Wired shows how to respond to a problem
Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson shows how to handle a PR problem. He doesn’t shuck and jive; he actually acknowledges the problem and takes responsibility.
On Friday, the SF Chronicle’s consumer-rights columnist ran a piece about complaints from Wired subscribers that they were getting threatening letters from a collection agency when they let their subscription lapse.
The reason turned out to be that they were among the small fraction of our subscribers who signed up for an automatically-renewing subscription under the bill-me option, rather than the usual credit card option, and then didn’t send in a $12 check at the end of their billing cycle. They thought, quite reasonably, they were just letting their subscription lapse and were not aware that they had signed up for the auto-renew plan, probably because the details of the subscription plans are not marked as clearly as they could be.
This was really distressing to hear for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that sending letters from a collection agency for $12 is a poor way to treat customers. But the good news is that it has clarified a problem that we can fix, and for that we’re grateful to the Chronicle.
