ecommerce: January 2007 Archives

Do you know where you live? That may seem like an odd question, but judging by some of the stuff Keith's found in our backend systems it might be a valid question to ask. NB: I have no way of seeing who supplied this information as we just ran queries on a section of the table... Ireland has 32 counties. 26 counties in the Republic and 6 in Northern Ireland.. or at least it used to have... According to some people the land mass has expanded considerably. While I know that some of the confusion may stem from wording on a website I still fail to see how "region/county" could have led to some of these gems (in all cases the country selected was "Ireland") | 9666663696h | << em. Ok... I'm really worried about you | asdasd | << you're not even trying | Éire | << presumably a nationalist / republican | berkshire | << after 800 years the roles are reversed ? | Canada | In Ireland? | CO | << interesting | County | << but which one? | FL | << Disney in Ireland I guess | Florida | | Murcia | << porque no? | n/a | | na | | none | | Pennsylvania | | poland | - that's not that surprising :) | Random | - some people like to keep us all guessing | Region | | Surrey | | sweden | | Tennessee | | test | | uk | | united kingdom | | United States/CA/Goleta | - covering all bases I guess..... | W | I now feel more sympathy toward my postman! :)

I don't like posting to complain about customer service until I have exhausted all other avenues. In the case of ScreenClick however I've already tried all the "official" methods. Emails to their "support" seem to vanish into the ether (if you're running an online business why don't they have a ticketing system??) and I can't get a human on their phone line. So, why am I annoyed with them? It's very simple. As anybody who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I like films, so I watch a lot of DVDs. When my mother signed up with ScreenClick she got an invite that she could give to a friend which offered a 30 day free trial. I used the coupon and signed up. While I may not have been delighted with the service I wasn't unhappy with it. In any case I decided against continuing my membership, so I cancelled it. However, when I checked my bank account earlier this week I saw that they'd debited my Laser card €14.99 for the service. A service I had cancelled and a service I was not receiving anymore. I am not impressed. I cannot do a "chargeback" as it was from a Laser. I have to get a refund. The only people who can give me the refund is Screenclick. Screenclick is not answering the phone or my email. Why does this feel like a catch 22? EDIT: Finally got a reply from them this morning, so hopefully it will all get sorted out ... EDIT: All sorted now

I've been pretty vocal about Google's complete lack of customer service in the past. Maybe someone somewhere has started listening to people like me, or maybe the puppy has grown up a bit OR maybe they see it as a way of boosting sales.... For whatever reason(s) Google has just announced that they are making available phone support for their UK and Ireland advertisers. According to the email I got earlier this evening:

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide you with the best service possible, we are pleased to offer you the opportunity to contact our AdWords specialists by telephone.

They then go on to detail the number, its hours etc., I haven't spoken to anyone in Google's Adwords team in sometime. The last time I spoke to them was when they cold called us a few months ago - even though we've been a client for sometime (about 4 years I think). The person I spoke to on that occassion was very helpful, but the couple of outstanding queries I had about various things were never really dealt with. Ah well.... So what does the introduction of telephone support mean? Will this mean the death knell for online marketing consultants? I somehow doubt it, as it will probably be much easier to deal with someone with whom you have an existing relationship, rather than a "number" in a call centre. It may, however, mean that Google has begun to lose some of its cockiness and may actually be ready to deal with customers on a more serious level ie. by providing them with a decent level of service, however I for one won't be holding my breath.