Has Anyone Had This Problem?

[Petrushka]

A friend kindly gave me a gift subscription to BBC Music Magazine for my birthday - but I already subscribe to it myself! No problem I'll just e-mail the people involved buysubscriptions@service helpline.co.uk and they'll sort it out, I thought. Surely they must get this kind of thing every day.

I duly e-mailed them and have been involved in a protracted saga that makes me feel as if I'm inhabiting some sort of parallel universe. You never get the same person twice and the one you get doesn't seem to read the trail to see what has gone on before. It's just going round and round in circles with different answers every time

Despite giving my own sub number they could find no trace of it so they advised me to wait to see if two copies turned up (not surprisingly, they did). I asked if the gift sub could be inserted into my own sub to extend it but no-one is answering this simple question as to whether they can or cannot do this.

At present both subs have been cancelled (I think). Where is Caliban's head-banging emoticon when you need it?

I really, really don't want my friend to get involved with this ever increasing nightmare and wonder if anyone else has had this problem and how should it be resolved?

[Pulcinella]

Sorry to learn of your hassle.
The staff have always been good when dealing with my queries.
I use Tesco Clubcard vouchers, and was able to take up an extended offer rather than just one year's subscription at a time, so I see no reason why they should not be able simply to extend your current subscription.
But if you can't get that simple message across (and I know from dealings with other Customer Services how difficult and anmoying it can be) then there's not much you can do!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It sounds like dealing with EE after switching phone and broadband to another provider.

A complete nightmare. They carry on sending me bills with ugly threats if I don't pay. Yet two months earlier, they told me I owed them nothing.

Plus the bills conflict depending upon who has sent the letter.

Oh, and one is for a phone number I've never had.

Idiots.

[richardfinegold]

It sounds like dealing with EE after switching phone and broadband to another provider.

A complete nightmare. They carry on sending me bills with ugly threats if I don't pay. Yet two months earlier, they told me I owed them nothing.

Plus the bills conflict depending upon who has sent the letter.

Oh, and one is for a phone number I've never had.

Idiots.

Probably everyone has a story like that. And I've had my share.
I have mentioned several times that I don't do downloads. One reason is the unreliability of my Internet Provider, AT&T.
The reason I don't cancel them is that I am afraid to. I have had to cancel several AT&T accounts when I owned my own Private Practice and each time it was a protracted nightmare that in some cases went on for years. They kept sending bills, everyone we talked to would have a different explanation , we were sent to collections...
I have had several employees as Patients. They are all miserable and hate their jobs, they work unreasonable hours to meet ridiculous targets, and have health problems galore. One person told me that her entire job consists of trying to fix mistakes made by other employees. What kind of a business thinks it is a good idea to hire people to fix their own screw ups instead of putting effort into not committing the original errors?
Petrushka , if you can restore your gift subscription, Can you then cancel your own sub, and use the money saved to pay your own sub when the gift expires?
On the bright side, you aren't missing much. You undoubtedly own recordings of every piece of music issued on their CDs and you probably know more about the music and performers than that superficial rag will display

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What kind of a business thinks it is a good idea to hire people to fix their own screw ups instead of putting effort into not committing the original errors?

Government?

[ahinton]

Government?

!!!

I think that you might indirectly have hit on the road to a solution! Launch a petition on Parliament's website to the effect that what BBC MM's team have been doing has no legal validity and that it must accordingly be overturned!

Oops - wrong thread.

I have every sympathy with this. I've never encountered such problems with BBC MM but am well versed in similar issues with comms and energy firms in particular; this kind of thing is indeed very widespread. I hope that it all gets sorted out OK. Compensation for inconvenience shold be demanded once it has been.

[oddoneout]

At present both subs have been cancelled (I think).

As someone who has been in this situation with another magazine I sympathise. I asked for the duplicate to be cancelled, but ran into problems because it was not me who had set it up and so I had no authority to cancel nor ask for a refund to go to the third party(although it was paid by cheque, not online or DD).In the end I resorted to snail mail to the Customer Services Manager setting out what had happened and what I wanted done, which proved more successful, and the duplicate was used to extend my own subs.
Might also be worth letting the magazine itself know how their subscription service(which they are paying for) is letting them down?

[Dave2002]

Before my father died he got interested in some military history books, and joined a subscription book club. Books kept coming, and were not wanted. At first he was ill and unable to deal with this, and then he died. Try discussing this with some of these organisations.

"You can't change it, you're not the account holder".

"Can I speak to the account holder? We can only deal with the account holder" "No, he's in hospital".

"Can I speak to the account holder? We can only deal with the account holder" "No, he's dead".

It took quite a while to get the books and the requests for payment to stop, and we did return all the unwanted books.

[Barbirollians]

Probably everyone has a story like that. And I've had my share.
I have mentioned several times that I don't do downloads. One reason is the unreliability of my Internet Provider, AT&T.
The reason I don't cancel them is that I am afraid to. I have had to cancel several AT&T accounts when I owned my own Private Practice and each time it was a protracted nightmare that in some cases went on for years. They kept sending bills, everyone we talked to would have a different explanation , we were sent to collections...
I have had several employees as Patients. They are all miserable and hate their jobs, they work unreasonable hours to meet ridiculous targets, and have health problems galore. One person told me that her entire job consists of trying to fix mistakes made by other employees. What kind of a business thinks it is a good idea to hire people to fix their own screw ups instead of putting effort into not committing the original errors?
Petrushka , if you can restore your gift subscription, Can you then cancel your own sub, and use the money saved to pay your own sub when the gift expires?
On the bright side, you aren't missing much. You undoubtedly own recordings of every piece of music issued on their CDs and you probably know more about the music and performers than that superficial rag will display

Generally you are right about their recordings but there are occasional gems normally either archive or new generation artists . The recent Ida Haendel Brahms Britten disc being an obvious example .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Generally you are right about their recordings but there are occasional gems normally either archive or new generation artists . The recent Ida Haendel Brahms Britten disc being an obvious example .

That was extraordinarily good, wasn't it! I bought the CD for 59p from a charity shop - the magazine is such a waste of paper that I've not bought a copy in over two years. Disagree with rfg's low opinion of the general quality of the performances on the cover CDs; there have been very few absolute duds, and it is useful to have supplementary recordings of works in Live recordings of such good quality - and some works I only have because of these CDs (Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Stenhammar, Calisto, Scarlatti, Venetian Baroque, Arne, Britten ... )


In the situation Alpie describes, where a company is making threats of legal action if you don't pay money that you don't owe, the best advice I was given was from my landlady (who is a solicitor) when I was a student and a certain mail order record company claimed they had sent me goods (which I hadn't received) that I had ordered (which I hadn't) and demanded the money for them or else. She told me to write to them, expressing that I didn't think that threats of legal action was a satisfactory way of running a business, but that if they intended to pursue such action, they were welcome to do so, as I was convinced that I would win any such case.

I did precisely this - and the threats stopped arriving. They have to prove your negligence, and if you have proof (especially from them, as in Alpie's case) that this is not so, they're just blowing hot air and hoping you'll be cowed.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In the situation Alpie describes, where a company is making threats of legal action if you don't pay money that you don't owe

Ah! Not quite "the situation Alpie describes" - a Utilities company could cause much more trouble than a mail order sales company