Miserable customer service from C2

I’ve been a C2 subscriber since March 2013 primarily because I followed a developer here. Recently, my credit card expired and as a result I was unsubscribed by C2.



Here is the auto email I received from C2 after the monthly fee was denied by the credit card company.



"to insure that your subscription continues uninterrupted, it is important that you check the credit card information you have given us, or that you choose to use another credit card. For your security, we do not email credit card information over the Internet, so you will have to login to your Collective2 account to do this."



I was notified by C2 only after the charge to my card was denied. No prior notice of an impending denial of service was given.



I corrected the credit card info immediately and tried to re-subscribe but that didn’t work, despite the info in the notice, so I contacted C2 and the developer.



The developer responded promptly but C2 completely ignored my emails and phone calls and 6 days later I still have not received a reply of any kind from C2 to my requests for help. I lost 4 days of access to my system and the developer had to assist with signals. I was finally able to re-subscribe this morning.



Given the fact that C2 knows the expiration date of every credit card, why doesn’t C2 notify subscribers of an upcoming credit card expiration date sometime prior, say 15 to 30 days, to the termination of a credit card?



Why are emails and phone calls completely ignored regarding account issues? If it wasn’t for the developer helping out, I would still be ignored.



Normally I wouldn’t clutter a forum with my personal problems but I see Mathew has the time to chat up the discussion boards every day so I am posting here in an attempt to get his attention.



I would never consider auto trading with a site that has such poor customer service. We are playing with real money here.



Hey Mathew! Who is minding the store? Shame on C2



Disgustedly,



Andy

Hi, Andy:

Your complaints are fair and valid.

The only thing I can say in our defense (and a weasely defense it is, I admit), is that we assume that the process of maintaining and updating credit cards on the site is simple and trouble free. Clearly, that was not true here, for which I apologize. Indeed, I’d like to learn more about what you tried, and why it didn’t work, but I will contact you via email to get the details.

For now, let me just say publicly that I am sorry your emails were not answered in a timely way; there’s no excuse for that, and I’ll do some investigating.

Finally, your suggestion that C2 pro-actively contact people whose cards are about to expire is a good one. It’s just one of those software development projects that seems always to fall to the place on The List that I never quite get to. But perhaps your angry post (anger deserved) will inspire me to rearrange development priorities.

I’ll reach out to you by email to learn more about where the process broke down. For now, let me close by saying your criticism of me and C2 is deserved, and I’ll try to figure out what happened so that I can make the process better in the future.

Matthew

Well thanks for the mea culpa.



If customer service is “on The List that I never quite get to” then it won’t be long before The List will grow shorter and shorter as your customers fade away.



Want to make the process better?. Respond to customers sooner than 6 or 7 days after they contact you. After a customer sends you an email, stop the silly auto-respond emails justifying the lack of customer service. Don’t provide phone numbers if you won’t return the calls. Analyze your customer service or better yet hire someone qualified to save you from yourself.



“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”



P. G. Wodehouse