Your rights as a customer when service is free
‘œThere is only one boss. The customer.’ – Sam Walton
Since I’ve been on a customer service rant lately, why not continue the trend? I’m not the only one’¦ there are others at Queercents that have an equally low tolerance for lousy service.
Here’s my latest experience. This week, on several occasions, I’ve been unable to access my Yahoo! Mail. I receive an Error Code 5 which is the email equivalent of your desktop going to the dreaded blue screen. A prompt allowed me to send a message to customer care. Of course, I didn’t see this reply until my email was working again:
You can always try hitting the refresh button, closing some windows or making sure you are only signed into 1 account. However, if you are repeatedly experiencing these errors, please reply to this message and a Customer Care agent will respond within 24 hours.
Here’s a posted message from another disgruntled customer:
Finally, why am I asking a public forum, when I need to send this message directly to Yahoo?! OH…OH…OH!!! Better yet, what’s the point of emailing me the answer… I CAN’T GET TO IT!!!
Get the picture. Now I’ve been using Yahoo! Mail for years. I’ve never upgraded from the Classic version which is 100% free and even includes unlimited storage. Who needs Gmail?
So here’s the question’¦ As a customer using a free service, do I have rights to working and uninterrupted service? Sure I can upgrade to Yahoo! Mail Plus for $19.99 a year, but even with this package they don’t advertise an 800 number for support and for some reason. I suspect the problem would persist.
What free services do you use? And are you able to make demands like a paying customer? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts below.
I prefer Gmail because it’s integrated with my Google Account. I’ve got iGoogle as my home page, and from iGoogle I can see my feeds, my inbox, weather, Google docs, and Google maps all in one place.
From the Gmail account, I can even connect to GTalk (their IM service), which many of my friends use.
It’s not “free” per se but if you own any domain names you can administer your own email throught your webhost (and call them for problems). I do it for all my primaries.
Nina, did you see “When Services Fail: Relying Upon Web Email Services for Your Work” on Web Worker Daily?
Well, they still want your business. You give them zillions of ad views just by being you—plus as a yahoo customer ads go out on the bottom of your e-mail. So in that way, you’re not unlike a paying customer. Demanding to take your service elsewhere, etc, is a real threat if enough people do it.
I just don’t know if the people you’d be working with would see it that way.
I have a bazillion e-mail accounts through several people. So I know that if my gmail mrsmicah account goes down, I have one at yahoo too. And I have e-mail directly through the site. Just in case.
This is an often discussed topic at my work. The restaurant chain I work for gives out free cornbread (like tortilla chips). We bring it anywhere between when the drinks are served or right after you order depending on how many other things a server is doing simultaneously.
The cornbread is free. It’s a large portion and by rule of thumb we bring out one for every four people. If you finish it, we’ll bring out another on request. Rarely, we run out. Like once every six months if our oven suddenly had a malfunction or some other fluke accident. People go fricking apesh*t over it. You expect a riot. I’ve had someone ask if they could get a discount on their bill when I was unable to bring out a second loaf. It’s FREE!
This is obviously a free service, but on the other hand, people might have come to my restaurant and ordered food with cornbread in mind. You’d think I was serving manna at times. Even as a server, I realize that although it is a free service, it brings paying customers. Likewise with Yahoo, the email is free, but they are getting a gazillion dollars in revenue based off all the ads.
A.J.: I thought about making the switch when Gmail was first introduced, but I have so much information stored in my Yahoo! Mail folders, that it seemed like a hassle.
One folder has 499 messages and acts as an archive of my Feedblitz alerts from the last three years of Sitting Pretty posts… I know, weird way to back up my content, but it’s a system that works for me. Oh well… thanks for the link to the article. Most of the solutions offered though were way too technical for me. Like the Lifehacker fetchmail suggestion:
Mike: As you know, I have a nina [at] queercents [dot] com email but it points to my Yahoo! Mail address. Again, as with Gmail, I just never made the switch to the Queercents.com control panel. Good point. I should look into using it.
Mrs. Micah: Yes, because of the ads, I do feel like a paying customer. But one without any rights to good customer service.
Vixen: Love the cornbread analogy. Thanks for sharing!
Even when using a free service you are an important customer because when a business gives something for free they are making money (or hope to make money) from you another way. Sooo yes you have a right to expect good service from even a free service and a business should be just as attentive to the free service customer.
Is there anyway you can switch to gmail and still use yahoo as a pre-2008 info archive? Gmail really is superior. I’m going to send you an invite right now just in case.
Lifehacker has a sister site Consumerist that talks about people’s pains with customer service. Some major companies are also monitoring these blogs and react where appropriate.
Pam: Yep, cross-selling and up-selling all come into play here! Good point.
Aundi: I also have a queercents [at] gmail [dot] com account, but again never use. I recall Paula suggesting I open it so we could use it to back up Queercents content. Off hand, I can’t even remember the passcode.
Phil: I can only hope that Yahoo! is monitoring my complaint here – blasted out to tens of thousands of queers worldwide. Did you hear that Yahoo!? — 300,000+ visitors here and counting. Snap to that Error Code 5!