Scoopon

I’m sure everyone is aware of Scoopon, and probably even more aware of the issues regarding their business performance. A growing number of customers have been refused goods or services, and just as many are getting frustrated and angry that when they try to contact Scoopon, they are either ignored or fobbed-off.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog (and let’s face it, you should be!), you will know that I HATE bad customer service and I won’t stand for it. I have recently started giving advice to my workmates and they are starting to benefit from what I have learned.

Just last week, my supervisor bought herself a new Mitsubishi Outlander. She knew about my dealings with different companies and we got to talking. She ended up purchasing an ex demo model, and managed to get free window tinting, floor mats and an umbrella after following my advice. Doesn’t sound like much, but when these things are brand-name and/or factory fitted, she probably got about $700 worth of extras.

My favourite story is about an incident in 2010, when the fuel pump failed in one of my employee’s cars. The car was about 8 months out of warranty and he was facing a $1,300 repair bill. I discussed a thing called “Implied Warranty” with him and told him to phone the service manager and discuss the issue.

For two days he ummed and ahhed about it, feeling a little uncertain about just how Implied Warranties work. One day, he left for lunch, stressing and grumbling about how he was going to find $1,300. So I called the service manager on his behalf, explained the story and asked if they would replace the fuel pump under an Implied Warranty.

The guy was unsure and said he would check it out and get back to me. By the time my workmate came back from lunch, Honda had agreed to replace the pump for free. You can imagine just how releived my workmate was.

So…..how do you do it? It really is simple. I am a HUGE believer in good customer service, as well as the legal and moral requirements for retailers to stop ripping people off. And I am not afraid to spend 10 minutes writing an e-mail to these companies to force them to comply. Most recently, I have contacted Global Shop Direct about their misleading or deceptive advertising, Zarraffa’s coffee about the hidden catches in their ZCard loyalty program and Couriers Please whose drivers seem to think the law doesn’t apply to them. Incidentally, Couriers Please have failed to respond to me, so I am about to report their behaviour to Police.

But I digress. My advice really only applies to Australian residents, because the laws are slightly different in each country. But even so, the underlying concept is that when a sale is made, certain contractual obligations are agreed to by all parties. Some of those obligations are explicit within a document, and some are implied – such as retail shopping. So while the laws in Australia may be different to your country, the CONCEPT will be generally the same.

I always tell people to use www.accc.gov.au. The ACCC is the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. These are the guys who are responsible for protecting both consumers and businesses when it comes to the way we all interact. On their website, you want to click the link on the left hand side which says “For Consumers”.

You will be taken to a page that outlines the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Don’t worry, it’s not a thousand pages of legalese. It outlines the 9 reasons why you are ENTITLED to a refund, exchange or repair – despite what the retailer claims their store policy is. These are the “Statutory” rights you hear about all the time, and no retailer has any discretion over them. I won’t go over them here, but I can’t recommend this one link enough.

Consumer Protection (used to be called Fair Trade) can also give you advice on the law in your state. A trick is to contact Consumer Protection with your complaint. They will tell you to contact the supplier to try and resolve the issue. Then you contact the supplier, tell them you have received advice from Consumer Protection and that if they don’t resolve the situation, you may commence legal proceedings.

The ACL replaced the Trade Practices Act 1974 which also covered Implied Warranties. You can look up Implied Warranties on Wiki, here. In a nutshell, this covers the theory that if you buy an item, it will have a certain “lifespan” that is longer than the standard 12 month manufacturers warranty you get.

Implied Warranties are a grey area, because there is no list of how long every item should last, and this is why you MAY end up in an argument over it. To use the fuel pump as an example: The car in question was a Honda which cost around $60,000 when it was purchased. Honda (like most car companies) offer a 3 year warranty on new cars. But shouldn’t a $60,000 car last longer than three years? Of course it should!

And that is the concept of an Implied Warranty. If something goes wrong AFTER the actual warranty period, you are not left high and dry. Your initial call to the business may result in a “Sorry, but it’s out of warranty”, and I would urge you to EXPECT this when you call. If that’s the response you get, ask to speak to the team leader, manager or owner.

REMAIN POLITE AND UNEMOTIONAL. Explain that you paid $X for your item and even though it is out of warranty, you believe that it should be covered by an Implied Warranty. If they try to defend themselves, POLITELY argue that their $2,000 TV should last longer than 12 months and that under an Implied Warranty, you want a refund or a repair/replacement.

The beauty of Implied Warranties is that it can give businesses a legitimate way to right a wrong without losing face. There is no admission of guilt or wrong-doing. And any smart business person will realise this.

The sad thing is that retailers are not required to understand the law/s that apply to their business, so you may still get opposition from a manager. If so, jump on the ACCC website and they will step you through how to take things further, including how to get the ACCC involved if you need them. For anyting related to telephones (including mobiles), contact the Telephone Industry Ombudsman (TIO) instead. They will give you a reference number and a different contact number for your carrier.

Along with Implied Warranties is a thing called Goodwill. This is even more grey than Implied Warranties, but has worked for me in the past. When all reasonable negiotations break down, you can call on “Goodwill”. This is most effective if you have been a loyal customer for a longer period of time, or have some ongoing relationship with a company.

If you buy a new car and always get your servicing done by the manufacturer – you can ask for repairs like the fuel pump as an act of Goodwill. Basically, you are asking to have your loyalty rewarded. After all, you could always have had your servicing done somewhere else and handed over thousands of dollars to someone like Ultra Tune, right?

And never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. Luckily, with me being in the military, I can pass information to around 3,000 people with a single e-mail. If a company does something wrong or illegal, I can threaten that I will “relay my experience to my workplace which encompasses 3,000 people”. You would be surprised how effective that can be.

But how does all this relate to Scoopon? Sorry for prattling on, but I wanted to arm you with information you can use against Scoopon if they are failing to perform. You see, it’s not just retailers you can battle with all this. Scoopon are just as bound by all this as everyone else.

Start by e-mailling them. Politely explain the issue and state your desired outcome. Give them a week to reply – after all, big companies get busy, and with all of Scoopons complaints, it may take some time for them to get to YOU. If you don’t get a response after a week, forward your original e-mail back to them, reminding them that you have tried to contact them, and give them a deadline to get back to you.

Depending on how annoyed you are, or how much $$$$ are at stake, your dealdine could be 24 hours, or it could be another week. Just be reasonable. If things turn ugly, they will try to argue that you didn’t give them enough time to respond. So be fair, but don’t be a patsy. When you set the deadline, tell them that if you don’t get a response by then “with a genuine intent to bring the situation to a resolution”, you will contact Consumer Protection or the ACCC and report them.

And always remember that disassociating yourself from these companies is a good way to voice your opinion. Unsubscribe from their website, cancel your membership or close your account. Nothing tells a company that you are fed up with them more, than when you stop doing business with them. And if enough people report the company and stop dealing with them, they will slowly stop making any money.

In Australia, if you tell a company or business that you do not wish to be contacted by them and they continue to do so, they are harassing you and you can call the police. This relates to e-mails that you have unsubscribed from, telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen (including religious orders) and charities.

I know that many of my family and friends think I’m a whinger, but I just don’t stand for people trying to rip me off. If they try their shit on me, I’m going to push back. I’ve already given you examples above of what my e-mails have achieved, and each of those stories have used up around 15 minutes of my time. So it’s no skin off my teeth to write an e-mail if it saves me money or holds someone accountable for their dodgy behaviour.

Just remember to ALWAYS be polite. If you have to contact a company through their website, then copy what you write into a Word document and include the date you sent it. Save it to your desktop so you will see it every time you use your computer. I shake my head when people tell me that they got ripped off but refuse to contact the company. If we don’t stand up to these companies, they will keep doing what they do, and we will keep getting shit service from them and we will keep getting ripped off.

My last tip is that you do need to be careful when you have problems. You can get into legal trouble if you make a claim or statement that isn’t true, if you tell a lie about the company to stop people dealing with them, or if you wrongly bad-mouth them. So when you contact them, always stick to the facts, never abuse anyone, call anyone a name, or make a statement like “Your company are a bunch of thieves”. If you SAY these things to someone, it’s called Slander. If you WRITE it, it’s called Libel.

If you’re interested in more tips – like how mobile phone companies MUST give you a handset warranty for the same period of your contract, or want to hear more about some of the things I have managed to fix by contacting these companies, leave a comment and I will spill my guts. I’m even prepared to give you some advice on how to resolve your issue.

QANTAS

I’m going to start this post by clarifying that “slander” is when you VERBALLY bad-mouth someone and “lible” is when you WRITE it. The one thing that disqualifies these two offences is when all you do is state fact.

So I’m going to state fact. No opinions. No name calling.

My GF and I had been planning a trip to the USA before I carelessly snapped my toe off. Well, I snapped the BONE off, not my complete toe. Anyway – I needed surgery and was told I couldn’t fly. Our hopes of a great holiday were dashed, until we decided to re-schedule. So now, we’re going in June.

I am a member of the QANTAS FF program. I have been for almost 9 years, and being a government employee, I have flown QANTAS almost exclusively for the last 20+ years. The only I time I DIDN’T flown on QANTAS was when they didn’t fly to where I wanted to go.

We booked our AU-US-AU flights using FF points. We were a little short, so I called QANTAS to purchase some “top-up points”. This system lets you just buy the last few points you need to claim a flight. The T&C state that:

+ You can only buy top-up points once in every consecutive twleve months (meaning that you have to wait a year after buying points before you can buy them again);

+ The points must be related to a specific flight; and

+ The points must be for you.

Fair enough. But here’s the thing. We looked on the QANTAS website to see how many points we needed. I rang QANTAS the next morning and bought the points, agreeing to their conditions.

I then rang my GF and told her that we had the points and she could go ahead and book the flights. But when she went to book them, the cost of the flights had changed. I rang QANTAS back (within 2 hours of buying the points) to explain my problem. They’re response?

They didn’t care. They stood by the fact that I had agreed to the terms, and that I was not allowed to buy more points. I told them that I had purchased the points in goodwill (a legal term you should all learn about) and that there was a problem with their website.

They didn’t care. I told them that now, for the sake of about 3,000 points, we could no longer fly to the USA. There was some to-ing and fro-ing, and eventually the woman agreed to speak to her supervisor. They put me on hold for a while and then came back on the line. Her supervisor’s response? They didn’t care.

Courtesy of companies like this, I have learned quite a bit about my rights and what used to be called the Trade Practices Act 1974. I argued my point again and told them that I had purchased the points based on what the website said, so I shouldn’t be disadvantaged by THEIR error. Eventually, they agreed to speak to their head office in Sydney and call me back.

About half an hour later, they called. They had agreed to cancel my initial purchase and allow me to buy the points I needed. And then they told me the most amazing thing. QANTAS are actually aware that the point-cost of their flights change online. They KNOW that this happens to other people. I asked them what their procedure is when it happens. Guess what?

They don’t care. They make it the customer’s problem. So I asked what they were doing about the problem. And the answer was “Nothing”. So they KNOW there’s an error that disadvantages their customers, and they’re choosing to do nothing about it. Are you listening, ACCC?

Anyway, our flights were booked and we were happy. And then I broke my foot.

My GF called QANTAS to cancel our flights. “Sure” they said. “But we’ll charge you 5,000 points (per person) for cancelling.” My GF explained that I had broken my foot, needed surgery, and was ordered by doctors not to fly. They didn’t care. On the heels of the initial points issue, this meant that we no longer had enough points to fly in the future.

I was kind of prepared to wear this penalty at the start. Shit happens, and companies have the legal right to not be left out of pocket for their customer’s actions.

But then we booked new flights to the USA. Strangely, we are now flying AU-US-FIJI-AU for LESS points than our original trip – even though THIS time we’re going in peak season.

My GF booked our flights, but we realised our stop-over in Fiji was going to cost us about $2,000 in accommodation and meals. Within three hours of the flight booking, my GF rang QANTAS back to change the flight.

She made the call so quickly that the points hadn’t been taken from my account. And I need to mention here that the new flight we wanted would bring us home a couple of days early, and had the same point cost.

QANTAS decided that for us to change our flights, they would charge us 3,500 points. Each. As a penalty. AND THEN they were going to charge us 7,500 points EACH to change the flights. 22,000 points to change a flight that hadn’t even been processed yet.

So I sent them what I call a shit-o-gram. At the time of posting this rant, I’m still waiting for QANTAS to contact me to discuss their behaviour. So it could all work out in the wash, but my problem is twofold:

+ Why are they allowed to get away with treating customers like this in the first place?

+ And why should we have to fight to be treated fairly?

I talk about consumer protection quite a bit on my site, and this is a perfect example. If you write a cheque that bounces, banks are no longer allowed to charge you enormous fees. They’re only allowed to recover THEIR costs associated with your bad banking. So why can QANTAS charge us 22,000 points when they’re not “out of pocket” at all?

And what about the initial 10,000 points they took from me? We cancelled the flights two weeks prior, so I would imagine that those seats will be taken by someone else. So that means QANTAS have taken more points for those seats than they charge. That should be illegal.

And my GF just reminded me of something else QANTAS have done – which MUST be illegal. I’m a little over six feet tall, so 13 hours in an economy seat is hell. We paid $640 to QANTAS to secure exit row seats for our AU-US-AU legs. When we had to cancel, QANTAS told us they are keeping the $640.

It also turns out that if you pre-book the exit row (@ $160) and then can’t carry out the “duties” of the exit row, and QANTAS staff move you – you don’t get your money back. Or if you show up, and QANTAS allocate the exit row to someone else – you don’t get your money back.

Hello ACCC? Are you paying attention? Why do QANTAS get away with this shit?