Whatever Happened to Customer Rights

[Ravenseye]

At what point did the rights of a corporation become more important than the rights of a consumer?

Ok, I'm a geek. I'm proud of it. I played Everquest 2 (EQ2) online for a bit, which is made by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). I grew bored with it and canceled. Well I find out that they've been charging me for months. My wife asked me "I thought you canceled EQ2?" and I replied "I did. Months ago." Sure enough there was a new charge, and my wife informed me that they'd been on every month.

Well, of course you can't call them. They don't have phone support, so I sent an email and waited for 2 hours in a online queue for a customer support instant messager chat. Turns out that they have no record of my cancelation. I ask them to cancel my account, and to refund my money. They cancel my account, but refuse to refund my money. With their tools they can plainly see that I haven't logged in to the application in months, but it doesn't matter.

I tell them that it isn't about the money it's about doing what's right. I claim I canceled months ago, and they have record that I haven't touched the game in that time. Sure, it's my responsiblity for the money, but I did cancel. In my mind a good company would refund the money, or at least the most recent charge that set me off. Instead they accuse me of lying and claiming that their billing process has never had any problems. I asked them if my reporting this would count as a problem to their billing process, and that it's inane to claim a process has no problems when you dismiss all the people reporting problems as liars.

Whatever. If it had only been one charge since I canceled, they should have removed that at the very least. Instead customers have no rights, companies can do whatever they want. Well, I don't care about the money. SOE though will never get another drop of mine as far as I'm concerned.

I just....I don't know. It seems to me that companies used to actually care about their customers. Particularly companies that rely on people coming back again and again month after month. You'd think they'd have been nicer, offered me at least a month of my money back, and not called me a liar.

Makes me not ever want to buy anything from anyone ever again if I can't ask for my money back.

[ikri]

1. It's SOE

I have never come across a bigger group of complete and utter bastards who have such apparent disdain for their customers.

I used to play another SOE game Star Wars Galaxies. SOE, in their infinite wisdom, decided that despite having around 200,000 subscribers who were generally satisfied with the game they needed to radically redesign the game which, in many people's eye, ruined the entire game. Rumors suggest that they lost between 50% and 75% of the subscriber base on the back of that decision.

If the rumors about SOE's dwindling subscriber base is true, then it's probably not that hard to believe that they're adding extra hoops to jump through before unsubscribing.

[Ravenseye]

2. i played SWG awhile back

I played it initially and while I'm a star wars fanatic, the game was a real disapointment to me. After I heard about what happened. I installed a demo to see the differences. The trial demo kept crashing on me.

You're probably right. Still. They'll never get another dollar from me that's for sure. Plenty of other games to choose from if I feel the need. It just pisses me off that companies can get away with doing this. There's nothing I can do. I cancel, they say "ok you're canceled", then months later they say "nah you never canceled..." and there is nothign you can do about it. That's why this time I stayed in the long line for the chat to get a name, and a confirmation number of the cancelation. Of course they could just say "sorry we don't have any confirmation, that number isn't in our systems" and they could charge me more.

One thing is for certain, it'll be a long time before I give ANY company a right to charge me anything regularly to my credit card. I won't allow any more recurring charges like that. It gives companies too much control.

[skygazer]

3. It's like that everywhere

And it sucks. My SO belonged to a gym a few years back but he never went so decided to cancel his membership. Like all gyms these days, he paid with an automatic deduction on a credit card. He stopped in the gym to cancel and they told him he couldn't cancel there - he could only do it online. Which is absurd - not everyone has internet service and he signed up there, he should be able to cancel there.

So we went online and sent them an email cancelling and he was billed for several more months while we fired off email after email, all of which were ignored until I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and sent the company a certified letter telling them I was doing so. But he never got reimbursed the several months that had been charged after the initial (ignored) cancellation.

They don't care. I don't get it either but it's terrible.

[Ravenseye]

7. That's nuts

I've never heard of someplace not letting you cancel in person.

Once again though this story really makes me realize that I'll never again allow any company to automatically charge my card. Send me a bill, either online or paper...but never automatically deduct money. Never again.

[Deja Q]

4. Rarely. Shareholders have higher priority.

Pity. If the customers were cared about, we'd stick to the corporation's products. And as such their profits would remain, which in turn keeps the shareholders happy.

[Ravenseye]

5. Exactly

I have a few companies that I like the way they do business, so I've stuck with them.

Then ones that do things like this? I never use them again and tell others not to either. Kind of dumb for a $15 refund ya know?

[leftofthedial]

6. the moment a corporation is formed

it has far more rights than any individual

and none of the responsibilities

and if it gets caught breaking the law, it is seldom given more than a slap on the wrist as punishment

[grace0418]

8. I take screen shots of everything that I do on the computer, with the date

plainly visible. Even if they say they'll send me a confirmation email, I take a screen shot anyway, showing all the pertinant information. Why? Because I got burned like you did. There are no customer rights anymore, the corporations don't have to worry when they have so little competition these days. Or regulation.

Sorry Ravenseye, I know how infuriating that is.