floodgate.blog

Fantastic idea here from Napster — A little background is perhaps appropriate: I signed up for Napster-to-go when I got my Creative Zen Sleek for this past xmas.. service was ok, download speed was ok, I hate the lag between click and hearing music due to windows media 10’s overly complex DRM, large inconsistencies between the napster standalone application and the WMP plugin for their store.

At $15/mo, I suppose it’s a deal… I can listen to what I want to, wherever I want thanks to the to-go part.. but I just decided that $15/mo is better served in my pocket. You sign up for napster online, which makes sense as most things these days can be done online. Cancelling a subscription, however, is not quite as simple. Going through the “My Account” section and checking my account status, there is a link to change the level of my service (demote it to the $10/mo thing that takes away the “to-go” part, and to cancel).. looks promising.. then I click to cancel (they call it “Switch to Napster Light” — no thanks I’ll buy songs on iTunes).. it then takes you to another page with an 800 number that is not 24-hour. Now, 9am-9pm EST is pretty decent support hours, but I usually decide to solve my problems later in the day than this. So, today I called to cancel…

My hold time was negligible (put it this way, I didn’t notice that I was on hold… which usually happens after about 3 or 4 minutes with me), so that was good. I was greeted by a nice gentleman and once we got my account pulled up he asked why I was calling… “I want to cancel my account”.. he then went into this ill-advised and probably scripted “what? are you serious? why would you want to cancel napster?” schpeel.. I pretty much told him I wasn’t using it (which is true, i really wasn’t), and I wanted to cancel. from that initial statement of “i want to cancel” to when I got my confirmation number was 10 minutes… I was offered a free month to *further evaluate* the product (I am an uber-computer guy… you’d think 4 months was enough!!!), I told him no thanks… he then continued this “I see you’ve downloaded songs recently blah blah blah”.. no thanks… I then get a “did you have a chance to try out… blah blah” — ASSHOLE, I SAID NO THANKS!!!

Finally, we get to a mutual understanding that his piss-poor attempts to keep me as a customer when I clearly wasn’t budging and he cancels the account, gives me a reference number for the cancellation, and then messes up the “thank you for your service mr.. uh… ” and bumbled my first name.

So, I guess I am a stronger person for saying no to their relentless guilt trip? I know most people would cave in at the sound of a free month… holy fucking shit that’s $15 less dollars! Guess what… when it is october and they made you forget you paid them another $75.. they’re laughing, because you’re still not using their service. No thanks guys.

In their defense I guess, the man on the phone was really nice, and I understand he was just doing his job — he could perhaps lose the “man, like man why are you…” socal shit that no one in this country cares about.

that’s all

~rd~

p.s.: here is some reading for you if you need any comparison shopping advice on these kinds of services:
buy by the track
subscription