Once upon a time I wrote a note to customer service at Albertson’s (grocery store) complaining that they didn’t offer a single brand of eggs in a non-styrofoam carton, and provided them with some information about the environmental effects of polystyrene in landfills. Two weeks later I received from Albertson’s a computer-generated form response thanking me for my “recent correspondence.” Included in the envelope was a coupon… for a free carton of eggs in a styrofoam carton. Their little way of connecting with customers and assuring me that my voice had been heard.
Two days ago I wrote to customer service at gap.com complaining about the fact that if you visit their site with Safari, you get kicked out with a message: “We’re sorry, but we do not support the version of the browser you are using.” I provided some information on Safari’s excellent standards compliance ratings, and asked “If you can’t make your site work with Safari, how can you make it work with anything?” I also noted that, yes, I could fire up Firefox and use that instead, but that I refused on principle — I’d rather shop elsewhere than play that game. Today I got a message back from gap.com reading, in part:
Currently we support AOL, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Firefox for PC users. Unfortunately, we temporarily do not support Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh. …. Safari users having problems accessing our site can download the free Firefox browser.
I guess failing to understand or even apparently to read my message was their little way of connecting with customers and assuring me that my voice had been heard.
Why even bother? Speak a smidge of sense into the void and you end up feeling like Quixote, raging against the machine. Corporate retards.
>>Today I got a message back from gap.com reading, in part:
Watch out they don’t spam you thereafter.
>>I guess failing to understand or even apparently to read my message was their little way of connecting with customers and assuring me that my voice had been heard.
It could be worse — they could have entered you into some CRM database and you’d never hear the end of it.
>>Speak a smidge of sense into the void and you end up feeling like Quixote, raging against the machine.
But then, there are times when a plan comes together.
Thank you for your recent blog posting. Please accept this oil spill and beheaded pony as a token of our interest in your comments.
Please upgrade to Windows XP to view beheaded pony.
I receive letters like this at my company. I read them. Think about them. Share them. Then throw them away. The letters do influence decisions way down the road because corporations are often slow turning ships, but it is impossible to predict, so what can I say now? “We’ll think about it?” At least I don’t send out form letters.
That and your letter could be part of a plot to snare us in a lawsuit. Customers. Can’t trust them.
My father in law passed away recently. My mother in law wrote her credit card company asking whether she could remove his name from their (joint) account, and informing them why she was making that request. She got a very nice letter back informing her that they couldn’t honor her request, but if HE wrote in asking to remove his name from their account, they would be happy to make that change…
Situations like this are so stupid, you’re at a loss for how to proceed.