Archive for September, 2009

Domain name registrar Dotster sent me an email inviting me to “confirm your email address”, and in return promised to “give you a coupon for 20% off your next purchase as a special thank-you gift”. This sounded good, as I had some domain name renewals coming up.

After checking that the email was really from Dotster and wasn’t phishing spam, I clicked on the link to confirm my email address. I figured that receiving Dotster’s promotional emails for a while would be a small penalty to pay in return for a 20% discount off my next purchase.

Not only did the 20%-off coupon expire in a mere six days, it also had a whole bunch of exclusions. Apparently, Dotster doesn’t think the purchase of domain name renewals should qualify as my “next purchase”. It sure feels like a purchase to me though.

To make it worse, not only was the coupon useless to me but I couldn’t find a way to remove my recently-confirmed email address from Dotster’s marketing subscription list.

The car rental from Tempest Car Hire (South Africa) seemed to be good value, and everything seemed to go straightforwardly. When I returned the vehicle, a staff member checked it and found that everything was OK, and confirmed that the fuel tank was full (as it should have been, because I had filled up just one block away).

I was therefore surprised to receive an email two days later charging me R61.25 for “Refuelling”. That’s about £5. Not a lot, but at least 6 litres, and more than could possibly have been squeezed into the tank.

The email said “This is an auto-generated email – please do not reply”, so I used the form on their website to send this message:

I have just received an invoice from Tempest (invoice number 2572868) which shows a Refuelling Charge of R61.25. The vehicle was completely refuelled by me at the BP garage at Cape Town airport just one block away from where I returned the car.

It’s completely impossible that driving one block used this fuel, and the person checking in the car confirmed that the tank was full while I was there. Please arrange for your accounts department to reverse the Refuelling Charge.

We’ll see what happens.

Update: Within 24 hours I received this message from Tempest’s “Total Quality Department”:

I have logged a query for you; this means someone will investigate into this matter on your behalf and you will be notified of the outcome.

I did wonder whether I would hear anything more, but sure enough two days later I received a credit note with a “refuelling adjustment” reversing out the R61.25 overcharge.

Well done to Tempest’s Total Quality Department for sorting this out correctly, although of course the refuelling charge should never have been imposed in the first place.