What should happen when you don’t receive something you paid for? The first reaction should be to work things out with the company in question before trying the alternatives. I’ve found that front-line support, while perhaps not empowered to fix complicated network issues, often has discretion when it comes to issuing credits or making sure your item gets delivered.

In my experiences with Netfirms, a call to their toll-free number got me speaking to a real person in less than a minute. The agent was more than happy to cancel an auto-renewal for a domain, and refunded the charge without complaint. Based on this positive experience, I’ve since used them for all my .ca domain registrations with no problems whatsoever.

If you do request a refund or exchange, make sure you’re aware of the company policies on these points before calling in. Knowing them can put you at an advantage; and if the agent goes above and beyond the written script to resolve your request, you’ll also feel good about your business with the company.

There are some companies that don’t focus as much effort on customer service. If you’re having bad luck with one form of support available, try another: email responses are often auto-triggered by keywords, so sometimes you may have to bite the bullet and make a call. Online chat is often worse than useless and is no substitute for phone support.

What happens, then, if the company isn’t cooperative? If you used a major credit card for the purchase, you’re at a significant advantage and are protected under your cardholder agreement: not only are you protected against purchases you didn’t make, but you also have recourse if you didn’t receive a product or service as agreed. More interesting is the merchant agreement that all businesses accepting credit cards must comply with: Visa, MasterCard and American Express all have these terms, and they all say the same things:

• Merchants cannot ask for identification as a condition of accepting the card.
• The customer card must contain a valid signature. “See ID” is not valid and even if combined with a signature, the merchant can ignore this request.
• The customer must receive the good or services as described.
• Numerous disputes and chargebacks can result in the merchant losing the ability to accept credit cards.

In dealing with a disputed charge, it helps if you’re on good terms with your bank. Chances are if you don’t pay your bills in the first place, the card authority will be more interested in collecting outstanding funds than helping resolve the situation with a third party.

Before establishing a complaint or chargeback, you should note that dealing directly with your credit card issuer can provide valuable information, such as the phone number tied to the original merchant. This number may be a special customer service centre for billing issues, and you should ask for it given the opportunity.

Chargeback procedures vary among financial institutions, and often require documentation such as a receipt, tracking number and even a written statement. The level of proof required may hinge on the amount of purchase and time since the transaction was posted to your credit card statement.

One final thing to note is that while you shouldn’t abuse chargebacks, or threaten merchants with the action simply based on poor customer service issues, a prudent placement of the phrase can often reverse results. In this example from Digital River, I’d requested a backup DVD set for Office 2007 as part of “The Ultimate Steal” promotion, and had yet to receive it after eight weeks. During this time, I was moving into a new apartment and really didn’t have time to pay attention to the exact shipment dates. Here’s a transcription of the messages I received and then sent to their support team.

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting the Ultimate Steal online store.

We have received your notice that you have not received the Backup DVD
from order number [redacted]. We show that the Backup DVD was shipped to
you on 4/16/08 via USPS and should have been received within 4-6 weeks
from this date. Please note that the backup DVD is shipped in a plain
white envelope and might be mistaken as junk mail. Due to this, we
suggest that the mail received to the following address be checked for
this envelope:

Jake Billo
[redacted]

Unfortunately, since the Backup DVD was originally shipped more than 90
days ago, we can no longer reship a replacement Backup DVD. We apologize
for the inconvenience this might cause.

—

I was displeased with the seemingly arbitrary 90 day policy, and decided to escalate the situation:

—

All mail shipped to this address is delivered to a secured post box. No such DVD was received during this time period. Unless you can provide a replacement disc, I will be issuing a chargeback for the 13.00 fee with my credit card issuer. Please let me know if you intend to send a replacement DVD.

Regards,
Jake

—

The response was much more favourable:

—

Dear Jake Billo,

Thank you for contacting the Ultimate Steal online store.

We apologize for the inconvenience. We have submitted a request to have the disc re-sent via a method that can be traced. Please allow 24-72 business hours for this request to process. Once this request has been process you will receive a separate notification.

—

The disc arrived via DHL the next day - and I never even had to contact my credit card issuer. The reason this message worked is because a chargeback would have been a legitimate recourse of action: I’d never received the promised product, and the company had no tracking information for the original shipment.

Hopefully you find these techniques effective in your next customer support experiences.

- Jake

Most people would assume that this is just something that is thrown out there for companies to protect themselves. Although this may be true, and most companies do record their calls, one would be led to believe that very few would actually review these calls. I’ve discovered that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Recently, Jake, Warren, and I (I’m Dave, by the way) have been running a VoIP company called GrokPhone. We have been testing out a Linksys SPA3102 ATA. This is a device that let’s you turn your normal analog telephones into VoIP capable phones, while still being able to receive calls from your landline.

I was having difficulties getting this device setup, so I called Linksys tehnical support for some assistance. Upon calling them, I was told that I couldn’t receive technical support, and that I was to contact my reseller for support. Regardless of the fact that I ensured the representative that I was in fact a reseller, they wouldn’t hear of it, and ended the call promptly. With a few more hours of playing around with it, I managed to get the device up and running, and just brushed the whole incident off.

About a week ago I received a call from the “Linksys Quality Assurance” department. The woman calling wanted to follow up on a recent call I had with Linksys technical support. She indicated that upon reviewing the recorded call, they determined that the representative’s conduct towards me was disrespectful. She had called to apologize for the incident, and gave me a direct number to call in the future for Reseller Support.

This is the sort of customer service I would expect from all companies. It is unfortunate that the incident occured in the first place, but it’s also good to know that these incidents are being reviewed and followed up on. I had a similar experience with Telus, except it took a call to their Loyalty & Retentions department to get the issue sorted out.

- Dave