Letter From a Jilted Customer

Going through an old e-mail account this morning, I came across this gem I wrote to Belair Direct last fall after my repeated calls failed to resolve my issue, which was that my address needed to be updated, and they didn't seem to be able to handle that.  Since the internet is for the free exchange of information, and maybe I can save someone the unpleasant experience of dealing with this company, I'm unleashing it on the blog.  Some personal details cleansed, of course.

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Hello,

Over the last year, I have had a number of problems with your company, and I do not feel as though I am being taken seriously as a customer at all. If you look into my account history you will see a series of complaints filed around January this year regarding a collision dispute, where you tried to tell me that being rear-ended while making a left turn is somehow my fault, but this is not what I'm writing about.

Problem #1: I called on Aug. 28 this year to create a new auto policy, since I had separated from my wife and moved to a new address.  I have the e-mail and the temporary slip indicating my new policy number and new address.  I was given a new quote and agreed to purchase the new policy.  I received the e-mail notification that the old policy (<policy#1>) had been cancelled, but I never received a notification about my new policy (<policy#2>).  I didn't think anything of it at the time since I had my temporary slip.  I called today to update my address again since I have moved again, and found that my first address was still listed on my policy, and the CSR I talked to today couldn't find a record of the address change in your system.  Why then do I have a temporary slip with the proper address?

Problem #2:  I received a quote on my new policy that was based on the address that I had provided, or so I thought.  When I updated my address today, my annual premium nearly doubled. If I do an online quote through any number of websites online (can't do one through yours because I'm already a client) the quotes I receive are over $500 less than the rate I was given today.  Care to explain?

Problem #3: I tried to log in to your website to review my portfolio.  When I click to register, the website indicates that my online portfolio is already activated.  I have no idea what the password is.  I try to fill out the password recovery form with my current policy number and my driver's license number.  The website indicates that my license number is invalid. I have entered <my valid Ontario driver's license number>, which IS my license number.  I have it right in front of me.  So if this number is wrong, exactly what license number is on my portfolio?

Problem #4:  Belair will not update my tenant coverage because my new apartment building is a "high commercial risk" because it's "too close to a commercial area".  What the hell does that mean?  If I live in the city I can't get insurance?

Do I even have coverage right now?  Am I paying you for absolutely nothing?

Greg Burrell
gburrell@<my old isp>.com

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Belair responded within a day that they would call me on Monday to discuss. When they hadn't called by Tuesday, I cancelled my policy. They also fought me on their 30-day new policy guarantee, saying they were going to charge me almost half the value of the policy for early termination, which took another few hours of angry calls to sort out. Now I have a much less expensive policy which includes tenant coverage, and actual customer service.

Caveat emptor.

Censorship and Facebook

"It's like twitter. Except we charge people to use it."

It's come to my attention that a link I posted to Facebook somewhat recently has been flagged as inappropriate "by Facebook users" and blocked.  I fully realize that Facebook needs to rely on its users to identify inappropriate content and select it for review, but I also expect that someone actually reviews content once in a while, or at the very least that some kind of mechanism exists for a ban to be contested (I can find none).

The content in the link I posted is a humourous article detailing an e-mail exchange between a frustrated designer and a client who did not want to pay.  There is maybe one graphic in the article that might be considered offensive to the sort of people who think that devils are playing tricks in their eyes and making the lights in the magic box dance in contemptuous shapes, but for anyone who's been on the internet at all in the last 20 years, this article is timid at best.

Here is the link again, and yes I am going to attempt to link here from Facebook.  http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html

In my mind, Facebook has been on a tremendous downhill slide over at least the past year, as the site has tried to become more and more like Twitter, and in the process has destroyed much of the functionality that made Facebook unique and attractive as a social networking platform.  Now, it very much is not, and I have to say that if I didn't already have an account with established connections, my incentive to create an account today would be nil.  I don't want to play games and be inundated with my contacts' progress in those games to no end, and the other features that once made Facebook exciting are now recreated and improved by other websites like Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which I use regularly.

If Facebook wants to be the moral conscience of the internet, well good luck.  The internet is a community particularly well-known for rejection of censorship, and if that's the route they want to take, Facebook can easily censor itself out of existence.  And Facebook should have realized by now that trying to be Twitter is futile.  We already have a Twitter.  It's called Twitter.  And it has been so ridiculously successful in large part because there is no other Twitter, no competing standard, and everyone who uses a Twitter-like application [also] uses Twitter.  It's also successful because there is no option to block content (only users), meaning that if I post content I feel is harmless, and someone has a lame issue with it, it's their problem, not mine.

One of Facebook's potential niches is content-sharing, which is another thing it has in common with Twitter that Twitter does better.  By throwing up barriers to effective content sharing (like making it easy for potentially hostile users to make any content universally un-share-able) Facebook is shooting itself in the foot.

At this point I should note that the text I've associated with the link is from the article, and the fact that I'm ranting about how Facebook needs to be Facebook and leave the being Twitter to Twitter is actually coincidence.