stopped, and so the billing continued.
Four years!
How do you not notice something like that? Does this guy not ever look at his account balance? I can understand having it happen for a month or two, but it's been about fiftymonths for him.
Way to go, CaptainDetail!
# posted by Terry @ 9:47 AM 
