Two weeks ago, on sunday, we went to Friday's to get our long-delayed share of the $12.99 3-course meal. Before leaving the house, I checked on tgifridays.com and made sure that they still had the deal going (which they did). But once there, we found the deal had vanished from the menu. Apparently it had ended two days before and their webmaster was too lazy to update it. So, we had to enjoy our non-deal food while contemplating going to Friday's at all.

Disgruntled as I was, I came home and tried to do a test of Friday's and other companies' customer service responses, whom I was previously too lazy to make a complaint against.

First up was Jamster. They had billed me $1.99 per week for three weeks in January because I responded to one of their sleezy TV ads soliciting free cellphone wallpaper downloads. Apparently I had forgotten to read the fineprint - it was too fine to be read off a 27" TV screen anyway - which said that by responding to the ad I was signing up for their subscription. The funny thing was that I never downloaded anything off Jamster, because I don't have TZones internet access on my cell. Calling T-Mobile proved useless, since they can "only bill me on behalf of Jamster, but not do any refunds". Jamster's customer service line is all automated, I tried a few times without any luck to get through to a human. So, I emailed instead, asking them to "stop scamming people". But that was after I sent in a much politer email to T.G.I. Friday's about their shady sorry-the-deal-ended practice.

Two day's later I received a scripted response from Friday's asking me to call in with my problem. I did, and all I got out of 'Nancy' was that it wasn't supposed supposed to be on the site... actually, I didn't really get an explanation, except for that they were sorry and that they deal had already ended. That was it, no remorse and no gift certificates. And all that to me, I'm a Gold Points member and regular there for the last 79 years. Damn.

I was amazed and dissapointed at their response, but that was cut short by a very civil response from Jamster saying that they would refund me $8 as a courtesy. (I originally paid only $5.97!)

So the moral here is not to be polite to customer service if you know they are factually wrong.

Cellphone Content Providers 1
Food Service Industry 0