Lycos Deletes Emails and Says 'Too Bad!' 513
Billosaur writes "The Consumerist brings us a tale of woe which is apparently generating outrage in some quarters, along with death threats. Lycos email customer Whitney did not access her account for 30 days. This resulted in Lycos deleting over two years worth of email. It isn't so much Lycos' policy that's the problem (though that requires some scrutiny), but the response of the 'manager of all of Customer Service,' Mike Jandreau. Apparently he's not too service oriented, as his exchange with Whitney shows. And since this story was posted to The Consumerist, apparently Mr. Jandreau has become the focus of some unwanted attention. Of course, his final response to her might have something to with it: 'I'm sorry, no one here has any intentions of helping you with anything. I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.'"
tupiche (Score:4, Insightful)
>restore them.
I doubt this is true. There are probably more than a hundred different archives, tarballs, and tape backups from which they could salvage most, if not all, of the poor woman's e-mail.
If his sister/wife/daughter would "lose" her e-mail would he be so dismissive?
His statement is especially suspect when the original tech support answer
was
will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not
available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly
enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the
$19.95 upgrade fee
Sounds like my last three [slashdot.org]
employers.
Re:Boo Hoo (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh-huh. What's Lycos' archive, backup, restoration, and redundancy system like? How much money have they poured into their network stability?
Policy is one thing. Bull5hit is another.
Re:Before it starts... (Score:2, Insightful)
The e-mail isn't really completely deleted.
> Go read the replies
Exactly. This is a perfect example of social bullying.
Mixed feelings here... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, it is a free service, and Lycos has just proven that you do, indeed, get what you pay for. It is a shame that the old E-mails are gone, and it is unfortunate that nobody thought of a way to archive them off of Lycos' servers so that it no longer cluttered their machines, but it does appear to have been part of their ToS, so my sympathy is limited there, too.
Customer Service (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a hard time with this kind of reaction from Lycos, and other companies. How can they get away with being assholes?
I worked for Lycos as a contractor for two months. In that time, I survived two rounds of layoffs, in which they lost half their workforce. I didn't survive the third.
Re:Outrageous (Score:5, Insightful)
Backups not really required; logical delete. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that, if I'm understanding what happened correctly, at one point after her email got deleted, they offered to restore it
That was the beginning of the whole argument. She got mad because she felt that this was extortionate, and Lycos' Customer Service Manager basically revoked the offer and said "haha -- now you can't get it back even if you pay!"
So there was clearly a backup there at some point. Or not even a backup; they could have just logically deleted the data, but not physically deleted it yet. It wouldn't have appeared in her account, but it would have still be there on the servers somewhere. (A lot of web hosting companies do similar stuff; if you don't pay your bill, your site will disappear, but if you cough up it will reappear instantly. It wasn't actually deleted, just deactivated.) So it wouldn't be necessary for them to have much additional storage; they wouldn't need to keep a totally redundant backup system (though they probably would), just some feature in their email system that would let them render messages invisible to the user, but allow an admin or DBA to put them back later if the customer upgraded.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Prediction: Michael Jandreau is out of a job by Monday, and hopefully a tad wiser.
Re:tupiche (Score:2, Insightful)
Because this is Slashdot, where companies - even those that provide a service for free - are necessarily evil, and consumers are never wrong. How dare they try to hide behind the terms of the contract? To read the headline you'd think the company just deleted someone's emails for no reason.
Someone failed their Charisma check. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whitney is complaining because she doesn't want to pay for an upgraded account to get her emails back (apparently, there's a policy on that: inactive accounts can recover mail lost that way by upgrading to a paid account--not that unusual, IIRC, a half-dozen years back, and undoubtedly a valuable revenue stream for Lycos). Reading between the lines a bit, she's probably made herself a PitA by demanding that the CSRs do something they have no ability to do. (Remember that the key to a business isn't keeping every customer: it's keeping the customers that are making you money. Free email accounts probably aren't making Lycos much money, especially ones that nobody is using.)
Yeah, Lycos looks like a bunch of jerks here. I'm not saying otherwise. But I find myself in disagreement with the Consumerist's claim that they owe her a paid service for nothing just because they're jerks. Sorry about your luck, Whitney: in the future, don't store your email with Lycos.
The danger of all storage you do not control (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the crux of this matter is how insulting Lycos is to the user community (or at least one user). Perhaps it is a reminder of how spotty support can be for free services. Everything is often great, but occasionally support drops out completely, without the recourse (and support) that paid services usually offer. Enjoy things while you can, but don't expect them to stay the same forever.
Free service (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That is the policy, they didn't follow it. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's sleazy, sure. But you have the right to refuse service to anyone on any grounds other than those which are prohibited by law, and "I thought she was an idiot and I don't mean mentally retarded" is a valid reason not to do business with someone. Assuming their TOS warns you that they may delete your email if you don't use the service in too long a time, they're really under no obligation to return it unless the TOS itself also says (or more to the point, said at the time this all went down) that you can get that mail back by spending the twenty bucks.
Ultimately, this person is an idiot for not just spending the twenty bucks. If you can't follow the TOS, and they offer to let you have your data, why not just cough up the cash, then archive your mail someplace else, cancel your service, and tell the world your story? Instead, she threw a hissy fit and got smacked down.
Basically this guy sounds to me like he is behaving like a BOFH... If this story had appeared on the BOFH website, it would be posted here as a hilarious example of a stupid user, if it were even considered newsworthy. "Stupid user... I BANISH THEE! Now get thee from my sight. Ni!"
Re:corporatespeak (Score:5, Insightful)
"I am responsible for all decisions regarding Customer Service. At this time, we have followed our normal policy for free accounts. We offered you the opportunity to upgrade your account, which would have paid for one of our staff to restore your e-mails for you. However, since we didn't hear from you in 48 hours, the automated process has run normally and completely deleted your e-mail. It is absolutely unrecoverable. I'm sorry for your inconvenience, but we've provided the service that you signed up for. Please provide comments that will help us improve our service in the future if you wish. However, as the Manager of Customer Service for all of Lycos, I have decided that this particular case is closed and will provide no further reply to your questions and concerns."
Hmmm. Same thing, but not quite as confrontational. It still states the important bits: it was policy, we warned you, you ignored us, I'm the manager and I've decided to close this issue without further correspondence. "10/10 for effort, but minus a few points for style, ya?"
Re:Backups not really required; logical delete. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't read it since it's slashdotted, but if she was offered restoration for the upgrade price, and declined it, then it's entirely possible that the argument went on long enough to cycle her Emails out of the backup rotation. Given that Lycos offers both paid & unpaid services, I don't think it would be a stretch that the unpaid services were on a short backup schedule, with the paying customers having more recovery time.
I can't see the whole argument, but if her contact with Lycos CS was anything like the calls I would get doing tech support, it probably involved a lot of words that the FCC charges companies large amounts of money for using. She may just be posting the final notice after weeks of abusive behaviour. There does come a time when the answer "No, now go away & leave us alone" becomes the right one.
Re:That is the policy, they didn't follow it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Overall, $20 to have someone do a restore is cheap. I can't get my mechanic to plug in the EEC code reader for $20. I've dealt with Lycos before -the company I was working with at the time had a branded portal - they're not that bad, but they don't go out of their way to be pricks. I'm betting on the passing of a deadline and a recycling of the freebie acct backups. (face it it's free, they're not going to run daily, weekly, and monthly backups like they would for paying customers)
I just can't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is time that people in the IT field need to practice more tough love, this doesn't give us the right to be assholes, but computers are everywhere, in every part of life. The average joe needs to do this stuff for himself now. No more hand holding. What is it with the mindset that "oh I can just be clueless about everything, someone will sort it out for me"?
They offered to sort it out for her, for a cost. How were they to know she didn't abandoned the account?
And on the flip side again to my fellow IT grunts. Don't be asses, don't use unneeded technobabble (some is really needed sadly to properly communicate with others about computers though), and f'ing document things. Offer your info and insight to others, let them learn the rules of the field.
We all need to learn to be helpful not hapless.
Ok, Captain Angry Pants is going to rest now.
Re:tupiche (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever heard of a backup? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't protect your own data, why are you surprised they didn't either?
Re:Customer Service (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that someone is not paying you cash does not change the fact that they are a customer.
It is NOT a free service, anymore than TV is free. Just as I have the right to call up and complain about NBC having stupid shows on, she has the right to call up Lycos and complain.
She may or may not have been a pain in the butt.
But a GOOD customer service rep handles pains in the butt all the time. A good customer service rep could probably find a way to fix this situation without having it get blasted all over the internet, which I assure you his boss is NOT HAPPY about. They are in the business of selling PR (ads) and that damn fool of a Customer Service Rep just gave his own business a whole bunch of negative PR.
Re:Just a classic whiner being told "no"... (Score:3, Insightful)
"May" or "shall", it doesn't matter. Their service and attitude weren't exactly the helpful, perky type that is sometimes offered (and appreciated), it doesn't mean that she has any right to whine when Lycos *doesn't* bend over backwards to help her...
No such thing as a free lunch (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If that's his picture... (Score:2, Insightful)
But then the idea that people assigned to customer service should themselves be in their right mind is a dying concept. We live in an age where the customer is viewed as some sort of work horse; and it is deemed more financially advantageous to work a horse to death in three years than keep him in service for 15, because the horse is a consumer.
Of course in that situation the horse does not have much in the way of options.
Yes, in this case she was getting a free service and might be viewed by some as being a pure drain on the system, but attempts to explain to her that data retention costs money and thus the account deletion policy might well be reasonable and that restoration is a labor intensive process that she might just have to legitimately compensate the company for might have been handled with a bit more delicacy, and efficatiously.
She might not have been right, but she was the one with the twenty bucks they failed to get from her. And now they have a wider PR problem instead of a quiet, little private one.
KFG
Free Service (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outrageous (Score:5, Insightful)
i agree the parent is +5 funny, however, it seems that some people actually believe that she hasn't a right to complain because the service was free. let's follow that logic for a moment:
i have a computer shop that offers a back up service for free (as an incentive to get people in the store to buy computers, eg). a customer uses it, say 6 months in the past. every 2 months i archive stuff off to a cheap medium, say dvd-r. customer comes back, says, hey, my hdd crashed, could you restore my old info to a new hdd. i tell him, "sure, oh by the way, you'll need to upgrade to a premium service for $19.99."
the customer gets irate, and no one can figure out why. even after i show him the original fine print, he feels cheated. why?
because he was under the impression it was a FREE service with no "catches". he entered the agreement with a trust -- a trust that i will venture to say was exploited. if i saw that he didn't read the agreement when he signed, did i point out to him that it would cost him $20 if he were to ever *use* the service?
of course not. he probably would've just bought a backup drive or something instead. by the same token, i bet the 30day provision was buried in the eula, which lycos bets no one reads (and they figure they don't both people that do as customers).
i think, as a business owner, i should be able to stand my ground, however underhanded it is. he did sign afterall. it's not my fault he had a general trust in people.
however, to respond how lycos did in this case is plain unethical -- i doubt there was language in the EULA that stated, "if user complains about any portion of agreement, lycos reserves the right to delete any and all of user's data."
mr c
Re:Free service (Score:2, Insightful)
Firing Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point a customer demands more then their current and future business is worth and you have to set your foot down. I suspect Ms. Whitney is one of these, and the lycos rep put his foot down. It happens fairly often but with more diplomatic language in every company. There is simply a certain class of person who such a hassle to deal with that you want to direct them to yoru compitition.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
She shouldn't have gotten her way, but the "no" should have sounded a little more like, "sorry, but no" and a little less like "fuck off."
I work in customer service (Score:4, Insightful)
I will say this. If she's posting personal information and people are identifying him and sending death threats, I want this woman prosecuted, persecuted, and hung from her toenails. As a support rep, personally attacking someone and putting their life in danger is immoral and wrong on so many levels.
1) You singled out a peon who works at a big company, even if he is the supervisor. He doesn't make policy, he only enforces it. Blame the company, not a single person.
2) It's email. It's not a kidney transplant. You had a lot of opportunities to get it back, and it's not the end of the world. Okay, if one of the emails contains the formula for nuclear fusion or the location of your small child and you can't find it anywhere else, I'll understand. Otherwise get over it.
3) You want help? Take the high road. This is the low road. To said "he's a jerk and I'm making fun of you for ever and ever." How mature is that?
4) He's getting death threats. OMG I'm going to find YOUR address and YOUR picture and get a bunch of support reps to give you death threats, you stupid bitch, and see how you like it! Death threats are nothing to laugh at, and are completely over the top, no matter what he said about your email.
5) I'm shocked and amazed at people who torment support reps as incompetant, rude, and unsocial. Do you realize how much shit we get thrown at us every day and how hard this job is because people like this? The nicer you are to me, the nicer I am for you. I get people yelling at me every day, and I help them, but I don't wanna, and I can't help that feeling. When I call someone for service, and I never yell at the person on the phone. I know form personal experience that being nice is the way to go. Now you've completely ruined your chance at ever getting your email back because, when an asshole pissed you off, you decided to be an even bigger asshole.
He has every right to sue her, and I hope she gets taken to the cleaners. Yes I'm emotional about this because this is scary to me. You don't take out your petty problems on a support rep. The support rep is just a cog in a wheel. Keep it oiled and it will do the job, but don't take a wrench to it just because it won't do what the machine can't do.
Re:Customer Service (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an ultimate flaw in your logic.
They are NOT a customer. The advertisers are the customer. The users are a commodity. This is true no matter which ad-supported free email service we're talking about, be it Lycos or Gmail.
The users of Lycos' or anyone else's free email service[s] have the same relationship to the actual customers in this relationship as a cow does to the customers at McDonald's. They're a product to be sold, nothing more.
Of course, there's various grades of cattle. Buffalo, for example, won't stand for that feedlot shit. They'll just knock over the fence unless it's made of something metal, welded, and well-planted. You can be a cow over at Lycos, or you can be a buffalo over at Gmail (or some other similar service, although frankly nothing yet has been as painless and AFAIK even the people who did lose their email got it back, and without spending any money.) But all of us on the "free services" plan are still only a product.
Re:corporatespeak (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The real Mail Nazi! (Score:5, Insightful)
These assholes will make your employee's life a living hell if you don't allow your employee to protect himself. ( look at customerssuck.com for examples ) No employee will work for your company very long if you tell him that he must take shit from anybody 8 hours a day.
But a good customer service manager - and I mean the real boss, not the arrogant guy who claims to be the head of customer service - will train his people how to tell a customer to go away without getting embroiled in a pissing contest. ( Saying "I'm sorry that this happened..." is a good start. It's possible to empathize with a customer without admitting that the company is at fault. )
Yes, the customer was naive and foolish. Yes, the customer service rep was an asshole. But the real person to blame here is an unnamed manager who put this guy in customer service without proper training.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is simply because people are all too often wrong, stupid and loud with it.
It is an axiom of customer service that they are. It is their job to deal effectively with that. The saying is not meant to imply that the customer is always correct, but that without customers you have no income; and the customer decides whether or not to give you his custom, on his terms.
It is in this sense that the customer is always right, even when an incorrect, idiotic loudmouth asking something totally ludicrous of you. There is a greater art in coverting one of those people into someone who has just given you money and is happy to have done so than there is in just telling him to fuck off.
KFG
KFG
Re:Backups not really required; logical delete. (Score:4, Insightful)
That point seems to be a bit ambiguous - I get the impression that what he was trying to say was that if she had originally signed up for the premium service, then this would have been an option at this point. I'm not quite ready to jump on the "hate the customer service guy" bandwagon here yet - we didn't see the whole exchange; we just see a few excerpts presented by somebody with an axe to grind (for all we know, that last response was completely fabricated). He may have explained exactly what he was talking about, and she may have gotten a lot ruder in the blank spaces. I think it's ironic the number of Slashdot readers who are ready to crucify this guy for being honest rather than hiding behind corporate doublespeak and faux politeness - say what you want about this guy, but at least he's not an insincere, two-faced, backstabbing PHB.
Re:corporatespeak (Score:4, Insightful)
We're only hearing about this situation due to this guy's behavior. And now Lycos has probably lost business and he's going to get broken off first thing Monday morning. And why? Because he's "honest?" No, because he's a pompous ass who used his position to be unnecessarily rude to a prospective customer.
Move On Whitney (was Only Losers Use Free Webmail) (Score:2, Insightful)
This request is not being worked on. There are no further points of escalation. You think our terms of service aren't clear, but we've looked at them again, and they are, and furthermore, you're in violation of them. We are not playing an angle here to satisfy a hidden agenda; your mail is gone. End of story.
Could he be a little more diplomatic. I suppose so. Is he abusive or lying? No, absolutely not.
Are the Mail Terms of Service clear? I think so, but don't take my word for it - they're at:
http://info.lycos.com/legal/mail_terms.html [lycos.com]
In particular, the section on Account Inactivity is Real Clear:
--------- [Begin Excerpt---------]
8. Account Inactivity. Lycos reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to delete any materials (including emails) stored in connection with an unpaid Lycos Mail account if the user's account has been inactive for thirty (30) days.
--------- [End Excerpt---------]
In this case, "and unpaid Lycos Mail account" refers to their basic, free service. There
Additionally, the General Terms of Service (found at http://info.lycos.com/legal/legal.html [lycos.com] ) say:
Before you register for a Lycos Mail account, you must read and agree to these Terms of Use and the Lycos Mail Terms of Service, including any future amendments.
--------- [Begin Excerpt---------]
Lycos offers subscription and unpaid versions of its electronic mail services. For users of the unpaid mail services, Lycos reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to limit the amount of storage space available per user or to delete materials stored for an excessive period while the user's account has been inactive. Specifically, Lycos reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to delete any materials (including emails) stored in connection with an unpaid Lycos Mail account or Angelfire Mail account if the user's account has been inactive for thirty (30) days.
--------- [End Excerpt---------]
The user is presented with both of these links as part of the sign-up process. I just signed up for an account (set the 30 day event timer *now*, 'cause I'm sure not putty any mail up there that I give a kentucky about
Admittedly, no-one reads the ToS - so let this be a lesson, when you're signing up for free shit, READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE. Read the Policy Privacy too - this is probably even more important in the long run. Incidentally, the Lycos Privacy Policy seemed pretty well written to me.
So, yeah, tough break Whitney - it is a drag to lose mail. But want Things to Go Your Way, that means reading stuff when you're agreeing to it, and learning and lesson and moving on when you get burned by your own actions.
Re:Customer Service (Score:3, Insightful)
The customer is always right - Have you ever done customer service for computer related issues? Would you please explain to me how it is the ISP's fault that the woman who superglued a phonecord jack into her modem & cut off the cord can't get online. (She caught her son surfing porn & this was her solution, until she wanted to get her email). Why would Lycos engage in the expense & effort of restoring this woman's email when it's obviously not even worth $20 to her.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (or muriatic acid) - Butric acid [wikipedia.org] actually catches flies even better - but you would never deliberately put it in the house. This woman started her issue with compaints of extortion, and given the tone of the snippet she posted, she was probably quite a bit more vitrolic in the parts she cut.
Make sure your products don't suck - Lycos is a web portal. It has free email. It has a clear policy that if you go over 30 days without checking your account, they can delete it when they want to. What do you want them to do, hold it active for eternity waiting for you to return? Not going to happen. Shouldn't have to happen. They actually have a policy that gave her an oportunity to recover that email - for a measly $20. If you can find a contractor who will rebuild an account on a mailserver from an archive tape for $20, I'd piss myself in surprise. Their service doesn't suck any more than any of the other free mail services out there - almost all of them have a come back or loose the acct policy. Most of them don't offer any way of getting the mail back.
[snip] get away with being assholes. - which part do you find being assholish? The policy is clear. There was even an oportunity to recover from the problem - according to the snippet she posted, she was given a 48hr window to make a decision on if she wanted the email back or not - given the amount of animosity in the email snippets she posted, there were probably more than she showed. Not being part of the tech team I can't say what was going on but, it's quite possible that when she notified them of the problem they put a hold on recycling the tape - which you can only do for so long before it has to go back into rotation.
I've had to deal with customers who have lost Email before - people who's clients deleted email from the server & it was gone when they reinstalled Windows, cancelled their account then tried to get their email a month later, etc. - they are nasty. If you tried the broadcast 1/10th of the conversation after you tell them it's gone, the FCC would make SWAT look like a bunch of amateurs. Did we have backups - yep, were we going to dig them out for a customer? "Not without a court order" was the actual response to the question. If she got hit in the quarterly purge, it's not surprising at all that they wouldn't touch her account after the grace period.
As for his tone that he's the last person in the chain & nobody is going to help her - there comes a point when being nice doesn't work anymore. At some point you have to say, "this is the way it is, you had your chance now go away."
Re:tupiche (Score:3, Insightful)
What happened to:
Physically walk or SSH/remote desktop to the system controlling the data storage device on which the backup is stored,
Re:tupiche (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it's a lot of cruft, but you also get necessary corporate features out of Exchange with Outlook that are impossible to get out of Pine, mail, Thunderbird, you name it. Welcome to the reality of systems and email administration: little tricks and setups that work for individual users or small business almost never work the enterprise.
Re:The Mail Nazi! (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Strawman [google.com].
Who said anything about the war? We're talking about making up laws about data retention.
Re:tupiche (Score:5, Insightful)
Which pretty much sums up why Exchange is totally unsuitable for use as a production mail server. I mean, come on - that's absolutely crazy. If it wasn't for the middle management obsession with shared calendars Exchange could be tossed out and something sane used.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are they not selling something? Are not the free accounts a pool of qualified (in the sales sense of the word) customers for what they are selling? Lycos execs did not just wake up one day and say, "Hey, let's just give away our shit for free." They saw a profit path. Just as the cheese people did.
She started by firing off what amounts to an accusation of extortion.
No. She did not start out that way. That was a response; to a response. Perhaps the request for money was made without much in the way of art.
And what it have hurt to have told her, "Ok, look, we'll help you out this time, because that's the sort of people we are. But now you know the score and we know that you know the score. Don't take advantage of us in future, 'k? We offer a reasonable service at a reasonable price and we would be delighted if you chose to avail yourself of it."
Instead of a PR problem they would this woman giving the word of mouth that "They be cool and shit."
Customers don't just show up for no reason. They need to be enticed a bit. Performing that enticement takes time, effort and money. That's just the way it is. And anything you do that furthers that cause is part of your marketing. It isn't all just about advertising and mindfucking people.
This woman is thinking, and spreading the idea, that Lycos are assholes who didn't help her when they should have, whereas if handled properly she would be spreading the news that they help when they don't have to. i.e., she would have truer sense of her relationship to Lycos that she does.
And thus far more likely to start giving them money for what they do.
People like that have no intention of giving you money, they just want to suck your time and resources to extract as much as they can from you, in exchange for nothing.
Yes, there are people like that and I have had to suffer some of them as my own customers, but I realize they do not exist in a vacuum. Getting rid of these people often means getting rid of an even greater quantity of good customers. It's a package deal. There is someone out there that abuses the Craftsman tools exchange policy, but because it exists I am a customer; and I do not. Take steps to the get rid of the abusers and you will likely introduce a step that gets rid of me.
Why not just accept it and enjoy the fact that you make a profit. That's the goal, remember?
Maximinzing your profits in theory often means losing all of your profits in practice.
KFG
Re:corporatespeak (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, what if someone walked up to you and your wife and introduced himself as a guy that used to have sex with your wife, and proceeded to tell you the various positions they used and the sounds that she made? It's not an insult and he's just "stating the facts without sugar coating them."
The fact is that if you're in customer service, your job *is* to bend over. If you can't handle that, then look for another career. Unfortunately for this clown, he's going to have that decision made for him. What's more, he deserves it for puffing up ("manager of all customer service"), pointing out that the prospective customer was wrong ("which is, despite what you say, completely clear") and being a snotty little prick.
Re:The real Mail Nazi! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you might argue that she is a customer that thats hardly justification. A more compelling argument is that its his job to never lose his cool and always be polite. So he'll get fired over this. Which is a shame because in my book he tried to do his job and dealt with an angry customer the right way. People don't like it when your firm and clear with them and want things sugar coated. She wasn't worth it. She hasn't ever paid them a dime herself so her being a customer itself is debatable - user yes. She was eyeballs for advertising. She didn't backup her mail. She didn't feel that two years worth of email was worth logging in to check up on every thirty days. She didn't pay 20 bucks to get it back when she lost it. IMHO her email is rude and accusatory. No sympathy.
Re:I work in customer service (Score:4, Insightful)
Puhlease! Let's rephrase that into, "According to Mike Jandreau, Mike Jandreau had 81 death threats last night."
Not even Dubya receives 81 death threats a night. Since you didn't figure out yourself and you seem kind of emotional about it, let me asure you no one intends to kill Mr. Jandreau or has threatened to kill him. He was a mere asshole to a stranger. Maybe he got 81 mails telling him that? Maybe one teenager failing to be funny sending 81? Or maybe he's trying to extort the site into doing what he demands. That would be utterly tasteless and completely over the top. It would also conform to a pattern. Learning moment: whenever you throw in a "I got death threats" into the argument, be modest and start at just a couple, so you don't give it away straight away.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real Mail Nazi! (Score:5, Insightful)
so...
1) 2002, Company offers free service with additional features like account protection/backup capability at a price.
2) 2005, New customer signs up for free service without additional features that she sees no value to.
3) Two years on she loses all her mail because of the ToS of her free service.
4) She now sees value of additional features.
5) Emails customer support asks for help.
6) Is told please pay 20 bucks to get your mail back.
7) Despite apparent value of offer, she accuses company of extortion and refuses to pay.
8) She loses all her mail.
9) and gets told to FOAD by customer service rep.
Am I missing something?
No, it's really not (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, he didn't.
Let's assume you're right and that the woman was out of line, and that the guy was 100% right.
Here's his one-time response.
"Dear :
Again, let me apologize that you feel Lycos has let you down. As stated in my previous email, this in accordance with Lyco's policy and your only option at this point is to pay $20 to have your email restored. I understand you may not find this option to your satisfaction, and I apologize but those are company rules"
And then here's the key.... don't respond any more. Even if the woman calls him the worst names possible. Just. Walk. Away.
It's nothing personal. He doesn't get it. And you look at the pictures, it's pretty obvious he's just a kid trying to do an adult's job. He hasn't been adequately trained to deal with the public.
But you cannot seriously think this is the right way to deal with a customer no matter how abusive.
Re:The Mail Nazi! (Score:1, Insightful)
Obviously you're blinded to the recent trend that even CENTRIST freaks are noticing what a disaster this administration has been!
Re:No, it's really not (Score:3, Insightful)
He gave her the standard ToS - the (presumably) standard 20 buck offer - not rude. I have no idea what the mail she sent him looks like. After that all I have to go on are cut and paste snippets on her blog. Even those make her out to be unreasonable. Even his next reply is not rude but a tad brusque. She argues that theres nothing that REQUIRES them to delete mail from inactive accounts. There is also nothing requiring them to keep it of course. Still no sight of mails from her.
Now he stops trying. Up till here he has done everything any reasonable person would require him to. Other than restore the mail. Thats just business. After this if you want to accuse him of being rude you can make a decent case. I'd call it being blunt and telling her to take a hike. It is his job to be professional to customers. He certainly tried. He failed. He will get fired. Its a shame because I sympathize with the guy. He tried to do his job and lost his cool and I can't claim I'd have reacted differently in his place.
Yeah sure, the right business thing to do is to respond exactly as you say. But I'm not sure thats the same thing as the right thing to do. I don't know what is but I feel it involves his fist and her face. I've just no sympathy for her whatsoever.
Re:No, it's really not (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Mail Nazi! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why this guy is good. (Score:2, Insightful)
He's supposed to serve the customer. From her perspective, he's just rubbing the shitty job he did in the first place in her face.
What a asshole. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats how he should have said it. IF the emails are gone, they are gone and he couldn't help even if he wanted to. But there is no need to go asshole on the customer no matter how much the customer would dislike the answer, even if the customer is screaming at you.
Or even a trick I've seen work well:
"Ok, I understand your frustration. The emails have been removed, and backups are designed to cover disaster recovery rather than deletion per policy. If I can put you on hold for a few minutes, I'll check with our server admins to see if there is anything we can do" *Puts customer on hold and plays Nintendo DS for five minutes* "Ok, I checked with our admins, unfortunately they are unable to restore your emails from server backups"
After one of the above, perhaps offer a courtesy credit if it's a pay service, maybe a temporary upgrade to a pay version of your free service, and the customer will be satisfied more often than not. Won't exactly be happy unless you are able to fix the problem, but they will accept the answer and be satisfied with the level of service they got in that call.