Blockbuster Supports Fraud?

Without going into all the gory details, I seem to have been the victim of a (so far) minor bit of identity theft over the weekend.

Somebody signed me up for various services, or even made some purchases billed to one of my credit cards. In some cases, it was rather painless to cancel these transactions - the "confirmation" emails I received included toll-free contact numbers, and calling those numbers got me through to somebody quickly, who then would listen to my tail of woe and resolve the issue.

And then we have Blockbuster Online. No contact number in the email. No contact number on the website. No easy way to contact them at all. So I hit "reply" on the email welcoming me to their service and said "this was set up with stolen information, the credit card has been cancelled, so please cancel this registration."

Their response was priceless -- "Sorry you have to deal with this, but we are not authorized to cancel this account due to this claim of fraudulent activity or identity theft." (italics, mine).

Thus, my recently sent message to Blockbuster Investor Relations:

You know what's interesting? That a large company like Blockbuster will accept a fraudulently generated account for Blockbuster Online, but when the defrauded consumer attempts to get this resolved, he is told "we are not authorized to cancel this account due to this claim of fraudulent activity or identity theft."

I'm sure my local media outlets and the whole rest of the internet will be interested to know that Blockbuster worries more about inflating its "subscriber" numbers than resolving issues with fraud.

I had no problem at all contacting some of the seemingly sketchy companies that also were involved in this incident, and having them quickly and easily cancel the orders and verify that no attempt would be made to charge my credit card. They even published toll-free numbers so that I could contact them.

I'll never be a blockbuster customer, and I will make sure EVERYBODY knows how you all operate.

So there you go. If you're reading this, you are part of "the whole rest of the internet" and/or "EVERYBODY."

Please think twice about patronizing a company that seems to value "the numbers" more than security.

xposted to Bent! Blog

Not quite as promised

I opened up my freezer the other night to choose a side dish to go with the steak I was about to grill. Right there in front of me was a box of Kroger brand "Rice and Broccoli (with low fat cheese sauce)." Seemed like a decent choice, and it would be pretty easy to prepare.

Look at this tasty looking product, filled to the brim with pretty green broccoli heads and rice, covered in cheesy goodness:




And now look at the sad reality of what as in the package, after cooking:




I went to the Kroger website this morning and filled out a "customer contact form" telling them what a ripoff this product was. I've gotten the "automated acknowledgement" but no actual reply yet.

As an interesting sidenote, the automated email I received had my own email address as the sender. They also had a bit in the body of the email saying

You have received this email notification as a result of submitting a
Customer Comment to Kroger. If you did not submit a Customer Comment, please
contact a Customer Service Representative at 866-221-4141 and report the
following sender's IP Address: 6x.xx.xxx.xxx [my IP obscured]

So they're concerned about security (although sending rogue email comments to Kroger seems pretty low on the list of risky activities), but they have no problem with spoofing an email "from" address? Weird.

So anyway, my personal recommendation is to avoid the Kroger brand frozen vegetables. They're not what they appear to be.

AOL's New Webmail

I've been being a bit of a gadfly on AOL's "mail blog" and support forums for their new webmail "service." I wonder if they're going to take away my screen name?

I've had a netscape.net email address for years, probably since before Netscape was purchased by AOL. I use that email for most of the commercial websites I deal with, such as airline frequent flyer programs, NetFlix, Papa John's Pizza, etc. I added an aim.com address simply because I had an AIM ID for use in chatting to some friends. I use that address very seldom, primarily for job search related emails. A while back, AOL combined the Netscape and AIM mailboxes, so that everything ends up in the same inbox. This wasn't all that much of a problem, although it's confused me a few times when writing emails since the "from" address defaults to the AIM name. No major problem though. A month or so ago, suddenly they unveiled this new "service". It's some kind of AJAX-y application that is a giant mess of usability miscues.

• They show the contacts list in a panel on the right side of the screen. You can't not see this panel, although it can be closed. But closing it creates a tiny vertical strip on the right side of the screen, outside of the scroll bar. So if you slam your pointer to the side of the screen to click and skip down a page, you are just as likely to re-open the contacts list. In addition, the contacts list was fully populated with the return address of every SPAM sender that I'd ever received, including those that AOL itself had automatically filtered into the SPAM folder. As if I'd really need access to those addresses again. Supposedly this last thing has been fixed, but let's revisit that whole fixed thing later.
  
  
• On startup, they also show a "Today on AIM" screen that covers more than half of the inbox. You can "hide" this window (or "curtain" as they call it), but there is no way to make it not appear at all. One of the developers who posts to the mail blog says it's because it helps to pay for this free service and that "all webmail has something like this." I would imagine that the ten other doubleclick.net ads on the page might also help pay the bills. In any case, I most extensively use gmail for my webmail. I don't see any "curtains" blocking my view. There are no ads at all on the main inbox page. Yes, there are ads when I read individual messages, but they are unobtrusive, they don't block half my screen. I also have a Yahoo email, which I mostly access via that My Yahoo page, but just for kicks, I checked the mail.yahoo.com page. Ads yes, obstructing curtains, no. So I'm at a loss to know what "all webmail" this guy is talking about.
  
  
• This "service" often automatically updates itself, leaving one with a screen that says "your webmail has just been updated!" Well, whoopee. Why is a web page acting like an application? Why does AOL still want to get its sticky tendrils all over my computer? Isn't it bad enough that the AOL client was like an evergrowing fungus that became impossible to remove? Now a simple web page has to try to take over? I have also seen reports that this automatic update feature will happen even if one is in the midst of composing an email, and when it's done, your partially composed email is gone. Nice!
  
  

The initial question I asked on the mail blog was "did anybody do ANY usability testing on this?" It seems like a bunch of developers are sitting around, adding features that are "cool" with absolutely no regard to how this will affect users. I posted several instances of poor usability (including the above items). To his credit, the developer who runs the blog did respond, but then again, he said that I should move my "tech support questions" to the support forum. Of course they're not "tech support questions", but I did anyway. And then I blasted them for having a VERY poor design and not having tested it. Somebody on the blog said "why can't the 'send' button be easier to find?" That's a design and usability issue. The thing about the contacts list adding spammers? That's a design and usability issue.

When I was first blessed with this new application, I tried to find ways to not see the contacts list or today curtain. There was nothing in the configuration settings. I also wanted to be able to sort the contact list. Again, nothing. Now supposedly the sort thing has been added to the config. But How would I know that? Am I supposed to re-check the config screen every single time there's an update? That's a design, documentation and communication problem.

Bottom line, AOL has released a very early BETA product onto their whole user base. It's not labelled as such, but the frequency of updates makes it very clear that this thing was NOT ready for prime time. They've also announced that they will be releasing a "lite" version for "people with older computers or browsers." Way to know your user base there, guys! Again, one of the principle of usability/design is to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Maybe I Should Get It At Gimbel's

As many people know, last year, Macy's rebranded all of the various chains it had subsumed via the May and Federated mergers. It's hard to was nostalgic about the loss of Rich's and Hecht's and Strawbridge's, because frankly those chains were just vestigial remains of the grand old department stores that preceded them.

But that's not really what this post is about. I'd had a Hecht's credit card for some time, one that I barely used, but it occasionally would come in handy, particularly at Christmas time. One would have assumed that this card would have been replaced with a Macy's card after the rebranding. When I used the card for Christmas shopping, I was assured that a new one should be on its way.

Well, now it's June and I happened to see that old Hecht's card as I was doing some housework, so I thought it was time to follow-up on this missing replacement. I went to their website and found my way to the "contact us" page for credit card customer service. They have four options

• EMail Us
  "We ask you to log-in for your security and to expedite the handling of your questions"
  Ummm, WTF? "Log in"? I don't want to "log in" I want to send you an email.
  
  
• Text Chat
  OK, I tried that. Evidently that area of customer service was closed, so I received a pop-up asking me to enter the "skill" and "identifier". Again, WTF? Those are not fields that the customer should be seeing.
  
  
• Talk Live
  At first I couldn't figure out what was different about this in comparison to Text Chat, but then I noticed that it requires a microphone and speakers, so essentially it's a VOIP application. Good enough. I clicked on the link and got a security warning from my browser. The certificate they want me to accept expired in 2002. I hate to repeat myself, but WTF? A five year old security certificate does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I guess I should be impressed that the system has not balked at my using Firefox.
  
  
• Call Us
  I have to admit, I did try to call them on this topic once before. It was after I received the bill for my purchases last December. I'd got patched through to India, and while I have no general problem with outsourced call centers, I do require that the person on the phone speak relatively clear English. So I'd hung up. This time I went ahead and called. I got a bunch of recordings, then a bunch of clicks, and then hung up on. Nice. So I tried again, and finally got through to "Basil". He listened only about half the time, ignored some of my questions completely, and generally was not very helpful.
  

I think I might be getting a new Macy's card though. Which I probably should cut up into tiny pieces and send back to them.

Macy's Credit "Services" - you hereby receive the WORST CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE of the month award.

Please Stay On The Line

I've decided to separate some of my posts from my other blog into this one, which will be specifically designed to post about customer service experiences, both good and bad, online and off, in person or on the phone.

In the coming days and weeks, I'll be transferring some content from the other place. Please stay on the line and my posts will be posted in the order in which they were received.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

After having sent back at least one of the Consumer Reports invoices clearly marked "CANCEL" as per their instructions, I received two further invoices. One would have been understandable, but obviously they didn't get the message, so I figured I'd deal with it tonight while working on the rest of my bills. I would have just marked up the invoice again, but why should I invest my hard-earned thirty-nine cents on a stamp? Since I knew their website was useless for actually getting anything done, I figured I'd call. Of course the number is not listed anywhere on the invoice, that would make too much sense. So I went back to the website and finally found the number to call.

Dialed the number and immediately got quality of service recording disclaimer, a thank you for calling message* and a preface to the routing menu. But before actually getting the menu, the nice lady tells me "you may also process customer service related inquiries at our website, just go to ...." Did they change something?

Whatever, I'd already called, it was easy enough to press 3 and continue. I told the rep who answered that I'd attempted to cancel, kept getting invoices. She said she'd take care of it. And then proceeded to try to cross-sell me a subscription to some Consumer Reports Newsletter! I'd love to meet the marketing genius who came up with that plan. Dude, I'm calling to cancel my subscription, why would you think it's a good idea to ask me to subscribe to something else?

After hanging up in stunned disbelief, I figured I'd double-check that claim of being able to use the website. I typed in exactly the URL that had been given me and, depsite the horrid interface, somehow managed once again to find the links about the magazine (as opposed to the "CR.org website) and clicked on the link about cancelling a subscription.

We are sorry to lose you as a subscriber. To cancel your subscription, you may call our Subscription Department at 1-800-XXX-XXXX and a representative will gladly assist you.

So just to re-iterate, you can go to the website to find the phone number, then call the number and hear that you can process your request on the website, which tells you to call the phone number, ....

Hey, thanks guys, but The Amazing Race comes on in less than an hour, so I gotta go.

* Why do corporations say "thank you" at the start of a call? Thank you is most commonly used in American English at the end of a transaction.

Follow-Ups

Hertz

They did the old "just throw money" trick. Except it's not really money, it's vouchers, which of course one can't use without renting from them again. To be completely fair, somebody did finally call me, and after going through the whole boring story again, it just seems all so futile. Nothing is going to change in their Atlanta office. They'll just tappy tap tap their way through annoying some other poor traveller on some other day.

Oh, and it turns out that when you use a discount voucher of any kind, they don't give you frequent flyer points. Not sure where that's spelled out, but I'm sure they don't go out of their way to make it obvious.

Consumer Reports

I'm still floored by the incredibly bad "customer service" from this organization. I never got a response to my first web-submitted questions about the subscription. I did, within the course of four days, receive both the January and February issues of the magazine. As of this past Monday, I still had not received the promised books, so I sat down and fumbled my way through their website and submitted another comment/complaint/whatever. I even specifically requested a response.

The books showed up on Tuesday, so at least they've finally fulfilled their obligation. I sat down last night to go to their website and cancel the subscription; clicked on the link that said "Cancel My Subscription" and what do I get? A message telling me to call some 800 number to cancel.

Dear Consumer Reports -- do you even know WTF a website is for? Jeepers.

I wrote CANCEL all over the invoice today and I'll be putting it in the mail "real soon."

Morons.