Communion Of Dreams

…we’ve had a pretty good relationship, but something has come up that we need to not talk about.

Yeah, with a heavy emphasis on the NOT.

A week or so ago I got your nice reminder that I needed to update my credit card info, since I hadn’t done so recently and would have some automatic billing charges at the end of November. That was considerate of you. No, really, it was very thoughtful. I appreciate a short note about such things.

And I took care of it.

But then one of your helpful assistants called me.

Now, I was busy, and so a little more curt than courteous. I’ll admit to that. But I wasn’t rude, just told the person not to call me, and that I had taken care of the update.

That was Thursday or Friday, I think. Yeah, I know, it’s thoughtless of me to not remember such details. I’ll work on that.

But then someone else from GoDaddy called me on Monday. Nah, it wasn’t too early. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they again wanted to “help” me with the upcoming automatic renewal. ‘To see if we can save you some money!’ he said, in his most upbeat sales-person voice.

Again, I said that I would take care of it myself. And specifically I asked him to NOT CALL ME.

See, I don’t like talking on the phone. Not unless I know the person well.

Sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come across quite so harsh. Yeah, I know we’ve known each other for a long time, and I’ve been pretty happy with the relationship. But I really *don’t* like calls. It’s a quirk of mine. No, seriously, this isn’t about you.

Well, maybe it is a little.

Anyway, sorry. But I thought that would settle the matter.

Then this morning, while I was in the shower, someone from your place called me again. Now, I’m not sayin’ it was you. But it *was* your number. I’ve got it right there in my phone.

And, honestly, that kinda ticked me off.

Now, just to make sure I went the extra mile, so to speak, I just jumped through the hassle of getting into my account and finding the “Contact Preferences” page buried in the site. I gotta say, you might think about making it a little easier to find such things. But yeah, I did find it, and made the necessary change on the question: “May we contact you via phone with support for recent purchases, renewal reminders, or product information?”

So yeah, some of this is on me. I admit that. Though I’ll be honest and say that I don’t think I ever saw that page in the account settings before. Still, it was there, and the default setting was still set to “yes”.

But seriously, I twice asked your helpful assistants to not call me. I thought that was pretty clear. I mean, I didn’t want to scream or curse at them or anything. You know that’s not really my style.

But c’mon, it’s such a little thing. I’m not asking you to change, just to consider my preferences in this relationship.

Cause, you know, there *are* other hosting services out there …

Jim Downey

Edited to add: I tweeted this post, got a quick response from @GoDaddy with an apology and confirmation that the account settings were changed. Good on them — that’s decent & courteous customer service.