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Back in December of 2005 I signed up for a free account with Yahoo.com's Personals Service. Basically, I was bored at work and there's a lot to surf on that site. Eventually I met a few ladies on the site that I wanted to talk to, so I signed up for their subscription. I knew the policy because it was on the subscription sign up page, and I've gone over this before. I know that if I don't want to be billed anymore, I have to cancel the subscription. After having the subscription for a week or so, I decided to cancel. The only option I had at the time to cancel was to call an 800 number. So that's what I did. The man on the other end of the phone told me everything was taken care of. I had dealt with Yahoo's customer care service before, and I had no reason to not trust that my subscription was cancelled. This took place during either the end of December '05 or the beginning of January '06. Fast forward to April 4, 2006. I decide to cancel my subscription to the Yahoo Music Engine, because I find it sad that you have to pay per month AND per song download. Upon reaching the billing page on Yahoo, I found that I was still being billed for the Personals subscription. I cancelled it then, because I didn't want to be billed for it again. I emailed their customer service, after hunting down the customer service contact information, which ironically isn't easy to find. Why is it so hard to get personalized customer care Yahoo? Here is the email progression verbatim. Me to Yahoo:Let's go over this. First, they ask me what my Yahoo ID is. Hey jackasses, it's the fucking name on the email address I used to email you with. These assholes don't even know their own system. Any part time user of Yahoo knows that your name with them is good for all of their services. Hell, it says that on your main account page. I should've known from there that I wasn't going to get the help I needed. Then they tell me the policy. Yeah, I had already mentioned that I knew their policy, but they still had to tell me. I guess they're so proud of it that they just have to show it off every chance they get. And why not be proud of it? It's making them tons of money. They tell me the policy AGAIN. I go off, and then request a number to call them. The very next email says "If you have further questions, please call us at:" Well, isn't that nice of them? They offered their number to better assist me. Oh that's right, I asked for the number. That quote is there because they're using the good old fashioned "copy and paste" method of handling this problem. I wasn't actually talking to someone, I was getting pre-typed out answers because they don't want their "customer service" jackoffs to actually talk to the customers. No, fuck the customers. After all, they're only the reason Yahoo is as big as it is today... And what's that? A customer service number that isn't an 800 number. Very nice. So now I have to spend more money to talk to you about my problem? How ironic how that worked out. I bet Yahoo has stock in the phone company. Jump ahead to April 7, 2006. I call the non-800 number and get a guy that surprisingly spoke clear english. I told him my problem and he attempted to help me out. By "attempted to help me out" I mean "read off of a script to answer my questions. This is the problem with this country. Big corporations took over, and then basically said "fuck you" to the consumer that made them the giants they are. How is it that Yahoo basically runs the internet, makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, yet they can't train their customer care "specialists" well enough so that they can help out the customers? Because they're not helping you folks, they're reading off of a fucking computer screen. THE COMPUTER is helping you, the person on the phone is just telling you what the computer said. And the computer is just a computer. No feelings, no thoughts, no remorse. It's just a computer. And the person on the phone is only as good as the computer. So I tell this guy my problem, and you know what he does? He starts to read to me the policy. Yeah, that policy I was given twice in the emails. I interrupted him, which was one of many times, and told him I knew the policy. I then explained myself again. He had no answer except a bunch of babbling and stuttering. This is because he was stalling, because he was trying to find the appropriate answer on his computer and couldn't. I say to him in these words (more or less), "Why the hell would I have a subscription if I'm not using the site at all?" He puts me on hold for what could've been 3-5 minutes. Thank god this isn't a long distance phone call that I have to pay for. He comes back to the phone and his voice is trembling. He tells me he's going to have to transfer me to one of his supervisors. I can tell now, that he is indeed crying. I made this fucker cry by saying "hell". At most I was cooperative with him and very nice. At the beginning of the call I had even apologized early for what was about to happen and told him that I'm very upset about this. He seemed to understand. I guess he's never heard someone say the "H" word before. I'm put on hold again for another 5 minutes before a lady answers the line. I quickly explain my situation to her and she gives me the exact same run around I was getting with the emails and with the guy. Yes, that means she too, was reading a fucking script. Even the god damned "supervisors" are morons. I guess it takes one to supervise one. She "guarantees" me that I won't be charged again. I tell her that isn't the issue, and again tell her the issue. The only thing she can tell me is she "can't give me a refund here." So I asked her where I could get one, and she again would say she "can't give me a refund here." I'm assuming she meant at all, but that's not what she said. She then asked me to hold, so I did for another 5 minutes and she came back to me and told me that there was no way I was going to get a refund, but she did "guarantee" me that I wouldn't be charged again. No shit. One of the issues I had was I didn't record the confirmation number the man gave me when I first cancelled. That was my fault. HOWEVER, she told me three times that she would give me my confirmation number this time, and she never did. I was on the phone with them for 28 minutes and 55 seconds. And half of that was spent on hold. Can't wait to see my bill. So, there was only one thing left to do. Call an attorney. That's right, call an attorney. You see, this thing has escalated past the $80 they STOLE from me. This is now about principle. The attorney tells me what I figured. He's not going to take the case because it's not worth me paying him $1500 for $80. I told him that I'd like to go after more, and he said he isn't interested. Now I know why attorney's have a bad name. My final step... document what happened. This page is going to turn into a new website eventually. Just keep checking www.BeefyHouse.com for more. Until then, send in your horror stories to beefybooyawn@gmail.com and I'll get them here ASAP. I implore everyone that hates being fucked by big corporations, or anyone that's been fucked by Yahoo to not use their services at all. I gave up all of my Yahoo email accounts, of which there were 4, stopped using their search engine, their tool bar, and their messenger, which I've used for going on 6 years. Stand up to them. Together we can make a difference. I know that's cheesy, but it's true. This first one comes from a lady I work with at the Pub. After telling her my story she told me hers. She told me she signed up to Yahoo's Music Engine and paid for a year up front. Within one week she realized she couldn't use the service because it wasn't working for her. I know the feeling, I had the same problem happen to me. I had to uninstall and reinstall it several times before it worked for me. She cancels her subscription and they say they can't give her a refund because she paid for a year up front, even though the site says "7 Day Free Trial", and here's their policy on it, verbatim. YOU MUST CANCEL WITHIN THE 7-DAY TRIAL PERIOD OR YOU'LL AUTOMATICALLY BE CHARGED THE SUBSCRIPTION FEE YOU SELECTED DURING REGISTRATION. Once billing begins, your subscription will automatically renew on the monthly anniversary of your billing date, at the then-current price offered to the public for the subscription you select, until you tell us to cancel. The Yahoo! Music Engine application is free and will not be affected if you cancel a Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription. Free trials are available to new customers in the United States only. A valid credit card is required at sign up for validation. See additional terms during registration.I may have missed it because I didn't read between the lines, but I don't see anywhere where it says you can't get a refund if you pay for a year in advance. There are several other parts to the "small print" but none of them are about the billing and the free trial. So basically, if what she told me is part of their policy, then where is the documentation? On another page? Why would it be on another page when you have the rules and regulations on the main page that talks about the free trial? Nevermind that it says "YOU MUST CANCEL WITHIN THE 7-DAY TRIAL PERIOD OR YOU'LL AUTOMATICALLY BE CHARGED THE SUBSCRIPTION FEE YOU SELECTED DURING REGISTRATION." Doesn't that mean either the monthly or the yearly fee, which are the only two options? She lost $59.88. Yet another incident where lack of easily accessible information is fucking customers out of their money on Yahoo's site. |
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