{"id":637,"date":"2009-08-11T15:45:30","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T14:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/?p=637"},"modified":"2009-08-11T15:45:30","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T14:45:30","slug":"web-01-apple-customer-support-please-dont-email-us-just-sue-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2009\/08\/11\/web-01-apple-customer-support-please-dont-email-us-just-sue-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Web 0.1: Apple Customer Support: “please don’t email us, just sue us”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw an article recently that described this attitude nicely: certain weak marketing executives believe that the purpose of a “conversation” is for them to have more ways of telling the customer what to do; they are seemingly incapable of understanding the idea that a “conversation” involves listening to the other person.<\/p>\n

To them, email is a “one-way broadcast medium for us to tell the customer what to buy”, rather than “a two-way communication medium that allows us to listen and respond to our customers”.<\/p>\n

Today, I received a great example. Here’s an email I received one month ago, from Apple:<\/p>\n

\n“Thank you for renewing your iPhone Developer Program membership. New Expiration Date: 10 Aug 2010”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here’s the email I received today, from Apple:<\/p>\n

\n“your iPhone Developer Program has expired” (sent from address: “noreply-iphonedev@apple.com” )\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A triple-whammy on appalling customer support there:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Erroneously (I hope) claiming that they are NOT providing a service they have committed to providing\n
  2. Taking money from a bank account in return for a service that they then don’t provide (that bit’s illegal)\n
  3. …and:\n
  4. Sending all correspondence from an email address that they mark “noreply”; i.e. “if we (Apple) screwed up, we don’t want to hear from you. We don’t want to fix it. Go away”\n<\/ol>\n

    I especially like the way they put this all together, so you get the implication that:<\/p>\n

    \nApple would prefer me to sue them (Apple), or file a claim against them for fraud, than to let me send them a simple email and spare them the fallout of their stupid mistake.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Using a two-way media to deliberately ignore your customers? That’s Web 0.1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I saw an article recently that described this attitude nicely: certain weak marketing executives believe that the purpose of a “conversation” is for them to have more ways of telling the customer what to do; they are seemingly incapable of understanding the idea that a “conversation” involves listening to the other person. To them, email […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,29,54,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}