Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein.com
SMS Country Complaint
smscountry
smscountry.com
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SMS Country offers a service to send text messages for a small fee. The fee is about 5 US center per message. It was an ok service. I didn't have any real complaints with it, except to be able to send a text message in their basic (low cost service) you have to copy and paste the cell phone number, then go to another menu to send the message instead of just being able to click on the phone number and send the message. But still it was ok. Then one day I went to send a message and after I wrote the message, it told me my "credit had expired". Well it was late at night. I was stressed anyhow and that really ticked me off. So I wrote them. Below is the correspondence to date.
S. Hein
July 11, 2007
Here is a note I wrote about this to my readers to explain the letter
I am really irate....
I just found out my credit has expired. I had no idea it was going to expire. I used it recently and it didn't give any warning. The expiration date is hidden on the site. It is not clearly stated at all. I suspect it is also in the "fine print" on their original sign up page, but it was six months ago that I signed up. This is exactly what they want. Customers to forget that there is an expiration so they can effectively steal your money. This infuriates me.
To me this is theft. I used less than half of the credit I purchased. I feel robbed, cheated, ripped off. I am livid. Please tell anyone you know now to use SMS Country. If you know of another text message website, please let me know. Thank you.
June 2007
Now here is the letter..
| I am VERY unhappy with finding out my credit has
expired. It was very important for me to send a message
today. Please immediately reactivate my account. I am the webmaster of a website on which I write about customer service. I will be writing about this. I am EXTREMELY unhappy. My account is xxxx |
First letter from SMS Country
| Hi Steve We have provided the feature where you can check the validity of your credits at various locations: 1) Login with your username and password to our website and there you click on balance credits and there you can check the 'Credits Purchase History'. 2)In our webiste in the Pricing slab. Check the link
below: http://www.smscountry.com/sms 3) In pricing tab ----> Payment options. http://www.smscountry.com We also introduced the process of automated mail
intimation system before one month of expiry date. As we
were not able to intimate you in person we are extending
the validity of your credits for one month now. From now
onwards you will receive a mail before 1 month of
expiry date. -- |
Comments on the first letter. Recommendations to customer service reps
- Apologize to the customer
- Address his complaint specifically.
- Show some understanding. Especially show understanding for how they were feeling when they wrote the letter. Say something like "We are very sorry you needed to send a message and couldn't. I am sure that was very frustrating. "
Think about how much the customer is likely to feel understood from 0 to 10. When I got this letter I felt understood about 1.
- Act like you really appreciate them writing you. Say something like "Thank you for writing. This is how we can improve our service.
- If they are really unhappy offer them something more than just a token one month extension. For example I would have felt a lot better if they would have given me 50 more credits and 6 more months to use them. This would be peanuts to them but would have meant a lot to me.
- Don¨t say "Have a nice day!!!" to an obviously angry customer
- Notice how this letter starts out. It doesn¨t start out by apologizing. Instead it almost makes it sound like I was stupid for not knowing my credit was going to run out.
- If you are not a native English speaker, hire someone who is to check your correspondence. Look at this sentence..
As we were not able to intimate you in person...
My next letter
I am still unhappy about this. There is no way I am going to use the
rest of my credit up in the next month. I have used less than half in
six months.
Could you please explain why you even put an expiration on the credit?
And please take the expiration off of my credit completely?
Steve Hein
Their response
Hi Steve,
We had already extended the validity of the credits for one month, But we cant remove the expiration option forever as it is beyond our system.
We offer 24 x 7 E-Mail support. For sales calls, we are available between 9:30 AM and 6:30 PM, India time (IST)
Have a nice day!!!
Thanking you,
Warm regards
Pooja
--
Notes on this response
- He did not explain why they put an expiration on the credits. He didn't even address my question.
- He didn't show any understanding about the fact I had only used half my credits in 6 months and acknowledge that a one month extension was pretty lame.
- Nor did he offer to extend it for even one more month.
Then I wrote this sarcastic letter after seeing that my complaint was top in google
Please go to google and enter
sms country complaints
then reconsider your position and think a little more about the
letters you are writing me
i am very unhappy. you dont seem to be understanding what i am saying.
i asked you a question in my last email and you did not address. it
and you continue to tell me to have a nice day!!!
are you from another planet? or dont your customers feelings matter
any more than this to you? or am i failing to express my
dissatisfaction?
when you write the next time, if you do, please show a little more
understanding and please dont write have a nice day!!!
s.hein
Then I got this letter
| Hi Steve We want to educate ALL our customers (including potential customers) about the concept of "Credits Expiry". This is made quite clear when a customer buys credits and the credits validity is always available in a Customer's 'Account Info' page. We have also integrated this in reminder e-mails and in all the pages of our website where anything related to payments is mentioned. So, its not just the 'terms and conditions' as you put it. We are constantly trying to ensure that EVERY CUSTOMER knows about "Credits Expiry". The key for us is to ensure that our customers know about "Credits Expiry", are comfortable with this, buy credits and use them with-in the stipulated validity period. Your efforts will help us in targetting only these customers. Many thanks. I will get back to you once I upload the mails that have been exchanged between our support and you in our BLOG. We always try to potray both sides of the story. I will include a link to your article. Our customers are very intelligent. We never had to spice-up or spin the communication between our support and our customers. They can arrive at their own conclusions after going through the entire e-mail history. ------------------------------ You Wrote: I am the webmaster of a website on which I write about customer service. I will be writing about this Wonder how the above sentence can be classified. Can this be classified as a THREAT? Wonder how you would have reacted if we just extended the validity of your credits. ------------------------------ Regards Ramesh Thimmana |
My response to Ramish
July 11, 2007
| Ramish First, I am not sure what the point of your writing this was You Wrote: I am the webmaster of a website on which I write about customer service. I will be writing about this Wonder how the above sentence can be classified. Can this be classified as a THREAT? Wonder how you would have reacted if we just extended the validity of your credits. But regardless of that, I am still not satisfied, or actually let me say partly because of the above, but that is not the main thing which is bothering me. Also, I am writing to let you know that I just checked sms country in google and my complaint is in the top five results. Not just sms country complaints, but "sms country" I am going to assume that you would prefer I feel a little more satisfied with your company's response since my page could cost you some sales. So if you still want to talk about this, let me know. I still do not feel very understood, although I appreciate you not saying "have a nice day" at the end of your mail, and you taking this a little more seriously. But from my personal standpoint when you wrote me I still had about 50 credits out of the 100 I started with almost 7 months ago. I have been using them up more quickly now but I am afraid my extra month will still run out. I have never liked this practice of making someones credits disappear at a certain "expiry" date when I have come across it. I feel robbed when I spend my money and then I cant use the service I paid for. And I feel manipulated into either using up my credits faster than I would have otherwise, or into buying more credits so I dont lose what I already have. To me this is a bad business practice which I would like to see stopped around the world. This is not just about company. This happened to me recently with my cell phone company. I ended up buying more credits, then traveling and losing nearly all the credits I had bought in an attempt to save the other credits. I personally resent this kind of business approach and I expect many others do also. I use my website to voice my own complaints and also to inform people and to try to change things. I am very strongly opposed to this kind of sales trick. I see no legitimate reason to put any kind of expiration on these kinds of services. If your costs go up you could inform your customers of the increase, but you would not have to simply keep all of their money. In my opinion this is our money we are entrusting you with when we buy credits like this. In my opinion businesses abuse this kind of trust. And everyone loses in the long run because there are many negative feelings generated needlessly. I dont agree that it is enough to educate your customers about the expiration. If all companies have these kinds of tricks, then where is a person like me supposed to buy credits? Or maybe you dont want "small" customers like me who don't spend their money fast enough. In any case, I would prefer to see a businessworld where all companies honor the trust placed in them by their customers. I also feel concerned that my complaint is only being taken seriously now because I did write about it on my site. But at the same time, to me this is a valid use of the power of my site. I don't think it is an abuse of power: What do you think? I see myself as a consumer advocate as well as just an unhappy individual consumer. I also believe it is fair to let someone know that I will be writing about them. Maybe it did sound like a threat, but it also could have been taken as simply useful information in making your decision in how to respond. Not all customers care as much about things like this. We are, after all, not talking about much money. Most customers, as you probably have experienced, just quietly accept these kinds of practices. But I am not most customers. And my website is not just any website. It has taken me years to build my website and get the ranking and influence I have. I want to use the power it has to make things better in the world as much as I can. This practice of credits "expiring" bothers me. And when your employee said something like it is not possible in our system to remove the expiration date, my first thought is "well, who wrote the system?": I find these kinds of answers, such as, "it is not our company policy..." or "it is not in our system's capabilities" extremely offensive. They don't help me feel any better. In fact, they help me feel worse. I don't want to just know what your policies are. I want you and others to change them. If you don't, it is your choice, but I hope customers will stop using companies which have these kinds of policies and an enlightened entrepreneur or manager will offer us better alternatives. These kinds of practices are standard at huge companies.With these companies you are unlikely ever to be taken seriously because they have so many customers. In your case you have given this some time and attention, which I do appreciate, that is one reason I am writing again to try to make myself better understood and also to clarify my position for my readers. Returning to my personal case, I would like a real explanation of why your company puts in these expiration dates in the first place. And I would like to know if it is possible to change the date to, say, 6 more months in the future to give me plenty of time to use them without feeling pressured or rushed. Thank you. Steve Hein |
I just found this in the "terms" - you know those things that look like this
I Agree to the Terms & Conditions __
Then there is a litle box you can check. Or you can spend a lot of time reading the terms. Well, I would suspect a lot of people initially trust companies, and dont bother to read all the terms. Until they are burnt. This to me is how we become hateful of big businesses. Anyhow, here are the terms I didn't read when I signed up. And please don't bother telling me I should have. I disagree. I believe companies "should" offer better service than this so we don't have to waste our time reading pages and pages of this stuff. With the power of the Internet we can pressure companies to raise their standards. To me this is a rip off. If you agree, then don't use SMS Country. If you do use them, at least be forewarned.
All credits expire within 120 days from the date on which they had been purchased. After these 120 days, 30 day credits validity period is available during which if the User buys new credits, his/her balance unused credits from the earlier purchase(s) are also added to the account. If not, the User looses all his/her credits but his/her SMSCountry Account remains to be active. SMSCountry may, at its sole discretion, curtail or extend this period on a case-by-case basis.
So if you happen to notice that you haven't used all your credits within 30 days of their expiration date, you can spend more money to not lose the credit you have. But let's think about it. If you haven't used your credit in six months, do you want to buy more and possibly lose that too?
This to me is extortion, theft.
It is NOT what I would call good customer service.
Let's see how they respond to my letter.
S. Hein
Another website I found where I was going to complain
I just found this website and tried to lodge a complaint but it wouldnt let me. It kept saying I needed more information. It was EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING!!!
http://www.mouthshut.com/review/SMSCountry.com-76617-1.html
Then I tried to just leave a comment and it wouldn't let me do that either unless I registered with them!!!
It makes me wonder if SMS country runs the site or has some interest in it.
I feel VERY FRUSTRATED!!!
It is around four thirty in the morning. I JUST WANTED TO SEND ONE SIMPLE TEXT MESSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another note to myself I wrote on the first night. It is a copy of something from my journal entry.
I just wanted to send one simple text message. As I think about it now, it didn't even tell me my credit had expired till after I wrote the message. Shitty customer service. That's probably the last thing I will say about it. For now. ha ha