Originally published by Bruce Kasanoff on LinkedIn: Is This Any Way to Run a Newspaper?
Customer service horror stories are not particularly interesting to anyone, but this one especially frustrates me because I want the offending company to live long and prosper.
For about 30 years, my wife and I have been New York Times subscribers. We believe in the organization's mission and recognize that it is one of the few remaining newspapers that actually practices journalism.
That said, it is inefficient and wasteful to receive a hard copy each weekday, as we have done for many years. For quite some time, a digital-only subscription to the paper was the same price as a print subscription, so it seemed silly to pay for a hard copy but not accept it. Finally last month, my wife pushed me to cancel our physical delivery.
Being a working professional, I tried to do this during odd hours when Customer Care was closed. (There is no way to use their website to switch from physical delivery to digital-only.) So, to reduce some waste immediately, I switched to only Sunday delivery, which includes digital access.
Today, I had a break during the business day and used the opportunity to call Customer Care in an effort to complete our switch to digital-only. That's where things went downhill, fast.
For reasons the Times rep couldn't explain, they no longer had my credit card on file and I had a balance due of about $99, which resulted, coincidentally, in my account being suspended yesterday. I gave them my credit card information, asked them to keep it on file as they have done for 30 years, and asked to switch to digital-only access.
Nope.
The rep told me if she did that, I would end up with two accounts, because of my balance due, which would take an indeterminable time to clear despite my having given her a credit card again.
Trying to save time, I told her to keep my Sunday-only delivery and just turn my account back on.
Nope. That will take five days, she said. This is because a Sunday subscription can only start on Sunday, and digital access can't start before it, even though I have had an active account for 30 years.
No matter what I suggested, there was a Catch-22. She couldn't do it, unless I called back on another occasion. Every possible change would take two calls over more than one day.
What's the point of this tale? While the journalism side of the New York Times is fighting for survival, trying many different innovations to remain vital in our digital world, the customer service side of the paper still operates like a 1970's lumbering bureaucracy. Bear in mind that customers are increasingly important to the newspaper, as traditional advertisers have fled.