I will admit that I am a bargain hunter and will ask for freebies every chance I get. Yesterday, I noticed that LinkedIn had a special for $60/year on presumeably their Business Account. It was noted at the bottom of the page that shows who’s viewed your profile. I clicked through to the subscription page but there was no $60/year special offer. So I emailed LinkedIn’s customer service.
I was very politely told that this was a typo and that their IT department would be removing it immediately (btw – it’s still there). So, me being the cheapskate that I am, asked if they would still honor the pricing since it WAS listed on the site and I quickly brought it to their attention. I was even more politely told no. They did offer me a free month trial that I would inevitably have to call to cancel after a month because there was no way I was paying $200 for a year’s worth of LinkedIn. I can hear the conversation now -
BB: “I’d like to cancel my LinkedIn business account.”
LI: “But you’ll miss out on all of the huge business benefits that our paid service offers.”
BB: “No thanks, I want to cancel my account.”
LI: “What if we give you an extra month at the end of the year?”
BB: “Seriously, I want to cancel my account.”
You get the idea. What happened to the days when being a good online citizen was rewarded or when business’s honored their mistakes in order to keep their customers happy? Apparently those days are long gone and I’m personally going to use this experience as a reason to be more accommodating to my own clients (and to check my own work for typos).
