This is going to be a rather silly post, but it’s on a topic that I’ve been meaning to write about for a long time.
We all know that it’s frustratingly hard to get good customer service from service providers. The telephone company, the cable company, that company that you bought your motherboard from; the list goes on and on. Then there are the companies that use deceptive marketing to convince you to buy something, and then it turns out that the product is totally unsupported. There is a lot of bad customer service out there, and I’ve always believed that consumers have a right to fight back.
Let me start by saying that you should never do anything illegal. No matter what a company has done to you, you don’t have a right vandalize or sabotage them. If you’re going to go public with your complaints, state only the facts, otherwise it’s defamation or libel. Also, be sure that you have evidence to defend your claims, because big corporations can and do sue for libel when customers dare to tell the truth about them.
Customers have the right to tell the truth about companies that have ripped them off, and you can be creative about how and where you tell the truth. Tell the truth in the store, loudly but without yelling, so that other customers can overhear you. Write to the consumer advocate at your local newspaper or news channel. Post in their forum, or the forum of a popular fan site. Blog about it. Start a petition. Spread the word, but do it legally!
So, I’ve received some spectacularly bad service from three different companies in the past few days, but I’m going to write about one that may not seem like such a big deal. You see, I like pudding. Try to guess where this is going.
In March I bought a bunch of Hunt’s Snack Pack 4-packs, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an instruction card inside offering me a free music download from Puretracks. Good deal, right! I went to the website, entered my unique download code, and received an email presenting my Serial number and PIN. I created an account on Puretracks and got a free download for signing up! So I had two free songs to choose from. I like to pick obscure songs that I’m not likely to find in stores, and ended up settling on My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died by Roger Miller because he sang it on the Muppet Show when I was a child, and u.f.o. rosie by Weeping Tile because it has a cool music video that they used to play on SPACE, a science fiction channel here in Canada.
That turned out to be a good deal for me, and a few weeks ago I had a hankering for some pudding and free music, so I bought some more pudding from Hunt’s when I went to the grocery store. This time I was thinking of downloading something from Malvina Reynolds, the wonderful jazz, folk and protest singer who was a ’60s radical when she was in her 60s! Her album for the young, Magical Songs, released in 1978 shortly after her death at the age of 78, inspired me as a youth, and her other songs inspire me as an adult. I was also considering An Old Fashioned Love Song by Paul Williams because, once again, he sang it on The Muppet Show when I was young.
So, once again, I found a card for a free download inside two of the packs. I went to the site, entered my unique download codes, and received two emails with my offer codes. Here’s a copy of the email response, with the codes changed.
Thank you for purchasing a Hunt’s Snack Pack 4-pack!
Below you will find the serial number and the pin code so you can download 1 free music download.
Serial Number: 1234567
PIN: 1234567890
It is very important that you keep your PIN and serial number in a safe place. You can’t redeem your free download without them! They will be used upon check-out instead of a credit card.
Instructions:
- Please visit www.puretracks.com
- Browse for your track and select “Add to Cart”. When finished shopping, select “Checkout”.
- Fill out short registration form. If you are already registered, enter e-mail address and password.
- Click on “Prepaid Cards, Promotional Codes & Gift Cards”. Enter your Serial # and your PIN code.
- Click on “Submit” and follow the on-screen instructions to download your music.
- A confirmation email will be sent to your account containing your download details.
*Download must be used by October 1, 2008. Controls are in place and will not allow any user to download content that has been designated by Puretracks’ music providers as containing explicit content.
Notice a problem with this email? It’s December 17, but I have to use my free download by October 1. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, but my DeLorean is in the shop, and even if it wasn’t, with today’s energy prices, 1.21 gigawatts of power is a lot to spend in order to go back in time to get a 99 cent song.
Well, I’m no dummy. I’ve been a consumer for a long time now, and I know that almost all promotions have a deadline. I carefully read the entire card before I even bothered to visit the website, and thankfully there was no expiry date on the offer. I’ve read the small print, and all of the legalese everywhere on the card. This offer does not expire! Without an expiry date, my code is good forever. A contract cannot be amended without the consent of both parties, so Puretracks is legally obligated to honour their contractual obligations and render a free song to me for every valid download code I provide them.
How many do I have? At least two so far, and possibly more once I eat the rest of the pudding. I went back and looked at the email I received the first time I entered a code and, indeed, it told me to download my music by September 17, 2008, which was easy to do since it was March. I’m still trying to figure out why pudding purchased in late November would have an offer that expired in October. Maybe it’s just an error? But I tried using the codes, and they didn’t work. They really have expired. But they can’t legally expire the code, because the terms and conditions on the card don’t have an expiry date!
Well, I’m confused. I’m also annoyed. Now, you may ask yourself, is it really worth getting upset over $1.98 worth of free downloads? Perhaps not, but it gave me a great opportunity to write on the subject of consumer vigilantism in a situation that might also get a laugh. Yes folks, this is an entire post about my outrage over not getting free songs that I earned by eating pudding.
I’ve written to Puretracks’ customer service department to let them know that they sent me a code that’s been expired for two and a half months, and that they have no right to refuse to honour their promotion code because they failed to put an expiry date on the instruction card. The card doesn’t even instruct the bearer to go to their website for full rules and regulations. It clearly states that I can download any song, excluding any tracks that are labelled with Parental Advisory: Explicit Content. Since the card failed to indicate that there are any other rules, those are the full rules of the promotion, and they need to honour the conditions of their contract. If they failed to place further conditions in the contract, and failed to indicate that further conditions existed on the promotion’s website, that is an unfortunate oversight on their part. It legally obligates them to honour these cards forever, though in reality, it’s unlikely that anyone will try to claim their free download a hundred years from now. This whole thing will likely blow over in a few months or years. Live and learn, Puretracks, and have a little chat with your legal department about their mistake!
In conclusion, I’d like to talk about one final form of consumer vigilantism that I strongly believe in: encourage everyone you know to write, phone or email the company providing bad customer service and demand that they change their ways. I know it’s hard to convince people to spend their time fighting for a cause that they may not feel strongly about. This cause has the novelty of having a funny subject: pudding! Tell your friends to join the Pudding Protest and send an email to customerservice@puretracks.com demanding that Puretracks honour their contract with pudding purchasers and give them a free download when they enter their code. Pudding Power!