mind=body=soul

1. Insurance companies:
Method adopted: Give customers a false sense of security and if they come back on a claim, overwhelm with time/effort needed on their side by asking for more evidence or try to make simple policies sound complicated and hope they give up.

Personal exp.:
I have been going back and forth with my health insurance and hospital care on a claim(for a cough, which they conveniently said "you can use whatever syrup you would normally take and oh btw, please pay us 950$ for the 2 minutes of consultation with me" ) for over 5 months and my car insurance company for 1.5 months to get a simple answer("Will this be covered by the other insurance company or do I have to get it done myself". Is that so difficult to answer?)

2. Most online subscriptions:
Method adopted: Make the subscription recurring automatically and make that info almost unknown by auto-selecting etc. Make the unsubscribe, not through a website but intervene a human. Eg: Call a toll-free number or email support etc inorder to cancel something.

Personal exp.:
I was naive enough to enroll in a credit protection agency which while signing up for a new credit card, they automatically decided thats right for me. They charge only 3$ or so p.m, and I have to call and wait on the toll free for 30min in order to cancel it. Finally I did it after almost a year. The small amount works good for them, as customer wouldn't mind to cancel it immediately. When I asked few ppl about vonage - "Don't even get me started on thier cancellation policy" was all of thier reply.

3. Claiming rebates/discounts etc:
Method adopted: Similar to #2, basic idea is to capitalize on customers' laziness. Good sales tactic to make seem the price lower.

Personal experience:
Not only did I not mail lots of rebates,but I did submit a rebate for my camera with everything perfect, haven't got any rebate. Of course, if I spend some insane amount of time in follow up, I can get it, but is it worth it? To most people not, either the amount is not that big or mostly they are just lazy.


To all companies:
Please don't say "We value your customers more than anything, they are our first priority" or crap like that which don't mean anything to us anyway, when the way you treat them seems like your motto should be "We screw our customers and we really enjoy doing it".
In addition to providing a quality product so we cant stop bitching about you(apple),make it easiest to return (amazon/costco) or easiest to unsubscribe membership(netflix) or better yet tell me whats good for me like suggesting competitors(zappos), then you have me for life(well, atleast few more sales directly or indirectly). This may seem like losing out on your business but ironically does the opposite(I dont know why; maybe its consumer's psychology or loyalty or their love to occasionally hear a tiny amount of transparent truth from a gigantic corporation ). Not only that - we tell our friends and blog about you. Thanks for listening to my rambling which you are clueless about anyway.