Law of the Letter
Another gym membership down the drain.
What is it with gym memberships?!
Like napalm, they cling and burn no matter what you do.
I was pleased to see the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission agreed with our assessment of that Gold Coin to Join ‘deal’.
Alas, I’ve had less success at my local pool.
Technically, they’re correct.
Morally, I feel twisted and hung out to dry.
See what you think.
I Said
Dear Team,
I’m going away for a bit.
Could you please suspend my membership immediately and reactivate it effective 26 July?
Best regards, P.
She Said
Hi Paul,
Unfortunately we are unable to suspend your membership as requested, as you have already used your maximum 62 suspension days this year.
If you do require your membership to be inactive while you are away, you are able to cancel your membership and rejoin within six months without paying a joining fee.
Kind regards, X.
I Said
Thank you, X.
Could you please cancel my membership immediately?
Regards, P.
She Said
Dear Paul,
As I did not hear back from you prior to your email today, unfortunately you have missed the cut off to prevent the next debit being processed, which is the 25th of each month. You will still be able to access our facilities until the 27th of August, so your cancellation will be effective of this date.
Your reference number is CLC 32018
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your patronage and wish you all the best for your future endeavours. If you wish to re-join our facility within the next six months, we would like to offer you no joining fee.
I have attached a copy of the terms and conditions for your perusal.
I Said
That is a literal interpretation of a mean-spirited policy, X.
Your records will show that I haven’t been there for weeks.
If you need my money that badly, I guess you’d better keep it.
What a shame. 
She Said
Nothing.
Right & Wrong
She sure nailed me to the floorboards with that policy. Absoloodle.
Justice has been served. Or has it?
A month before this exchange, I returned from a swim to find a putative thief had flung my possessions around the change room.
I alerted the receptionist, expecting her reaction to include:
- Oh, you poor dear! That must be unsettling.
- Goodness! Is anything missing?
- Would you mind showing Bert where you hung/found your bag?
- Thanks so much for letting us know!
- All of the above.
Instead, she said:
- We’re not liable for possessions stolen from bags left on hooks.
- That’s why we have lockers.
- You should’ve used a locker.
- It’s in the policy.
Dampener
Another (new) policy is to charge members $3 each time they forget their card.
And a sign has appeared near the sauna urging patrons not to spit.
All this has dampened my urge to swim.
The pool is run by my council, with my rates, for my health.
Is my community so rabid that all these policies must be enforced with such rigour?
Could any of us business owners foist kindred measures on our customers?
Please jump in with your comments.
The water (at least) is fine.
Epilogue
I recently got a letter from the pool’s Sales, Retention & Events Officer.
Amid exhortations to buy a $60 Personal Training session …
He Said
Hi Paul,
We’ve been wondering where you are! It’s been a while since we last saw you in the Centre.
We want to make sure you get the most from your membership so if there is anything we can do to help you, please drop in and see us or give us a call.
Paul Hassing, Founder & Senior Writer, The Feisty Empire
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Hi Paul,
I think most of us have had a similar experience. Two issues come to mind:
1. You do need a process in place. However it needs to be done with the consideration of the customer experience.Life is not black and white.
2. You also need to give people who deal with customers the flexibility and authority to make decisions that may be against policy but is in the interests of strengthening the relationship.
Out of interest did you speak to them in the first place or send an email?
Calm, measured and sensible as always, Susan!
I agree with both your points.
As a writer, I greatly prefer setting my thoughts down slowly and clearly in print. Any residual desire I harboured to speak to them was excoriated by my interaction with the receptionist. So I sent an email.
I was tempted to ring the letter author, but I’d received four identical missives over the years, and concluded there wasn’t a shred of sincerity in any of them.
[Glass of (non-spa) water for Mr Hassing!]
It’s sobering that rules and regs, probably introduced in order to save organisations from inefficiencies, just end up as red tape, rewarding bureaucracies to the detriment of consumers.
Surely, in this transparent web 2.0 world, the worm will turn.
Either that, or:
I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
PS I’ve heard, re spit, that once the filter’s going, you can’t tell the difference.
PPS Does Bert commute from Koo Wee Rup to inner suburban Melbourne?
Thank you, Adam, for making me feel good AND laugh out loud during a tricky morning! You are officially ace!
G’Day Paul,
These people are interesved only in your money, not your custom or support. They clearly know nothing about “lifetime Value of a customer.” So……..
Find somewhere else to swim.
Email a copy of this blog to the Sales, Retention and Events Officer and tell he or she that you’ve posted it for the world to see.
Send a copy of the post to your local alderman
Email a copy of the post to the appropriate suburban newspaper in you district
Sit back and wait to see what happens……although I suspect that you’ll be ignored.
There is hope y’know. I’ve been working as a consultant to a suburban plumber here in Sydney for some years. It’s called “The Clean Plumber.” Their commitment to prospects and customers is simple; “If we’re late, you don’t pay. They’re very successful.
Make sure you have fun.
Regards
Leon
I’m really enjoying your comments, Leon. Many thanks for the return visits.
As anyone who’s followed this blog for a while will know, I have terrible trouble naming names.
I’m also a bit ‘over’ being ignored.
Susan asked me earlier what I was going to do instead of swim. Well, last weekend I borrowed my brother’s ute and went to the Clifton Hill council depot. They have a huge pile of free mulch that you can plunder at will.
I pitched two massive loads into the vehicle, drove to my dear old Dad’s place, and spent another two days spreading it around the garden my beautiful, departed mother created.
Dad was rapt. The weeds shrank in horror. The garden went nuts. And I went to bed with cuts, blisters, splinters, aches and pains for the first time in years.
I slept like a child and awoke sore but refreshed.
So I can say with confidence that gardening is the new swimming!
My brilliant business coach, Winston Marsh, has spoken about tradies who step way outside the circle of expectation and thrive as a result. I’m pleased to hear you’ve heard similar things.
Thanks again, Leon!
I don’t think you would use those words to describe me if you had heard me blast my gym for not returning my calls as well as swearing at a voicemail from them saying in a superior voice that I was wrong.
From being a rather hot head age has mellowed me and not too much upsets these days. Rather laugh.
Your point about the lack of sincerity is a problem with the old form letters. I received an email today thanking me (it was one of those follow up emails) for my wonderful comments and sharing of the videos. I did neither and this was from a person who is pretty well known in the online world.
Thank you for the reveal, Susan. As Adam intimated, transparency will indeed be what it’s all about very soon.
Any chance of a Hansard transcript of that call? Sounds gripping!
Dear Vincent,
Take one 7,617,930 square kilometre slab of iron (great for barbeques
).
Add approximately 22 Million ‘Centers of the Universe’, stir in 200 Million Tonnes of Prescription Drugs, enough legalised consciousness altering toxic food additives to exterminate all life within 20 parsecs (and preserve the corpses indefinitely) and simmer over a Constantly and Never-Endingly Improving 3% Annual Growth Rate.
And what do you get? A ‘Ship of Pools’…oops I mean ‘Fools’. ;-P
Ah yes! “I’m only doing my job” and “I don’t make the rules…” and “it’s just the way it is…”…
And it would appear ol’ Bean, that you are soaking in it…literally
God I miss the screamin’…
Cheers
Stephen G
Hello, Stephen.
Soaking. Drowning. Disintegrating.
As Peter Sellers once observed about shooting fish at Ilfracombe:
‘You can’t hear the screaming; the water keeps all the sound in.’
Hi Paul,
What a heap of BS – I’m sick to death of this ineptitude of business masquerading as positive business practice. While we’re at it, let’s talk about the Village Movie Club. Sign up and receive points every time you buy a ticket.
Well bugger me, I was in line the other day and the 2 people in front of me presented the card to get a different excuse why it couldn’t be used. I purchased $755 of Gold Class tickets and was told that it only applied if I purchased and used the ticket on the same day.
Fair dinkum. Their so called loyalty program is a joke and is now a de motivating disloyalty waste of my time which I’m reminded of each time I open my wallet and see their card. So they can keep their emails, their so called benefits and their ineptitude as I seek another venue to use as promotional incentives for my staff.
And I plan to tell as many of my peers as possible and let me tell you I have an extensive network of senior managers. These people can go and sit in the dark and watch a movie because they are wasting their time promoting their business.
That letter ‘Hi Paul, we haven’t seen you for a while come and spend some more money here’ is enough to send you postal. We vote with our wallets people, are you with me brothers and sisters?
I’m with you, Big M. Totally get your (snow) drift on ‘loyalty’ schemes. Each time I go to Gold Class, the seats are smaller, closer together, more numerous and made of lesser-grade fabric.
It boils down to something we often say, “Nobody gives service any more!”
Ah, yes its often promised but rarely delivered so if you can genuinely promise and actually deliver great service you’ll get most of the business.
We should be heartened by the many companies who do it wrong… it leaves a heck of an opportunity for the rest of us!
You’re SO right, Winston. Seth Godin says a similar thing. That times of crap service provide golden opportunities for right thinkers. Thank you for joining us yet again!
I sure am Malcolm…except for the wallet bit. I haven’t got one of them any more. Would that be a ‘Donkey Vote’? ;-P
Cheers
Stephen G
Hey Paul,
Did you put a ‘No Pools’ sign in your Mum’s garden? ;-P
Cheers
Stephen G
PS I like the Poem too
Ha ha, Stephen. There IS a pool in Mum’s garden, but it’s been empty for years. With all this rain coming, maybe it’s time to heal the space. Thanks for your kind feedback!
BTW, Malcolm, didn’t someone move YOUR cheese at the gym the other day?
There’s already a Pool!?
Damn! This calls for an ‘Extraordinary’ Meeting of Council to discuss a new, improved, reformed Management Plan. But of course, before we do that, we’ll need to do a Viability Study toward a Strategic Plan. Oh! And we’ll have to calibrate our Environmental Impact Study against our constantly and never-endingly improving debate about whether or not Climate Change has anthropogenic origins.
But ‘moving forward’, our expert projections indicate that we’ll be proud to announce our progress no later than COB, 29 June 3017.
Draft Plans will be available for public inspection at ‘to be announced’ (Public Notification) or at ‘the Council’ offices between 8:30am and 4.30pm: Planning Secretariat, next to Potato Patch, up the road from the Turnip Chuckin’ Megaplex, Lot 1, Koo Wee Rup.If you feel an application may impact on you, you may wish to submit a written representation clearly stating the reasons for your submission. Representations must be received by COB tomorrow with a blood sample to be considered in the assessment. Representations can be submitted to someone who cares or posted to anyone but us at the above address. Copies of representations will be provided to the applicant and placed on the public register unless an exclusion has been granted. For further information please contact your local representative. Oh! And ‘No Spitting!’.
Cheers
Stephen G
No cheese movement, just sculpting my abs mate, could take your eye out I’m looking that sharp!
You two are hilarious!
Its what happens when a business doesn’t care enough about where customers come from because it isn’t their’s (council of govt owned) or it gets too big.
I was speaking to friend who works for a large an organisation which manages the motoring expenses budgets for thousands of drivers across Australia. The processes for managing these budgets are pretty poor ie many accounts are in negative with the driver owning money to the company.
One day they decided to fix it all up by sending a very ‘to the point’ letter to all customers telling them to either get their budgets into shape or the company would no longer pay for expenses on their behalf.
So instead of the company putting procedures into place to better manage their budgets they decided to blame the drivers.
Great escape plan for one executive, many very unhappy customers.
As you say, customer service is dead. Its all about get them in and get them out whilst taking their money away.
Thank you for yet another teriffic comment, Arthur. You really get me thinking with the points you’re making!
Real-world anecdotes like this add such depth to our debate. Best regards, P.
I’ve been thinking about your advice, Leon. And as I still feel aggrieved about this, I just sent the email below:
‘Dear Y,
’
Thank you for your letter of 29 July, and your kind offer of help.
As it turns out, there is something you can help me with.
I’d like my last two monthly membership payments refunded, please.
My reasons are detailed in this blog post:
http://mybrc.myobnet.com/2010/08/12/law-of-the-letter/
I was going to let this matter slide, but it’s still really bugging me.
We’re certainly not talking sheep stations, so I greatly look forward to your assistance.
With best regards and many thanks for your time.
Paul.
Wish me luck!
Just received another ‘wondering where you are / buy a personal trainer’ letter.
Identical to the last one (and all those before).
*sigh*
‘Hi Paul,
Thank you for your email.
I have had a read of your detailed blog past, however am still unclear as to the reasons for your refund request for your last two direct debit payments.
I understand that you were looking to suspend your membership for a certain period of time and unfortunately your allocation of 62 suspension days per calendar year had already been fully utilised in a previous suspension. At this stage a staff member informed you that you could cancel the membership and rejoin upon your return and would not be charged a joining fee; if you rejoined within six months of the cancellation date. The cancellation was not processed at this stage as confirmation in writing had not been received until after the direct debit was processed.
I do understand from your blog post that you are aggrieved by the policies and procedures in place, however these terms and conditions are approved by management and the City of Z. All administration staff will follow these terms and conditions when processing member requests.
I believe the staff member that was dealing with your request was attempting to resolve your enquiry with very good intentions and was seeking a solution to satisfy your needs within the terms of your membership agreement.
I hope I have clarified the matter for you, however if you would still like me to forward this enquiry to senior management for review of your refund request that I will send it through accordingly.
Regards,
Y
Acting Marketing & Communications Coordinator’
Thanks for your help, Y.
You’ve said it all.
• The situation is clarified.
• The policies, procedures, terms and conditions are inviolate.
• I feel fully utilised.
Please don’t bother senior management.
Regards,
‘A lot of our crew show some discretion … which we should, [but] some stick very rigidly to policy … not the ideal outcome for the customer.’
http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/violinist-fights-jetstar-over-broken-instrument-20100907-14zob.html?rand=1283903195216