Do not cash in on customer errors

I want to share two examples of how Western companies respect the money of customers and do not try to keep them in case of obvious customer errors. This is very lacking for Russian companies, especially cellular operators, who have already reached the point that, if USSD teams are entered incorrectly, they show an anecdote and write off from 30 rubles.

Amazon

I wanted to watch a movie that was released only in the United States, while in Russia. I decided to do it through Amazon, since there is the simplest procedure for paying with a Russian card. As a result, we watched the movie with a half-hour pause for buffering, it seems that Amazon’s servers are simply not designed to deliver content to Russia.

The movies were watched, the buffering was taken for granted, they say “they are to blame”, the incident was forgotten. But one morning I receive an SMS stating that there was a small deposit on the card. I go to Gmail and see this letter:

Hello,

We noticed that you recently had problems playing on Amazon Instant Video. We apologize for the inconvenience, and also issued a refund for the order:

$ 3.99 - The Russian Soul

Although usually we do not return funds for Amazon Instant Video, but in this case we are happy to make an exception. You must receive funds within 2-3 business days on the same card with which you paid the order.

Many of us do not like it when the “big brother” is watching us, but in this case, surveillance is still beneficial. Interestingly, the fact that I watched videos from Russia didn’t stop them. I must say, my loyalty to this service won just a huge amount and in case of arrival in the US, I will definitely consider options for its use.

Google

I had a subscription to full access to the music, but the card expired and I was too lazy to correct the situation for a couple of months. And today I decided to listen to music (the weekend), for this I had to activate the subscription again. Who does not know - payment is made for each month of use. On the date (31.05) I looked after I made the payment. It assumed the worst - that the day of the audition was “golden”, but then I went to the management page and what I see:



Instead of taking advantage of the client’s mistake and withdrawing the payment today and tomorrow, today I am “forgiven”.

On Habrone anyway, there are people who have their own online stores and with this post I want to encourage them to be a little more tolerant to customer errors and not to try to cash in on them. Your karma and visitor loyalty are much more expensive.