It’s not me it’s you.

I cancelled my account just before the 60% price increase kicked in. I took the exit survey because I wanted to let you know why. You didn’t give me that chance.

The closest item to my answer was “I want to cut costs.” While that’s somewhat true, it’s not the whole story.

You offended me with a 60% price hike. I immediately decided to cancel as soon as my current pricing ended.

Splitting the product prices cemented my decision. I purchase products because they provide value to me. If the value doesn’t match the price, I don’t buy. I’m not cutting costs, I no longer see the value of your separated services. It’s not me, it’s you.

First, you’re paying too much for your content; when you pass those costs on to me, I’m not interested. Yes, studios have a great deal of bargaining power in this assymetrical relationship, but not buying at their inflated prices is an option you should consider. It’s not worth what they’re charging. My pricing sensibilities are a product of the 99-cent-ificiation of media. Digital distribution should be cheap. Digital content at your scale should be too.

Second, Neflix offered the unique proposition of both discs by mail and streaming, together in one package. I don’t get that from RedBox. I’ve carried an Amazon Prime membership for years simultaneous to my Netflix subscription, and while Prime videos are a newer offering—and a perk of a service I was already paying for—they don’t offer the same value as your combined package at a low price. But now that I have to evaluate your products separately, I see that I’ll spend less each month getting movies from RedBox, and still get most of the “free” streaming content (excepting Starz, which you’re apparanly having problems with) through Amazon. For new releases, there’s a RedBox a block away a the grocery store. For me, the switiching cost is negligible. Your rivals are increasing, but you just commoditized your product. You’re no longer different.

With a combined plan you had a differentiated offering. Consistent customer service (even if it was sans-human), an iPhone app and quick turn-around times were a great selling point, but they’re not enough on their own. (I’m apparently lucky enough to live close to a Netflix distrubtion center, so I’d get a new disc a mere day-and-a-half after putting my old one in the mail.) I already have access to the same content at a lower price. I was paying you anyway, because the way you did it offered me value. No longer.

I made this decision before you announced you’re splitting into two companies, and I’m glad I did. It validates this break-up.

Please don’t write. I won’t be sitting by the phone waiting for you to call. Getting a lame “apology” via email a week later just confirms you don’t get it. I’m moving on.

Sincerely,

 
 
Tom Q. Customer

P.S.: Did you see the comics by Joy of Tech and Oatmeal? (h/t Gruber) I think they’ve got you down.

P.P.S: Maybe you’ll lose enough subscribers to come to your senses. Maybe not. The only sensible reason I can see for the company split is to sell either the spin-off or the whole company. Is a studio buying you? It would be a great match for them as you’ve got the distribution network and (flagging) subscriber pool in place. The DVD-by-mail business might be a great acquisition for GameFly—but they already charge much more than you do.

P.P.P.S: You have your own hashtag: #DearNetflix

I complained just over a year ago that Unsanity’s WindowShade X, a utility that provides better minimization options than just shoving more stuff in my dock did not yet have a working release for Snow Leopard. As it turns out, Unsanity released it seven month later (this past April, 2010)—hey guys, an email would have been nice.

Unfortunately, this is a paid upgrade, but as a previously registered user I was able to get 33% off ($5).

After months and months absolutely no word from Unsanity on the new version, I had given up, and wasn’t willing to give them money again. Several commenters on their infrequently updated blog wondered just how many customers Unsanity was losing by their silence. But WindowShade X is just too useful to me, so now I’m back—but still not impressed with their customer communication.

Parallels

In the same post last year, I complained about Parallels. This past summer, I was able to get Parallels at a pretty good educational price, and thought I’d give it a try again. It’s still slower than my 9-year-old when’s he’s asked to do the dishes, and I don’t like how they’ve forced a re-skin of XP. If I go full-screen and stay away from my OS X apps, it’s not too horrible, but doing any switching back and forth is just asking for trouble. I just need to move everything my VirtualBox instance and not look back. My only frustration with doing that is that I won’t be able to access the VM files without loading VirtualBox; in Parallels, I have everything on a separate mounted partition, so I can move files back and forth without needing the VM running.

About a year ago, we were shopping for a white suit for our little Tobin. It was a painfully morose thing: we were looking for something to bury him in. He’d not yet passed, but every day was more difficult and it was clearly imminent. It’s the sort of thing that is made markedly easier by doing it beforehand, although you’d rather not do it at all.

If you’ve lived in Utah (or Provo, in particular), you know there is no shortage of “white clothing” stores, selling white suits, dresses, veils, tuxedos, belts, shoes, or anything else you could ever want to wear that is white. Except no one seemed to have anything sized for a three-year-old.

We visited three or four specialty stores and the LDS distribution center; the only thing we found was a white jumpsuit. On a whim, we stopped by Men’s Wearhouse (in Orem, on the corner of University Pkwy and State St). The sales-people there know me, as I do much of my shopping there. We explained what we were looking for. They didn’t have anything his size, but suggested several places we might look. We’d visited each of them. The salesman then asked if it would be alright for him to call around to other stores. We agreed, and gave him my cell phone number.

Across the parking lot there was (yet another) white clothing store. They didn’t have anything in stock, but had a (frilly) tuxedo in his size that they could bring down from another store. After looking at a similar one in a different size, it was clear the tuxedo was much too flashy given the solemnity of our purpose.

While we were there, the gentleman at Men’s Wearhouse called—he and another worker had been scouring the phone book, and suggested a couple of other places we might try. We thanked him for his work, but we’d already visited the places he was suggesting.

Fifteen minutes later, he called again. After dialing every listing he could find, he had tracked down a store in American Fork called Little Things Mean a Lot, which not only had a suit in the right size, but was holding it for us.

When we arrived at Little Things Mean a Lot, the salesperson there expressed her condolences, and showed us the suit (which was waiting at the front). It was perfect. Clean, simple, and white. She said she’d spoken with the manager before we arrived, and given the nature of our circumstances had agreed to offer us a discount. We were grateful and impressed, and ended up buying suits for our other children as well, in part because the service was so good.

As a customer, I’m not afraid to boycott a company for lousy service, or support a local company that’s filling a local need. It’s experiences like this that make me a customer for life. I wish more companies were like these two.

I booked on Priceline.com. I needed to be in Atlanta for a day, so flew in late last night via Frontier Airlines.

On the first leg of the trip (with Frontier partner, United), the flight left 20 minutes late because a computer failure required all baggage to be processed manually. Fortunately, the pilot was able to make up the time (and then some) on the way to Denver.

On the second leg of the trip (Denver to Atlanta, on Frontier), the flight was delayed more than an hour for “weather reasons,” although no other flight into Atlanta, both from the same airline and from any other airline was delayed out of Denver. When questioned, Atlanta locals admitted there was some light rain that morning, but nothing that should have caused delays. After boarding, we sat on the tarmac for another hour waiting to take off while the pilot got clearance from the tower. We got in about two-and-a-half hours late.

Frontier Airlines cancelled my return flight, and didn’t tell me until I arrived at the airport. The agent at the counter said it was due to mechanical reasons. They claimed to have contacted the hotel I was staying at, but I had checked out in the morning—I was staying only the single night, after all. Although I had provided my contact information to Priceline.com, the airline was only given my hotel number. Frontier had no later flights, and they refused to provide a ticket on another airline that was leaving a couple of hours later. I was not offered any compensation for likely hotel charges caused by their inability to properly run an airline.

Checking with Delta (the other carrier who did have a flight running), a one-way ticket would have cost me in excess of $750, due to exorbitant walk-up prices (+ taxes; no love from Delta either). No wonder airlines are never profitable. The marginal cost to get me on that flight would have been negligible, but it seems they would rather do without the extra money than actually provide airline service.

The Frontier Airlines representative gave me the phone number to the airline’s “customer service center.” She neglected to mention they’d closed already. (5:00 pm Mountain. Really?) I had the option of leaving a voicemail to tell them what I think of them, and how I would very much like them to give me money back for not providing the service I paid for. I hung up without leaving a message rather than break into uncontrolled swearing.

I figured maybe Priceline.com might be willing to help out. Nope. After entering my eleven-digit confirmation number and home phone number, the answering agent asked for it all again. (I despise when companies do this—and many companies are guilty. If you require information be keyed in, provide it to the answering agent and stop wasting my time!)

I explained my problem to the agent, who put me on hold for 10 minutes while he “logged the details of my problem into the computer.” Uh-huh. He then came back on the line and told me the hotel fee was non-refundable. WTF? That had nothing to do with my problem. I explained again I was stuck in Atlanta because the airline was clueless, and would like them to find me a way home. More waiting. I finally got a warm hand-off (at least he got that part right) to a guy who told me the entire thing was non-refundable (even when it was the fault of the airline—federal consumer protection laws be damned), and that they would do nothing for me, not even check to see how much a flight on the other airline would cost me (it might be less than the walk-up rate). At no time did the fact that I paid for a service they were unable to provide factor in to his thinking.

The trouble with this story is that it could have easily been prevented or solved by either company.

Priceline.com: (1) Forward my contact phone number to the airline. The say they tried calling me. They could have only gotten my hotel’s phone number from you–go ahead and give them my actual contact information. It would have been easier. I would have have to cut my meetings short by a few hours, but at least then I might have had some options. It would have prevented the entire snafu. (2) Implement a useful automated answer program. The last thing you want to do is make a frustrated customer irate, and that’s all your system seems to do from my end. (3) Take care of your customer. The airline’s cancellation was beyond my control. Bend over backward to get me out of Atlanta, and not only am I your customer for life, you get a heartwarming story told to everyone about how cool you are. A permanent customer, and some free word-of-mouth publicity for a couple hundred dollars. Instead you get this. I hope it costs more.

Fronteir Airlines: (1) Again, would it really have been that difficult to have put me on another airline? This was your fault, after all. The customer desk agent was polite, and surprisingly helpful, although she maintained a somewhat condescending attitude. Again, is the cost of losing a customer and bad publicity worth the little bit extra it would have cost you to put me on a different airline? You already have my money, after all. (1b) As a second, half-baked make-up attempt to win me back, you can refund my money for the second flight (or provide some other consideration for the inconvenience), but I won’t hold out hope. I have no expectation you will respond with any sort of integrity; you are in the airline business, after all. (2) You may want to consider waiting until after all of your domestic flights have left (or, even better, arrived!) before closing your customer service center. Really.

UPDATE: Frontier cancelled another of my flights on the way home (no explanation), keeping me in Denver for several extra hours, and forcing me to (again) reschedule my transportation home from the airport. It was in Denver that I saw the first smiling Frontier employee of the trip too.

• As customers, we search for someone to blame, but only because we want a problem fixed. The person who caused the problem may not be the one to fix it. When working with customers, take ownership; connect the customer to the solution.
• Uncorrected little mistakes can become big mistakes. Responsibility lies with those who made the little mistakes at the beginning.
• Don’t try to hide mistakes. Take responsibility—)but more than that, take ownership of finding a solution.
• Capitulating early won’t provide the emotional win, but in real terms it may be cheaper than arguing. Even if we don’t consider intangibles like a positive brand image, word-of-mouth, repeat customers, or opportunity costs, our time and our employees’ time is valuable. Understand the cost of covering mistakes.
• Empathize, don’t patronize. We do this by taking ownership, sharing information and providing options.

You can see the recurring theme: take ownership.

I had problem with a major telecom when I last moved. (The other major telecom had caused me some significant trouble, so I switched.) I still had no service one week after it was to have been hooked up. It took eight hours on the phone (much of it on hold) over the course of more than fourteen calls to about five different customer service lines (all with horrible phone trees) before was I finally connected to a manager that promised he would personally make sure it was fixed. I was pessimistic, but willing to trust him. I wanted to trust him. He couldn’t, of course, fix it over the phone, but he did promise to call me back. (Which he did after it was fixed that evening.)

The simple act of someone taking ownership was enough to ease my frustration. I finally felt as if someone cared (empathy), he promised to call me back (information), and he followed through (trust). Why did it take so long to find someone willing to do that?

If you ever have to deal with customers, or manage people who do, head on over and read the whole thing.

Before you ask, yes, I know he’s using a knock-off of my design. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And, he asked politely.