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Lycos Deletes Emails and Says 'Too Bad!'
Billosaur writes "The Consumerist brings us a tale of woe which is apparently generating outrage in some quarters, along with death threats. Lycos email customer Whitney did not access her account for 30 days. This resulted in Lycos deleting over two years worth of email. It isn't so much Lycos' policy that's the problem (though that requires some scrutiny), but the response of the 'manager of all of Customer Service,' Mike Jandreau. Apparently he's not too service oriented, as his exchange with Whitney shows. And since this story was posted to The Consumerist, apparently Mr. Jandreau has become the focus of some unwanted attention. Of course, his final response to her might have something to with it: 'I'm sorry, no one here has any intentions of helping you with anything. I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.'"
>restore them.
I doubt this is true. There are probably more than a hundred different archives, tarballs, and tape backups from which they could salvage most, if not all, of the poor woman's e-mail.
If his sister/wife/daughter would "lose" her e-mail would he be so dismissive?
His statement is especially suspect when the original tech support answer
was Should you want to restore the previous contents of your account, you
will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not
available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly
enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the
$19.95 upgrade fee I guess the corporate mantra is: If extortion won't work then resort to extermination.
Sounds like my last three
employers.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I think it's entirely possible that free accounts, of which there could be millions, offer no form of protection. Think logically the amount of storage that that would require for a small company like Lycos, and the likely small staff they have. I just can't imagine them having a massive backup system.
... but only if she upgraded to the $20 premium service.
Except that, if I'm understanding what happened correctly, at one point after her email got deleted, they offered to restore it
That was the beginning of the whole argument. She got mad because she felt that this was extortionate, and Lycos' Customer Service Manager basically revoked the offer and said "haha -- now you can't get it back even if you pay!"
So there was clearly a backup there at some point. Or not even a backup; they could have just logically deleted the data, but not physically deleted it yet. It wouldn't have appeared in her account, but it would have still be there on the servers somewhere. (A lot of web hosting companies do similar stuff; if you don't pay your bill, your site will disappear, but if you cough up it will reappear instantly. It wasn't actually deleted, just deactivated.) So it wouldn't be necessary for them to have much additional storage; they wouldn't need to keep a totally redundant backup system (though they probably would), just some feature in their email system that would let them render messages invisible to the user, but allow an admin or DBA to put them back later if the customer upgraded.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Having clicked through the Consumerist write-up to the aggrieved customer's blog, it looks like the customer in question is being almost deliberately obtuse and the write-up at Consumerist is misleading.
Whitney is complaining because she doesn't want to pay for an upgraded account to get her emails back (apparently, there's a policy on that: inactive accounts can recover mail lost that way by upgrading to a paid account--not that unusual, IIRC, a half-dozen years back, and undoubtedly a valuable revenue stream for Lycos). Reading between the lines a bit, she's probably made herself a PitA by demanding that the CSRs do something they have no ability to do. (Remember that the key to a business isn't keeping every customer: it's keeping the customers that are making you money. Free email accounts probably aren't making Lycos much money, especially ones that nobody is using.)
Yeah, Lycos looks like a bunch of jerks here. I'm not saying otherwise. But I find myself in disagreement with the Consumerist's claim that they owe her a paid service for nothing just because they're jerks. Sorry about your luck, Whitney: in the future, don't store your email with Lycos.
Canthros
I expect several people to come up with the "thats what you get for using a free service" reply. I'm wondering what advise those people have when someone considers using a free operating system?
Yeah, not the best possible response, even if she was being exceptionally difficult. Let me give it a try:
"I am responsible for all decisions regarding Customer Service. At this time, we have followed our normal policy for free accounts. We offered you the opportunity to upgrade your account, which would have paid for one of our staff to restore your e-mails for you. However, since we didn't hear from you in 48 hours, the automated process has run normally and completely deleted your e-mail. It is absolutely unrecoverable. I'm sorry for your inconvenience, but we've provided the service that you signed up for. Please provide comments that will help us improve our service in the future if you wish. However, as the Manager of Customer Service for all of Lycos, I have decided that this particular case is closed and will provide no further reply to your questions and concerns."
Hmmm. Same thing, but not quite as confrontational. It still states the important bits: it was policy, we warned you, you ignored us, I'm the manager and I've decided to close this issue without further correspondence. "10/10 for effort, but minus a few points for style, ya?"
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
What the hell has happened to personal responsiblity? Now the Customer service agent may have been gruff,(I haven't been able to read the blog due to it being dotted) but why can't people learn to understand the rules of the field here. They have their rules of deletion. She didn't follow them. They deleted them. They offer a service to retrieve them for a cost. She doesn't want to pay. What is the problem really here.
I think it is time that people in the IT field need to practice more tough love, this doesn't give us the right to be assholes, but computers are everywhere, in every part of life. The average joe needs to do this stuff for himself now. No more hand holding. What is it with the mindset that "oh I can just be clueless about everything, someone will sort it out for me"?
They offered to sort it out for her, for a cost. How were they to know she didn't abandoned the account?
And on the flip side again to my fellow IT grunts. Don't be asses, don't use unneeded technobabble (some is really needed sadly to properly communicate with others about computers though), and f'ing document things. Offer your info and insight to others, let them learn the rules of the field.
We all need to learn to be helpful not hapless.
Ok, Captain Angry Pants is going to rest now.
CaptAngryPants aka Eric
http://rustmedia.tv
The fact that someone is not paying you cash does not change the fact that they are a customer.
It is NOT a free service, anymore than TV is free. Just as I have the right to call up and complain about NBC having stupid shows on, she has the right to call up Lycos and complain.
She may or may not have been a pain in the butt.
But a GOOD customer service rep handles pains in the butt all the time. A good customer service rep could probably find a way to fix this situation without having it get blasted all over the internet, which I assure you his boss is NOT HAPPY about. They are in the business of selling PR (ads) and that damn fool of a Customer Service Rep just gave his own business a whole bunch of negative PR.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
i agree the parent is +5 funny, however, it seems that some people actually believe that she hasn't a right to complain because the service was free. let's follow that logic for a moment:
i have a computer shop that offers a back up service for free (as an incentive to get people in the store to buy computers, eg). a customer uses it, say 6 months in the past. every 2 months i archive stuff off to a cheap medium, say dvd-r. customer comes back, says, hey, my hdd crashed, could you restore my old info to a new hdd. i tell him, "sure, oh by the way, you'll need to upgrade to a premium service for $19.99."
the customer gets irate, and no one can figure out why. even after i show him the original fine print, he feels cheated. why?
because he was under the impression it was a FREE service with no "catches". he entered the agreement with a trust -- a trust that i will venture to say was exploited. if i saw that he didn't read the agreement when he signed, did i point out to him that it would cost him $20 if he were to ever *use* the service?
of course not. he probably would've just bought a backup drive or something instead. by the same token, i bet the 30day provision was buried in the eula, which lycos bets no one reads (and they figure they don't both people that do as customers).
i think, as a business owner, i should be able to stand my ground, however underhanded it is. he did sign afterall. it's not my fault he had a general trust in people.
however, to respond how lycos did in this case is plain unethical -- i doubt there was language in the EULA that stated, "if user complains about any portion of agreement, lycos reserves the right to delete any and all of user's data."
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Working in customer service, I can attest there are some customers that you should fire. These are the low to no profit customers who demands time and vastly over estimate their importance in the world. The ones who demand to speak to your VP or assume the media is interested in hearing of how the evil phone company cut their phone service just because they're 6 months behind on their bills.
At some point a customer demands more then their current and future business is worth and you have to set your foot down. I suspect Ms. Whitney is one of these, and the lycos rep put his foot down. It happens fairly often but with more diplomatic language in every company. There is simply a certain class of person who such a hassle to deal with that you want to direct them to yoru compitition.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
His response sucked. I'm a supervisor and if I was his boss, I'd have severely reprimanded him. At the same time, I have no idea what their complete exchange was because the sites have been /.ed.
I will say this. If she's posting personal information and people are identifying him and sending death threats, I want this woman prosecuted, persecuted, and hung from her toenails. As a support rep, personally attacking someone and putting their life in danger is immoral and wrong on so many levels.
1) You singled out a peon who works at a big company, even if he is the supervisor. He doesn't make policy, he only enforces it. Blame the company, not a single person.
2) It's email. It's not a kidney transplant. You had a lot of opportunities to get it back, and it's not the end of the world. Okay, if one of the emails contains the formula for nuclear fusion or the location of your small child and you can't find it anywhere else, I'll understand. Otherwise get over it.
3) You want help? Take the high road. This is the low road. To said "he's a jerk and I'm making fun of you for ever and ever." How mature is that?
4) He's getting death threats. OMG I'm going to find YOUR address and YOUR picture and get a bunch of support reps to give you death threats, you stupid bitch, and see how you like it! Death threats are nothing to laugh at, and are completely over the top, no matter what he said about your email.
5) I'm shocked and amazed at people who torment support reps as incompetant, rude, and unsocial. Do you realize how much shit we get thrown at us every day and how hard this job is because people like this? The nicer you are to me, the nicer I am for you. I get people yelling at me every day, and I help them, but I don't wanna, and I can't help that feeling. When I call someone for service, and I never yell at the person on the phone. I know form personal experience that being nice is the way to go. Now you've completely ruined your chance at ever getting your email back because, when an asshole pissed you off, you decided to be an even bigger asshole.
He has every right to sue her, and I hope she gets taken to the cleaners. Yes I'm emotional about this because this is scary to me. You don't take out your petty problems on a support rep. The support rep is just a cog in a wheel. Keep it oiled and it will do the job, but don't take a wrench to it just because it won't do what the machine can't do.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I don't blame the guy for talking this way. He's honest. Their service deletes email permanently if someone doesn't log in for a time, and when something like that happens they can offer nothing further. He's just being honest about the service. Of course, with a service like that, brutal honesty isn't a good tactic, but whenever honesty becomes bad policy, you need to review your service, not the way you talk.
I run a business which deals with customers. In my 20+ years experience, 99% of customers are decent people. The other 1% are assholes. Unfortunately the good customers will do their business and leave, whereas the assholes seem to hang around. So at least 10% of your time is spent dealing with the assholes.
These assholes will make your employee's life a living hell if you don't allow your employee to protect himself. ( look at customerssuck.com for examples ) No employee will work for your company very long if you tell him that he must take shit from anybody 8 hours a day.
But a good customer service manager - and I mean the real boss, not the arrogant guy who claims to be the head of customer service - will train his people how to tell a customer to go away without getting embroiled in a pissing contest. ( Saying "I'm sorry that this happened..." is a good start. It's possible to empathize with a customer without admitting that the company is at fault. )
Yes, the customer was naive and foolish. Yes, the customer service rep was an asshole. But the real person to blame here is an unnamed manager who put this guy in customer service without proper training.
...Should you want to restore the previous contents of your account, you will need to upgrade to the Lycos Mail Plus service...Restoration is not available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly enforced. To have your account restored, you must upgrade, and pay the $19.95 upgrade fee. This is non-negotiable. Here response - So let me get this straight: you're holding my emails hostage until you get $19.95 from me? I checked your policies, and didn't see that listed. This hardly seems like a customer-friendly policy, especially toward someone like me, who has been with Lycos for several years. There were many times when Lycos was not in compliance with its own terms of service, and I didn't try to extort $19.95 from you. This is just the snippets she cut and pasted on her blog. Not the full emails. I'd love to see them. She sounds like she has already gone of on him in the first reply. Nothing about his initial email is rude or unprofessional. She on the other hand is rude and whining about their policies and accusing them of not being in compliance with their own terms of service (which they can arbitrarily change of course) and of extortion... over 20 bucks.Now you might argue that she is a customer that thats hardly justification. A more compelling argument is that its his job to never lose his cool and always be polite. So he'll get fired over this. Which is a shame because in my book he tried to do his job and dealt with an angry customer the right way. People don't like it when your firm and clear with them and want things sugar coated. She wasn't worth it. She hasn't ever paid them a dime herself so her being a customer itself is debatable - user yes. She was eyeballs for advertising. She didn't backup her mail. She didn't feel that two years worth of email was worth logging in to check up on every thirty days. She didn't pay 20 bucks to get it back when she lost it. IMHO her email is rude and accusatory. No sympathy.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Yes actually... as part of their premium $19.95 service. So aparently the ability to backup her mail isn't worth 20 bucks a year. They also have a 6 buck account preservation thing where your account wont get deleted. Also they've had POP access since 2002 http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is _2002_May_14/ai_85911533 i.e. before she got her account. And if her ISP gave her an email address she could have forwarded all incoming mail. Not easy but you'd have a backup.
so...
1) 2002, Company offers free service with additional features like account protection/backup capability at a price.
2) 2005, New customer signs up for free service without additional features that she sees no value to.
3) Two years on she loses all her mail because of the ToS of her free service.
4) She now sees value of additional features.
5) Emails customer support asks for help.
6) Is told please pay 20 bucks to get your mail back.
7) Despite apparent value of offer, she accuses company of extortion and refuses to pay.
8) She loses all her mail.
9) and gets told to FOAD by customer service rep.
Am I missing something?
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.