Blog for Stephanie Bryant, a 30-something writer who travels full-time. And her husband, Johnnyb.
Date: 05/18/2008
Date: 02/17/2008
Date: 08/05/2008
Bah. I hate Internet Explorer. No lock icon, if you can believe it. I placed the order at home on Mozilla, so I need to double-check from there. The site does show a certificate, though, even though there’s no https:// URL.
This is pretty bizarre, but it looks legit. All the other communication problems are far less important than making sure they’re encrypting credit card data over the net.
Okay, everyone must go “ooooh” at my user icon– that’s the graduation picture I took on Sunday. Notice how red my face is? Yeah– it’s not usually so ruddy, but I was a little excited, had just thrown a bunch of makeup onto my face to get it “pretty” and the first shot was a better one of my face, but I rsembled a pregnant cow in the photograph (and since I’m neither a bovine nor pregnant, I was a little embarassed and wanted to re-do the shot). I still look large in the picture, but that’s me– I am large. Big. Fat, if you will. I am a big, fat, beautiful, intelligent woman. Yeah. More on working on the “fat” part tomorrow.
I got a call from the company today, basically telling me that they understood my frustration and that there was no need to apologize. They also apologized again for the communication issues and for the perceived insecurity of the site. They assured me that the site was actually secure, but that they had decided not to display the security icon for design reasons.
Ummm….. this is not, to my knowledge, something you can disable, and there would be no real reason to do so, since it’s part of the browser interface, not the website interface.
So I tried to go to their site and verify (by getting to the final ordering page but not actually clicking the button this time) that the store is insecure. Because, hey, I’m tired enough sometimes to mis-read a lock icon (or a red light), and to reverse its meaning in my mind. The site claims that you need to have cookies enabled (I do) to use the store. I tried enabling cookies– all cookies– and still couldn’t use it. This is in IE 6 on Windows NT, so I’m pretty sure it’s not my browser. Perhaps they are working on the site, or maybe I need to monkey about with the settings a bit more or try it on another computer or something. Aside from double-checking their security, I fell all right about the company now.
Oh, and I should point out: I totally endorse their journals. If you find one and you have someone you could share it with, you should definitely do so. The only thing missing is a pre-printed space for the journalers to write their addresses in on the cover– that could save a journal from being permanently lost the way my sister’s and mine was.
So, I got email from Circle Journey asking for a number they can call me at today, apologizing and saying they can’t find a previous email (this is in response to the first email I sent). [I won't paste their message to me-- that's inappropriate.]
I emailed back with this:
Hi, Jen.
Actually, I followed-up apologizing because I don’t have a copy of the
previous email, which probably means I didn’t actually send one. I remembered
the words of it, though, which would be unusual for an email I didn’t send–
last night, I realized that I had actually called the number listed on the
credit card records and left a message last week. That was the communication
that did not receive a reply.
I will be at work today if you want to call me about it: 408-435-9600 ext.
189. Again, I apologize for flying off the handle without verifying my own
communication history.
–Stephanie
I don’t know what will happen at this point. Honestly, the only thing to make it “okay” is to enable encryption on their site so this doesn’t happen again. I want to keep the stuff I bought, and I don’t want them to give me any refund for my troubles– this is not a big company. One of the reasons I buy from them is that they’re really small. They can’t be operating at a huge profit margin at this point.
So…. any suggestions as to how to happily resolve this would be nice. Do I just let it go? Do I offer some means for “closure”? Their site is still insecure– if I drop it, it will continue to be so.
Your thoughts, please.
Do you ever wish a particularly snarky user would come back and say “Okay– I’m sorry I snarked at you. I was mistaken.” ?
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Circle Journeys to buy some “extras” to go with the circle journals I share with my sister, my best friend, and, as of this weekend, my grandmother. Mostly, just envelopes and extra stickers. The journals themselves are actually available in local stationary stores, but the “extras” are only available online.
Right after I clicked the final “Confirm order” button, I looked down and realized that the little lock icon was open– meaning my credit card information was speeding along the Information Superhighway, about as secure as writing it in bold letters on a really big post card.
Since I like to put my credit card into at least an unsealed envelope before shooting it across the world, I quickly slammed on the ESC key, cancelling my order.
Or so I thought.
A few days later, I found a charge on my credit card (which is actually my checking/allowance account, thanks to debit ATM cards), and proceeded to get, well, ornery. See, I hadn’t received any sort of confirmation email to let me know that the order had gone through. From what I could tell, it hadn’t. Until the charge showed up.
So, I fired off an email to them. Or perhaps I called the number on the credit card statement. Oh, hell. This story gets worse and worse for them.
Okay, I did call them. On the phone. And asked for them to call or email me about the order, which I didn’t want, and hadn’t confirmed.
And then I promptly forgot, because, you know, life and all that shit.
Today, a box arrived with my order. I emailed them this snarky email about the box:
I emailed you about a week ago regarding an order that I had tried to
cancel while it was sending the information to your insecure online
store server. Since I never received confirmation that the order had
gone through, I was a bit startled when the charge appeared on my credit
card account. I emailed you to find out what had happened.
And then I heard nothing from you.
Until today. When a box arrived. From Circle Journeys. And, no, there
was no notice when the order shipped.
This is not acceptable. A lack of any confirmation and or response to a
support request indicates, to me, that an error has been made. Despite
hitting the cancel button during the transmission, I do not feel the
error was really on my part; I was doing what I could to protect myself
online when I realized your online store does not use any encryption to
secure credit card information. It troubles me greatly that an insecure
transaction like this has gone through, been brought to your attention
by my previous email, and has been ignored. What bothers me most is the
lack of customer service I’m experiencing.
I will expect a response soon. Preferably within the next 24 hours.
–Stephanie Cottrell Bryant
Since I just remembered now that it was actually a phone call that I made, I went through my old emails and looked for the outgoing message. When I didn’t find it, here’s what I just emailed them with:
Wow.
Well, I have to apologise. I just went through my past emails, and did not
find any record of having emailed you about this problem previously. I
distinctly remember writing about it, but I can’t find it anywhere, which
means either I wrote and didn’t send it, or I thought of what I would say and
how I would say it, and didn’t actually type it out (though that would be
unusual, even for me).
Anyway, the lack of receiving any confirmation of my order still troubles me,
but I realize now that I must have made an error with regards to your
customer support. Either that, or the outgoing mail is on one of the 2 other
computers I use on a regular basis. If so, I still apologize for not
verifying before I flew off the handle at you.
Incidentally, I’ve bought 3 Circle Journals in the past. One is lost in the
mail (probably forever), the other is destined for Boston, where it will
begin its life as a birthday present for my grandmother’s 90th birthday, and
the third is sitting in a pile of papers on my best friend’s desk or floor in
Minnesota– and if I ever see it again, it’ll be a miracle (she’s not the
most organized in the world). So, um, yeah. Normally I’m a very happy
customer, and adore Circle Journeys and actually am considering another one
for an online group I’m in, which is probably why the perceived lack of
service was so…. shocking.
Mea culpa,
–Stephanie Bryant
Yeah. So, I don’t know what to do at this point. I feel like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if I keep this crap up.
I don’t use my mood icons very often. But, if someone wants to make a set for me with some sort of CHOCOLATE THEME, I would probably use them quite regularly.
Information on making mood icons is available here. You make the set, contact me, and I’ll post them. If they’re really good, I might even be able to negotiate something nice for you, like an invite code or something special (custom style for a paid user? override to do something spiffy for a free user?)
Thank you. That is all.