good customer service would have been to notify their customers every time they are going to charge against their card vs having to have the customer monitor explicitly what charges instacart is making.
It reads like they've decided to take $99 from previously free customers on the basis of them not complaining when they were sent an email. If thats the case, I personally think it's a pretty crappy practice and any customer that claims to have not recieved the email should be entitled to a refund.
If thats not the case, they should probably take a look at the message because it's confusing.
p.s. Please don't come back with a selective quote. The "what happens" seems to conflict with the "Next steps" which is why I'm confused.
It appears as though they haven't even rectified that. It's still opt out. They're going to email 71 customers asking if they want a refund. What if they don't respond? No refund, right? What about the people who got the first email but didn't cancel, they still get charged, right?
I would find it difficult to trust any company with my credit card info if I knew the only thing standing between me and new charges for things I don't want was reading every email they send me.
Can you imagine the backlash if Apple started charging $99/year for iCloud and auto-billed everybody who didn't cancel the service?
Nonetheless, even if they did discuss refunding, the entire process seems shifty. Every service I use (I checked!) warns me five business days in advance by email that they are charging my card or sends a physical mail two weeks in advance. Instacart should be sending an email on each event with the delivery fee spelled out clearly.
>Receive a full refund of the Instacart Express subscription >fee immediately >Continue as a subscriber of Instacart Express for the next >year. We’ll extend the end date of your subscription >through April 30, 2014. This option includes unlimited free >deliveries for orders over $35.
Still opt-out
What happened with the mails that got lost, went to the spam folder, where ignored because it looks like standard press release, went to the secondary mail account?
Am I missing something?
they did not convert people to paid members, they renewed existing memberships for people who had not been been notified of changes to policies of the membership.
As many have pointed out, it's not acceptable to just continue running with a broken business model. That benefits no one. But changing your model and either not making absolutely sure to tell your customers or neglecting the attempt is just plain dishonest.
You are pushing to soften the insistence that customers should have regarding how they are charged. I don't see how that's a better approach than actually holding a company accountable for its actions, without necessarily judging the character of their employees or management.
Edit: Yes, I would say that to their faces. Exactly as I said it here, without personal judgment, but with a judgment regarding their conduct.
That's a fair objection, but choosing an inadequate form of notice, by itself, isn't dishonesty. Knowingly choosing inadequate notice would be the problem. To me it seems equally (if not more) plausible that someone, mistakenly, didn't realize that email notice wasn't good enough.
I'll also add that it isn't clear that email notice was inadequate. Are there cases of people outside the 71 who were unhappy learning about the change from another channel (like this one)?
A while back there was a lawsuit over one of the Canadian cable companies doing an opt out (negative option billing) and in general its not really considered a good business practice.
I, personally, have continued to pay for a service I no longer used simply because it was such a pain in the ass to cancel.
They should make good their customers entire financial loss.