TescoDigital – Update on Rebuilding Trust

Last week was all about TescoDigital’s inability to deliver, inability to resolve and inability to retain.  The full story is over here.

But as an update on Sunday 15th I received an email from Malcolm Gwynne, another “Customer Service Manager” (just how many do they have) over at TescoDigital apologising for the problems and  offering up £3.97 in eWallet credit – kinda like prepay for digital music on TescoDigital’s site.

I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you and that there was a fault with the Lily Allen album.

This has now been fixed and I do apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I have now added £3.97 to your eWallet so that you can try again.

Please go back to TescoDigital and follow the instruction on how to use the eWallet.

Grateful as I am for the credit has this helped TescoDigital rebuild my trust in them; not one iota I’m afraid.  The reason is two fold;

Firstly, the very attraction of online digital music transactions is the immediacy of them, I see something, I click buy and a couple of minutes later I’m listening to to those newly paid for tracks on my computer.

Malcolm’s response took over 72 hours from my last email – that’s too long, especially when until that point the emails had flowed freely almost conversationally.

And I guess there in lies a problem with digital communication for customer service.  The expectation of timeliness inherent with the medium.

If I post a letter to someone a week for a response doesn’t seem unreasonable, an email say 24 hours, an instant message – well instantly of course.

So for a purchase to take 4 to 5 days is just not a viable model for me.

Secondly, and I’ve touched on this already.  If you’re going to tell the customer it’s fixed then make sure the bloody thing is fixed.  £3.97 added to my eWallet – I think not!