A Tale of Two Customer Service Incidents, Part 2
Now for a completely different customer service experience. I attempted to download for free the “Song of the Week” from iTunes. I had noticed the song earlier in the week, but didn’t get around to checking it out. Now I had time. I clicked the link, and was taken to a page that told me more about the song. A button said “free download”. I clicked. I saw the song listed, again with a price of Free, I clicked. The song was now in my cart, but with a price of 99 cents. Huh? The song was advertised on the homepage of the iTunes store as free, the ad linked to a page that again proclaimed the song as free, with a big action button that said Free, the song title list showed the song as free, but at the last step, the cart said the song was 99 cents. I removed the song from my cart and tried again, same result. I went back through the process slowly, looking for a different button or link to click to change the outcome; nothing worked.
I suspected the song was currently in transition out; a new song of the week was probably being prepared and while the site was being updated this song appeared as free on the homepage but the back-end of the iTunes store had already updated the song’s price. I thought this was pretty lame; certainly iTunes could make this transition smoother. So I wrote a note to customer service. Their response confirmed my suspicions and gave me a free song credit. I never claimed a credit was necessary, having backed out of the purchase process before the being charged for the song. The customer service e-mail I got back was clear and personable, so much so that I replied to the e-mail and said the credit was not necessary, they could have it back. They replied again, very promptly; no problem, enjoy the credit. They even acknowledged that I was correct about the source of the problem; during the transition between free song’s the website had not updated completely. Total elapsed time? Less than 24 hours between each e-mail. A follow up e-mail included a link to a survey which I filled out with a glowing review of the service they had provided.
