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Hey Safari… Customer Service Does Matter!
A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about Safari bookshelf. Safari is a really cool service. They have a lot of books, about things than many things computer related, that many people are always looking to learn.
They have books ranging from web design, to very in depth computer science books. I really like the way it works, and when you really look at it, it's cheaper to buy a subscription, than to go out and buy the books themselves.
A while back, I was on a 14 day trial account and had to cancel it, because I couldn't pay for the upcoming month. Recently, I was looking into buying some books, but figured it would be a bit cheaper to just go and read them on Safari. So I decided to email the customer service, and see what they could do.
So I sent them an email, basically saying, that I'm a student, and that I don't have a lot of money. My thought behind this was, "Sure they'll give me a month free, or discounted, I'm only one person, no biggie." So here's what I sent to them.
Hey,My name is Jake Dahn, and I've been wanting to subscribe to Safari for a while now, but I really haven't had the money to do so. Seeing as I am a student, I'm dead broke :-\
Is there any way that I could get a month or two free, or maybe a discount?
Anything is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
But I got a pretty disappointing response, from Nandagopal. He/she emailed me back, saying that I needed to get a valid credit card. Saying that they don't give discounts, or freebees, and then saying that I should buy their corporate plan, which is twice as expensive, as the subscription that I can't afford.
Here's what they wrote:
Hello Jake,
Thank you for taking the time to write to us and for your interest in Safari.
As per Safari terms of services, a valid credit card (VISA, AMEX, Euro/Master Card) is a must for subscribing to Safari. Also we are not offering any discounts.
One thing I suggest you is about the corporate subscription. We do have corporate subscription for 10 or more users with more flexible payment options and pricing. We do not have any of the corporate information here at customer service as it is based on the agreement between the company and Safari.
If you wish to have corporate subscription, reply back to this mail with the following details and I will forward the same to the marketing team.
First Name:
Last Name:
E – Mail ID:
Company Name:
Number of users:
Mailing Address:Let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
~Nandagopal
Safari Customer Service
I really thought this was ridiculous, and I really think that they need to hire a new support team. Not only did they completely disregard the question, they offered me a more expensive subscription, than the one I can't afford!
Though this is a really nice service, when you can pay for it, I doubt I'll ever subscribe. After having their support tell me that I should buy something more expensive than the thing I can't afford, I'm just going to go ahead and dismiss the chance of me ever subscribing to Safari.
I guess this is just another example of bad customer service, and how it can affect the company's reputation.
sounds like they just have stock answers to these things.
how about doing it the old fashioned way and going to a library
i think this applies to the web as well where not everybody makes sense, is customer-friendly and courteous. sales service, customer service … it’s all “service” and often if not most of the time, it’s poor and not satisfying, be it in the webworld or in the real world (store/shop).
First thing that occurs that makes the service less than a perfect 10 and you’re going to cancel and say bad things about them. ~shrug~. Buck up little camper.
Wow, I can’t believe they did that. I thought my case was a worst case scenario, but I guess not.
They really need to hire a new support team…
Jake – this guy had a problem with their service a year ago – some of the replies from customer service are just crazy!
http://perlmeister.com/safari/index.html
The messages from customer service are absolutely worth a read. Very poor job.
I have encountered this numerous times. Here’s what often happens:
1. your request is sent overseas, where a very busy person where English is their 2nd language is scanning tickets…
2. They see yours, make a very cursory examination, perhaps use an internal search tool or simply a chart to pull up something vaguely related to your request
3. They put together a pretty boilerplate email as a response
This happens to me EVERY TIME I email the .mac support group. They seem to make a point of completely misunderstanding my first email, so I re-send, re-explaining, and apparently they “get it.” So, in essence, they kick it up to a manager for their call, and you finally get a reasonable response. Believe it or not, it’s actually cheaper to waste this much time– for them anyway. Just like it’s cheaper to return 5 crappy DVD players than build one correctly in the first place.
Also, it’s entirely possible that you WILL get a discount, but they’re talking about a negotiated group discount, which is asinine. You have no power to negotiate such a thing, and it really sounds like they just want info for their marketing team to cold-call. Nice.
There is a joke on FatWallet and FlyerTalk that if the first rep does not give you what you want, you just keep calling back until you get what you want. And it is true. But for Jake, why should he have to do this? Why should anyone?
I attempted to try to get some reviews going for Nokia products – all they kept emailing me back is that if I want to do a sports sponsorship, this is who to call. Finally after the 3rd try of getting the Indian worker to get what I was asking for, I gave up.
I hope we will see an official reply from someone at O'Reilly. I have put in a note to my contacts there to see what's up. For such a well respected company to "do him" like this just seems silly. The easy reply would have been "sorry Jake, we don't offer student discounts". But instead they just saw the word "discount" and the rep sent him the "discount reply".
It is always easy to tell when you get an Indian or other 3rd party foreign support. Want to know how? It is so easy. Just listen to what they say after you make your request. If they repeat back your request, you know they are not in the USA. These support companies teach these people to be robots. I hate that. These people have personalities too, let them out. At least they are using their real names now and not "john" or "vicki".
ah shame, the librarys in the uk will get you books you want most of the time.
The library is way out of date. I can almost guarantee that most libraries in the US have outdated tech books, so it’s really worthless to take a trip and get something that is already dated.
I can't speak for Jake – but I went to the library here, one of the largest supposedly in the country… every tech book about a program was at least 4 yrs old. For example they had a bunch of DOS 5 and Win 3.11 books – nothing on any current programming language. I almost wondered why they are even keeping these books that are say more than 8-10 yrs old. Just seems like paying for real estate that is just not worth it.