Velocity Shop and NOT earn - waiting for 7 months
I thought I might describe my not so great experience in dealing with Velocity Shop and Earn support team that had driven me to a point of madness...
I have just sent a complaint via their feedback form on the website as I honestly thing they need to do something about their call centre and the level of customer service they provide.
Here's what I wrote:
"Dear Sir or Madam,
Having had 6248 points earned for a purchase on 08/09/2010 through Apple Store and not seeing them as posted on my account (they were showing as pending for 7 months), I contacted Velocity Rewards call centre on 19/04/2011 to enquire as to why they were still showing as pending.
I was told there was some concern as to whether my purchase actually had taken place and was asked to email a proof of purchase to the customer service agent. I duly obliged and sent a copy of my Apple Store receipt and shipping notice the same day by email.
Having heard nothing by 02/05/2011, I gave your call centre another call to only hear that my email had been lost. I re-sent it straight away and was then told it would take 10 days to sort it all out.
Today I got a phone call from your call centre saying something to the point "the date on your receipt is not the same as the date of purchase on your account so you are not getting the points". The girl ringing hardly spoke any English and I could not understand what she was saying so I asked her to get someone who speaks English to give me a call later. After another hour or so I got a voicemail message to call back - I did and spoke to a guy who said that indeed the dates were different. After talking to him for a while, I realised that your wonderful customer service team members were referring to another, prior purchase of an iPad that I had on 21/08/2010 and got points for. They did not even realise that I had been asking for points for another, later transaction that I had sent the receipt for!!!! How is that possible??? Can they read? It is all very simple - pending points showing for the 08/09/2010 transaction, the copy of the receipt shows the date of 08/09/2010 - what else does a person who can read needs?? In the mean time, the points now show as cancelled.
After realising what happened the customer service guy said that this was going to take some more time to sort out and he wanted me to re-send the email with the receipt copy again. At this stage I had run out of patience as we were back to stage 1 of the whole affair and asked to talk to a supervisor. It took another 5 mins to speak to Suresh who said he was the only supervisor available and could not do very much other than look at the email (that I had then resent once again to him - the 4th time) and tell me to wait one more day. It is all too long and frustrating! Please help!"
By the time I sent the above I had actually cooled down a bit otherwise it would've been much angrier...can you imagine this - you wait for 7 months, then give them a call, follow the instructions only to hear that things get lost, things need time and finally hear that I was not getting any points because they were not intelligent enough to make a distinction between an iPad (purchased on 21/08, points all received) and 2 iPhones (purchased on 08/09, points not received, proof of purchased sent, shows the same date on it, shows the goods were shipped etc).
All this looks to me like horrible incompetence and bureaucracy...dealing with overseas call centres has never been easy but to come across such idiocy as to mixing up two different transactions that had in common only one thing - Apple Store - and cancelling the points even before speaking to me, this is my first
needless to say I will think twice before buying anything through Shop and Earn in the future
- has been that those drones they've got answering phone calls are very poorly trained and can't make any decisions on their own. As soon as the problem is escalated to someone in Australia it normally gets resolved very quickly. I suppose you get great cost savings in paying not very much to staff in India or wherever Velocity call centre is but damage you do to your customers having to go through all the things described above far outweighs the cost savings
