Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Another Refund Experience: Learn to Get What You Want from Customer Service

A couple days ago I posted about asking for an eBay fee to be refunded to me. Well, today I've done it again. I signed up with Match.com a couple months ago, but I didn't have much luck with it so I decided not to renew. Apparently not paying them wasn't enough to stop the subscription, because when I looked at my bank account today I saw that they had auto-renewed my subscription and charged me for it.

Well, that was just not going to happen. No way was I going to sit back and let them charge me $70 for something I didn't need, want, or use.

I found a customer service number on their website and gave them a call. I was incredibly nice in explaining the situation and asked that they please cancel my subscription and refund my account. The rep explained that I agreed to their terms of service, which explains their auto-renew policy, and the best she could do was cancel my subscription as of today so that I would only owe for one additional month and she could refund me the difference between the three month subscription and the one month subscription. The difference was about $28 meaning that I would still be paying $40, which is just not in my budget.

At that point I knew she was technically right. I had agreed to the terms of service so I did owe the money, but I still wasn't ready to give up. I politely asked for a supervisor and she put me on hold. A couple minutes later she came back and said that her supervisor had authorized her to extend a one-time courtesy and refund the full amount.

Woohoo!

There are several things to learn from this experience. The first is don't give up. Even if they've already charged your account or you're technically in the wrong, they'll often extend a "one-time courtesy" that will get you what you want.

The second thing to learn is to be incredibly polite. Overly so. Be more polite than you've ever been in your entire life. No one likes rude people, so being rude will work to your disadvantage no matter the situation. The only time I would ever be rude to a customer service rep is if they are clearly in the wrong and are blatantly refusing to right the situation. Be polite first.

The third thing to learn is to be persistent. Ask twice. Ask for a supervisor. Explain yourself clearly. If you still don't get what you should, thank them for their time, hang up, and call back immediately to get a new person and try the process again.

1 comment:

Carol said...

Good for you!!! I had to call ATT/Cingular because they charged us $18 each for some upgrade fee or something. All I had to do was ask, nicely, and they reversed both charges.

Happy Thanksgiving!