Large, slow-moving and bureaucratic companies are an easy target for critics, but so what, it’s often fun and illuminating to pick on easy targets. Particularly when they descend to the pettiest behavior for the sake of cents today that will cost them dollars in customer loyalty tomorrow.
I returned a DVD to my local Rogers Video store yesterday evening (yes, yes, who rents DVDs in the real world any more?), and was confronted with a $36 bill for late charges. These charges were confusing on two counts: first, some were for a movie I hadn’t actually rented; second, and most perplexing, Rogers, like many other chains, prominently advertises that it no longer has late charges. Now the first count was cleared up easily enough, but the second strikes right at the heart at that easy target stuff I was talking about earlier.
You see, had I only read the smallprint (presumably crammed into the margins of the posters and banners?), I would have known that only some movies are exempt from late charges. Oh, and for all movies it’s possible to buy extra time for your rental, even for the ones that don’t have late charges. That’s right, insurance against late charges that don’t exist any more. The clerk explained that the fee was really a way of stopping the automated reminder phone calls that occur if you don’t return your movies on time. Even though you can (in some cases, sort of) keep them as long as you like. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Something I really like about the innovations and companies eating away at legacy markets is that there’s no choice but to build brands around what makes sense for the customer. Good customer service, policies that make sense, and, simply, common sense, are par for the course, while the incumbents struggle to leave behind the bad habits that once kept them rich.
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