Legal Research

The Rough and the Smooth

By scott

A couple of things happened over Christmas that involved me having to test the customer relations of two organisations. First off I was bought a 3 month membership to The Album Club (run by Rough Trade Records, a label I have had a lot of time and respect for over the years) , and then was the appearance of a hairline crack running diagonally from the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

The Album Club

What it is. According to Rough Trade: ” Every month we compile the ten hottest album releases. As a member, you receive the most exciting album from this selection ? we call it The Album. It comes with exclusive bonus material and a fold-out guide (see examples right, click to view as a pdf) that includes a members introduction to The Album by the artist. All for just £12 per month (including postage).”

Sounded like a cool present (thanks Jen, thanks Veen). I’ve always been a fan of Rough Trade and indeed had bought many an album from artists - The Hold Steady, Sufjan Stevens, Jarvis C, Decemberists, Motorcycle Boy (loved that band), Jenny Lewis, and of course the Smiths on the label ? indeed many in last couple of years via eMusic (although they announced pulling their content). Bought Warpaint album before Xmas. So, I was in good spirits.

You sign up online. So, I got a code to redeem as part of the sign up process ? to give me 3 months free - and I signed up. Or, to be exact, I tried to. The problem was the site crashed on me during the sign up process, and gave me an error message. However, as this came after them welcoming me to club and telling me when my first album would be sent out, I thought. Fine. Maybe, I can just log in anyway.

Apparently not. When I tried that I got a “This account has not yet been activated. These details are incorrect.” I’d agree that the account had not yet been activated, but the details were correct, so the second sentence is actually the only thing incorrect.

Maybe I need to try again, from the start? Nope That just tells me I’m already a member ? only I’m not (activated)

So, I look for a means to contact The Album Club. They have 2 email addresses. One is called: General: and the other Technical/Website. This being a sign up issue on their website I plug to send them an email to the latter. Several days pass, and no response is forthcoming. I moan about it on Twitter in which I said ” albumclub gift for xmas but had probs signing up. 8 days and still no response to email @RoughTradeRecs #FAIL . Not impressed.”

I thought maybe if I include an @ to one of RoughTrade’s accounts that someone would see this and pass it on to someone, maybe ask what the problem was, offer help? Nope.

[Note to Rough Trade Comms people: If you’ve made the effort to be on social networking sites like Twitter and you’re not monitoring for mentions of your products and services and then not chasing up on negative / complaint mentions, then you really don’t get it. And, let’s be honest you’re in an industry that has been famous for not getting it on many issues over the last 10 years. Put simply, you cannot afford NOT to get it.]

So I waited a few more days until yesterday, when I decided to copy my original email to the ‘other’ email address. Voila! Immediate response and apology (Much appreciated) and an explanation, from Will (who seems a pleasant chap) that my problem was caused by a bug they experience over Xmas and that my activation was sorted out (I’ll leave aside why no one was monitoring the other email address). So now I’m a happy man, yes?

No. You see whilst I am now able to access the site, it now says under membership ‘Your membership to The Album Club has now expired’ and that I need to enter card details if I want to renew. So, my free 3 months seems to have been overlooked. I’m now waiting for another email response.
Amazon

Compare this with Amazon. As I said, my Kindle recently developed a diagonal hairline crack on the plastic casing at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Checking online I found I was not the only one to have this issue and was also not to only on e to have this issue despite my Kindle living in one of Amazon’s own leather cases the whole time.

Anyway, I phoned Amazon up yesterday afternoon ? around 3pm - and within two minutes I had a replacement booked to be sent out and an email send with a label to print off and a number to call to arrange free pick up and return of the old Kindle. I get to work this am, and the new Kindle had arrived in the office at 8.30am. Amazing. Now when it comes to sorting out the content from the old to new Kindle, I may have problems ? who knows, but for now, I’m a happy bunny.

Conclusion

I’ll leave you, dear reader, to guess which experience was the most pleasurable to me, and which organisation is feeling the love from me, and which’s reputation has taken a bruising in my opinions.

Full post as published by Information Overload on January 11, 2011 (boomark / email).