Watch out for Interpage paging: "You won't win."

Posted Oct 01, 2009 in consumer watch

Once in a while I can’t help but comment here on a company or organization that has so clearly committed themselves to creating the worst possible customer service experience for their customers.  Interpage paging, which offers network paging services, faxing, voice and e-mail gateways, etc., is just one such company.  If you’re considering using them, you’ll definitely want to make sure you ask lots of questions about what happens if you’re not satisfied.  Here’s our story:

Summersault contacted them earlier this year about their network paging services as a part of our hosting infrastructure, and we certainly thought we’d found a service that was technically well done and reasonably priced.  After we signed up for the $50/month service and started using their system “for real,” we found that it lacked several key features that we needed (including some common sense security precautions), and that their user interface left much to be desired.  To be fair, they did offer us a free demo that we tried out a bit, but the way we were integrating their service with our systems meant that these issues didn’t come out in full until we actually started on the integration.

When we asked them if they could address some of our concerns, they basically said that we would have to pay for any work they might do to change their system.  This wasn’t surprising in and of itself, although some service providers are kind enough to say “hey, that’s a good feature idea, maybe we’ll add that in a future release.”  Not Interpage.

When we finally decided that the system was not going to meet our needs because of those concerns, we contacted Interpage to cancel our service, less than 2 months after we’d signed up.  You would think we’d announced that we were going to burn down their office building.  We got terse replies and no attempt to see if there was a way to keep us happy, just instructions on what paperwork we needed to send over. Okay, fine.

Until they kept billing us.  When I called to note what I assumed were erroneous charges, they said that they needed to bill us for the full length service period after the cancellation date (and they used the date we submitted the paperwork, instead of the date we first contacted them saying we didn’t need their service any more).  I explained how frustrating that was given that we’d never actually had any significant use of their system, but allowed them to bill our credit card for what they said was a final charge, just so we could be done with it.

And then another charge came in for the following month.  And then another charge for the month after that.  Two full months after we’d requested that they cancel our service, they were still billing us.  When I contacted them, they came up with some rationalization that their terms of service allowed for it, even though they’d told me that they were done billing us.

When I explained to Interpage that this seemed quite unethical and certainly not very customer-service-oriented, there was no backing down.  When I said that we might consider disputing the charges with our credit card provider, he literally said “You won’t win.”  The guy was challenging us to a fight.

We did dispute the charge, and during that process, Interpage started charging us fees and interest for the provisional credit that the credit card provider had given us – my understanding is that this runs up against the whole point of having a dispute process with your credit card.  Interpage was then somehow able to convince the credit card provider that we’d agreed to be charged well after our service had ended (I’m still trying to figure that out), and so the provisional credit was reversed.

So, Interpage got what they wanted, they were able to bill all of the fees that they thought they deserved according to their fine print, case closed, right?

Nope, they’ve now turned the $36 in penalties over to a collections agency.

I’ll spare you the remaining details, but it’s absolutely amazing to me that an business could have the gall to be so mediocre in its services provided, so insensitive in its relationship with a customer, and then so brazen in its thirst to “win” any kind of financial dispute.  Is this really the kind of company you want to do business with?

Some customer service lessons:

1. Just because you have fine print that says you’re allowed to take your customers to the proverbial cleaners doesn’t mean that you can treat them like dirt at the first sign of conflict.
2. You should at least pretend to care about making your customers happy for a few minutes before throwing down the gauntlet for a legal fight.
3. If a customer gives you feedback on ways your service can be improved, consider listening to that feedback for a few minutes before ignoring it.

Interpage Network Services, Inc. must have all of the income and customers that it ever wants, and it must not worry too much about what those customers think of it, because it certainly failed on all of the above counts in our experience.

If you’re considering doing business with Interpage for paging, fax, or other services, you’ll want to check and double-check that you aren’t setting yourself up for a billing nightmare.

Have something to say about that? Read and add comments below.

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