A Caution regarding Subscriptions
As business owners, we all have things that come up that frustrate us and this post highlights one of those times for me. It is a real look into the life of a Virtual Assistant/Business Owner.
I have had many subscriptions to online business tools. These subscriptions are usually for a set monthly fee via Paypal. I don’t believe I have had any through another merchant. The thing is that if you only want to try out a subscription for a month, be sure to cancel it before your monthly subscription fee is due because many companies show no customer service etiquette towards their customers. As that saying goes, “You snooze, you lose.”
This happened to me in January. I only wanted to try out this particular brand; no others have been as hard to unsubscribe to as this one. I could not find the subscription in my Paypal account. Beware of Paypal too, because they were of no assistance at all…and to dispute it with your bank you need to prove that it was an unwanted payment. Not sure if it is too late or not, but our bank was willing to assist us, so I suppose it is worth a try. $67 is $67, after all. I still hope our bank will come through for us and that my husband will have time to deal with it because I find it very frustrating.
In the initial moment of frustration I was even sorely tempted to smear this particular brand into the ground, but upon thinking about it, felt that was not the best way to approach the situation. It just isn’t good business for me to do so, even as it wasn’t good business practice for the company not to return emails after the initial contact/complaint! All the company and Paypal did was to provide links on how to unsubscribe, which I figured out on my own, but not via the regular method. They did not deal with the real issue I was contacting them about.
So think twice about subscriptions and also think about your own level of customer service – do you treat your customers and clients the way you’d want to be treated? Do you allow your personal/business gain to be first and foremost above your customer’s? The answers to these questions will affect your business.
