My apologies to the friends I spammed today
I signed up for a service that was offered on the USHalf.com website. For $3 per number, this company said that they would send my split times and finishing time to the cellphones or email addresses I specified. Now, in my mind, three dollars is a bit steep for sending out an email to an SMS gateway, especially when I had to do the work of finding out the email addresses of my friends’ SMS email gateways. But it was all for some fun and I wanted to be able to see the splits as I was running, so I said “what the hell” and ponied up.
On race day, no messages were sent. I checked with all the intended recipients. No split times, no finish times, nothing arrived to anyone.
That was disappointing, so Monday morning I tried to get ahold of this company. Their only contact on their website was a web-based customer service form, with flowery language about how much they care about feedback from their customers. The autoresponder said that the message I sent would never be read by a human being, but directed me to a list of FAQs and gave me some email addresses to try if I still felt the urge to communicate with a representative of their company.
Well, I wanted my refund, so I emailed customer service describing my problem and my dissatisfaction. What I got back was a promise to look into what had happened.
This morning at about 9:40, and then again at about 2:00 in the afternoon, each a full 48 hours after I finished the race, everyone got messages with the final results. I sent email back to customer service reporting this, and I got back voicemail explaining how it was the timing company’s fault, that they had never received the data from the company that does the timing, and that it wasn’t their fault and that of course, they’d be happy to give me a refu… oops, I mean a credit. My ears perked up at this point as he described setting up company credit against future purchases.
Um.
No.
A refund is what’s appropriate when you don’t deliver a product. Not a credit. I’m unlikely to ever do business with this company again, so what would I want a credit for?
Venting here on my little blog is the first step. If this isn’t rectified within the next 24 – 48 hours I’m going to start smearing this company where it actually might hurt: I’m the member of one of the two major triathlon clubs in the Bay Area, and I attend meetings. I have a friend who sits on the board of directors of the other tri club. I attend runs put on by several of the running clubs in SF and I know folks in other towns. I doubt that anyone will exactly be horrified by this, but it’s the sort of story that undermines confidence in an already unknown company offering a gee-whiz service that no one really needs.
Thanks for your email and your call.
I think I understand a little better how this works. I can appreciate your position, that your upstream provider didn’t give the data to your company in a timely fashion and so you were unable to deliver the information product that you were paid to provide.
However, understanding this does not make it my problem. If you had an agreement with the timing company, recoup the losses from the timing company. If you did not have an agreement with the timing company, shame on you for making promises that you could not expect to keep.
In short, while I appreciate the offer of credit toward future AllSportCentral.com purchases, all I really want is a refund. Your company did not fulfill my order, and that’s the bottom line here, isn’t it?
Furthermore, holy cow! As much as I kick myself for falling behind the curve regarding my programming skillz, I’m confident that I could build every service they offer by myself in one month. (OK, I might have to work weekends to pull it off) If there weren’t a zillion other athletic calendar and service websites out there, I’d have half a mind to quit my job and put them out of business.
