Do you think
technology is at the point where we can eliminate paper from our standard
business process(es) and activities?
I recently had an experience with a company that claims to have done just that - moved entirely away from paper communications with its customers and now relies solely upon email for that correspondence.
Sounds good, and in principle should be a means for cutting some cost (not to mention the number of trees you can save)... That is, until you have a challenge.
Last year, I had a need to store some digital content in a location that I could access via the internet from any location. At the time, I didn't have a good, reliable solution in-house so I started looking at online storage solutions.
In my search for a solution, I ran across XDrive that, as fortune would have it, was offering a special deal to test drive their service for 30 days before you were actually billed for the service ($9.95 per month). And... one could cancel the service at any time in that 30 day window and never be charged.
Of course, I figured I could take advantage of this offer by using and cancelling the service before the end of 30 days. The one thing that bothered me slightly was that I had to provide a credit card number to activate the service. I figured that I would be able to handle the situation though and I signed up.
I used the service over a 2 day period with great success. Then, I went to the website to cancel and could not find ANY indication of HOW to cancel the service. So, I wrote an email to their support group indicating that my account should be cancelled. I forgot about it until I got an email from XDrive about 3 weeks later indicating that I needed to cancel my subscription through their telephone support system, not through their email support group.
So I called the telephone support group, miffed that I was now past the 30 day grace period of the offer. I asked for the service be terminated and that I be credited for the 1st month since I was unable to find the appropriate process for cancellation on their website, and because their email support organization could not "tell" their phone support organization that I wanted to have the service terminated.
The support tech I spoke with was courteous and friendly. I was assured that all would be handled, so I thought no more about it.
Three months later my wife came to me with our credit card bill and asked what the XDrive charges were for. It had been several months since I called the phone support desk to cancel and so I could not find the phone number (and it wasn't on the website). So, I asked the credit card company to refute the charges.
All seemed to go away until 3 more months later when I got a letter from XDrive indicating that there was a computer glitch in their system and all accounts had been tripled-billed. The letter assured all its customers that the problem had been fixed and their accounts credited, but my account had magically been re-activated.
I called the credit card company again to refute the charges and I got a phone number from the credit card company for XDrive support. I called the support desk AGAIN and asked that the service be cancelled, my account be credited for the past months charges, and that I get a confirmation that the transaction had been completed. I was given a confirmation number, told I would receive a confirmation email, and I felt satisfied that I had done my job as a conscientious consumer.
This past week, my wife brought me the credit card statement and sure enough there was an XDrive charge. I called XDrive again, livid that I cannot get this company to stop charging my credit card for a service I no longer wanted and only once ever used. When I got through to a support desk tech, I politely asked for a supervisor right away.
Here is where the story gets interesting and made me wonder if we are really ready for a paperless business environment.
After much wrangling over how my account had been handled, we got to the point where the supervisor told me the account had finally been cancelled, gave me another confirmation number, and suggested that all was well and that I'd receive a confirmation email shortly for my records.
I informed him that this was exactly what I had been told the previous encounter with his company and I asked that I be sent a certified confirmation letter since the process had failed the previous time. The supervisor told me that he "could not do that", that his company only handled business via email. He suggested that I go look in my inbox and that he was sure I'd find the confirmation email.
I did just that while still on the phone, and lo and behold, no email... I told him it had not arrived and that I was not confident this process would work since it had not worked the first time and appeared to still not be working. Again the supervisor refused to send me a snail-mail confirmation letter.
I suggested that maybe there was something wrong with my email address and that he and I should review it and update it if necessary. He politely informed me that he could not do that either. Then he hung up on me. I called back and went over the same issues and he hung up on me again.
To date, no email has arrived. I am uncertain if the account has been closed. What do I do if I get charged again next month? How can a business that charges a consumer's credit card without the consumer's permission get away with that?
In my opinion, these charges are theft. I have notified the company's only representatives I can contact and I have told them in no uncertain terms that I do not want their service.
So, how do we as IT professionals handle a circumstance like this from a technical perspective? With the business constraint that no paper mail will be sent to customers, how can a business ensure that important communications are delivered, in this case, via email?
Well, it can't. The email delivery process has many places where it can fail and none of the exising protocols guarantees email delivery. In fact, with the rise of spammers and other forms of email exploits, email has an even higher chance of being rejected. And, there are no other alternatives to employ at this point.
So, I don't think we're collectively ready to switch business processes to rely completely upon our technologies such as email to create the paperless business. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time until we see legal proceedings calling into question business practices such as the one I encountered (and could possibly still be dealing with, ugh...).
What's your take?
I recently had an experience with a company that claims to have done just that - moved entirely away from paper communications with its customers and now relies solely upon email for that correspondence.
Sounds good, and in principle should be a means for cutting some cost (not to mention the number of trees you can save)... That is, until you have a challenge.
Last year, I had a need to store some digital content in a location that I could access via the internet from any location. At the time, I didn't have a good, reliable solution in-house so I started looking at online storage solutions.
In my search for a solution, I ran across XDrive that, as fortune would have it, was offering a special deal to test drive their service for 30 days before you were actually billed for the service ($9.95 per month). And... one could cancel the service at any time in that 30 day window and never be charged.
Of course, I figured I could take advantage of this offer by using and cancelling the service before the end of 30 days. The one thing that bothered me slightly was that I had to provide a credit card number to activate the service. I figured that I would be able to handle the situation though and I signed up.
I used the service over a 2 day period with great success. Then, I went to the website to cancel and could not find ANY indication of HOW to cancel the service. So, I wrote an email to their support group indicating that my account should be cancelled. I forgot about it until I got an email from XDrive about 3 weeks later indicating that I needed to cancel my subscription through their telephone support system, not through their email support group.
So I called the telephone support group, miffed that I was now past the 30 day grace period of the offer. I asked for the service be terminated and that I be credited for the 1st month since I was unable to find the appropriate process for cancellation on their website, and because their email support organization could not "tell" their phone support organization that I wanted to have the service terminated.
The support tech I spoke with was courteous and friendly. I was assured that all would be handled, so I thought no more about it.
Three months later my wife came to me with our credit card bill and asked what the XDrive charges were for. It had been several months since I called the phone support desk to cancel and so I could not find the phone number (and it wasn't on the website). So, I asked the credit card company to refute the charges.
All seemed to go away until 3 more months later when I got a letter from XDrive indicating that there was a computer glitch in their system and all accounts had been tripled-billed. The letter assured all its customers that the problem had been fixed and their accounts credited, but my account had magically been re-activated.
I called the credit card company again to refute the charges and I got a phone number from the credit card company for XDrive support. I called the support desk AGAIN and asked that the service be cancelled, my account be credited for the past months charges, and that I get a confirmation that the transaction had been completed. I was given a confirmation number, told I would receive a confirmation email, and I felt satisfied that I had done my job as a conscientious consumer.
This past week, my wife brought me the credit card statement and sure enough there was an XDrive charge. I called XDrive again, livid that I cannot get this company to stop charging my credit card for a service I no longer wanted and only once ever used. When I got through to a support desk tech, I politely asked for a supervisor right away.
Here is where the story gets interesting and made me wonder if we are really ready for a paperless business environment.
After much wrangling over how my account had been handled, we got to the point where the supervisor told me the account had finally been cancelled, gave me another confirmation number, and suggested that all was well and that I'd receive a confirmation email shortly for my records.
I informed him that this was exactly what I had been told the previous encounter with his company and I asked that I be sent a certified confirmation letter since the process had failed the previous time. The supervisor told me that he "could not do that", that his company only handled business via email. He suggested that I go look in my inbox and that he was sure I'd find the confirmation email.
I did just that while still on the phone, and lo and behold, no email... I told him it had not arrived and that I was not confident this process would work since it had not worked the first time and appeared to still not be working. Again the supervisor refused to send me a snail-mail confirmation letter.
I suggested that maybe there was something wrong with my email address and that he and I should review it and update it if necessary. He politely informed me that he could not do that either. Then he hung up on me. I called back and went over the same issues and he hung up on me again.
To date, no email has arrived. I am uncertain if the account has been closed. What do I do if I get charged again next month? How can a business that charges a consumer's credit card without the consumer's permission get away with that?
In my opinion, these charges are theft. I have notified the company's only representatives I can contact and I have told them in no uncertain terms that I do not want their service.
So, how do we as IT professionals handle a circumstance like this from a technical perspective? With the business constraint that no paper mail will be sent to customers, how can a business ensure that important communications are delivered, in this case, via email?
Well, it can't. The email delivery process has many places where it can fail and none of the exising protocols guarantees email delivery. In fact, with the rise of spammers and other forms of email exploits, email has an even higher chance of being rejected. And, there are no other alternatives to employ at this point.
So, I don't think we're collectively ready to switch business processes to rely completely upon our technologies such as email to create the paperless business. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time until we see legal proceedings calling into question business practices such as the one I encountered (and could possibly still be dealing with, ugh...).
What's your take?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment