(Online Dating Industry Journal) Online Dating Magazine has just posted a Letter to the Editor from an angry former True.com member who claims she was practically forced into a free month when trying to cancel her membership and was then charged again. When she attempted to call customer service she was refused a refund, put on hold for several minutes, and unable to speak to a high-level manager. From the letter:
"I realize most people would have hung up while waiting on hold, or at least after getting no where fast with Michael [lower level supervisor]. I believe True.com banks on that tendency of the public to be put off by and give up in the face of such tactics. It would then seem they are making lots of money off the trust of people who cancel and are mislead by salespeople cloaked as customer reps.... and not by satisfied customers receiving good service in a honorable business transaction.
I wanted to write to make people aware of the deceptive practices and give them a chance to avoid the hassle of having to put so much time and effort into canceling an online dating service."
Kim's Comments:
It is horrible customer service, inability to easily cancel membership, and deceptive practices like this that are turning people off to online dating. If a member tries out a service and doesn't feel satisfied with the results or, perhaps, is lucky and starts a relationship, they should be able to easily cancel without having to wait on hold and talk to a pushy rep who will try to con the member into "free months".
By making it difficult for member's to cancel you are only fueling their fire and stories like this get spread online, building a worse reputation for the online dating service. All you have to do is look at some of the reader reviews to realize that customer service is one of the major flaws of many online dating services. True worked so hard to get as much money out of this one member as they could, but I wonder if they even thought about how many members they might never have join because of Eileen's letter?
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