3rd Entry for today, do make sure you read #2 as it has goals met that are pretty cool if I do say so myself, and this entry gets its own new category, that will go for badly behaved companies.

Here's a copy of the email I sent off to Suncoast (the video and dvd store) today after an incident in their store, also today.

On November 7, 2006 I went into a Suncoast store located at Bellis Fair Mall, 1 Bellis Fair Parkwway, Bellingham, WA 98266-5563 to use my $20 Replay Reward Certificate from my Replay membership. My membership number is 094797404. The replay reward certificate expired 11/7/06. The employee rudely informed me that he could not accept the certificate because it expired 10/31/06, even though it clearly stated on it that it expired 11/07/06. He even acknowledged that the certificate said it expired on 11/07/06, but that didn't matter because it really expired on 10/31/06 and said there was nothing he could do to honor it. He would not explain why, that was just the way it is. To me this is false advertising and failure to uphold club membership rules.

When I called the membership line to cancel my membership because they failed to honor it, they refused to refund the money I paid just a few months ago for a two year membership, as apparently there are no refunds. I understand there being no refunds if a person cancels just to cancel, but if a person cancels because the company lied to them about being able to use their certificates in their stores or to honor a valid expiration date, than I believe a refund is justified. When I asked to speak to a supervisor I was rudely informed that it would not matter because there were no refunds period. I was rudely brushed off. I believe this was because it was five minutes before the system shut down for the day.

I believe because your company failed to uphold its part of the membership agreement, that you owe me a refund. If this incident is not resolved to my satisfaction, I will be emailing a copy of this complaint to the Better Business Bureau. I want you to understand that you are losing a customer that you have had since July of 2002, one who has spent several hundred dollars at Suncoast each year, for your failure to honor membership terms. I will be reporting on this incident in my blog. I will also tell as many people as I can on my various email groups and in person. The behavior of your company is unaccpetable. And your employees need to learn better customer service skills, as I was perfectly polite, but they were far from it.

******

Plus my contact info, of course. Now of course, I really don't care all that much if you choose to shop at their overpriced stores or not, what I care about is their bad behavior. If they had just been polite or explained things properly or at all, instead of me having to figure out through their website what the deal was (which is that they switched to a different type of membership and don't have reward certificates anymore just points in the computer and 10% discount, which 10% of overpriced dvd is still overpriced there, the certificates and sales would make it somewhat worthwhile before, they did not offer to change it in the store or on the phone, by the way).

But I do want the store to know I mean business, so the letter and the posting in my blog.