Sunday, April 15, 2012

Go2Meeting Treated Me Right

I expected to lose some money in cancelling my Go2Meeting account, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn't happen. Since I freely criticize companies when they treat me shabbily, I feel obliged to point out when a company treats me well.
A few months back, I responded to a free 30-day trial of Go2Meeting. It's a very user-friendly facility for doing web conferences, and I had thought that I would be organizing some. However, the projects I was thinking of using it for didn't come through, so I didn't use it after a few experiments.
However, I neglected to close the account. The terms of the 30-day free trial were clear; after the 30 day period, they'd start charging me month-by-month. It is completely my fault that I didn't cancel the thing when I decided I wasn't using it; by way of explanation I'll point out that I've been very very very very busy, but that doesn't excuse my noncancellation.
I noticed a charge by Go2Meeting; it was hard to miss since they sent me an email notification. I decided I'd better get to it and cancel the thing before another month goes by, but a month goes by and I am reminded that I have cancelled nothing because Go2Meeting sends me another notification.
THIS gets my attention; I've recently started ranking "to-dos" in terms of immediate financial impact, and the monthly fee was a nice concrete impact that bubbled the item near the top of my list quickly. I called their customer service to cancel, hoping that if I acted quickly I could get the most recent monthly charge reversed. If they insisted on sticking to the letter of the contract, there's no way I could think of forcing them to reverse the charges, but I figured it didn't hurt to ask. After all, I had not used the product after the free trial period.
I was pleasantly surprised when the customer service rep, after checking my usage and hearing my intention to close the account because I didn't use it, told me that they were reversing all charges. Perhaps this sort of thing happens a lot and they didn't want to hassle with angry forgetful people, or perhaps they just wanted to maintain a good image; either way, it worked. I hope to need a service like Go2Meeting soon, and their ready willingness not to charge me for a service that I had not actually used ... even though the letter of the contract strongly suggested they'd be entitled to hold on to at least some of the money ... has left me with a very good impression of the values of the company. The rep mentioned that the account was being inactivated but if I ever needed their service, I could reactivate it anytime (for the usual monthly fee of course).
To complete the business, I received email notification of the refunds within a day; this is a huge contrast to the days or weeks of delays I have experienced with some other companies not to be named.
Clearly, if and when I need an internet conferencing solution, I will feel confident to go back to Go2Meeting.
Fair's fair ... the above is my unvarnished experience!
Here's their website:
http://www.gotomeeting.com

No comments: