That’d be the place where you said to give him a full refund. Since he’s already used the boards for a couple months, giving him a full refund is the same as letting him use the boards for free for that time period.
What he means is, if you refund the 15 small, the “service” he’s received to date is free. Unless you’d like the Board to start not just offering refunds but prorating them at the rate of four cents a day.
That would be fine too. What you have to weigh here: How much is this guy going to be a pain in my ass? What am I willing to part with to just make him go away? If I gave him his $15 back, would he continue harassing me? Likely not. I’m not saying it should be a habit, and with great service, it most certainly wouldn’t be anyway.
Are you kidding me? Do you seriously think the Reader should be contemplating pro rata refunds? I have no more inside info than you, and I feel confident saying that there is nobody on the working end of this endeavor that gives enough of a shit for that to happen. To even dream, much less expect, that such a thing would ever occur is unreasonable bordering on delusional.
It’s 15 measly bucks. Anyone who pays it does so knowing there are some performance issues if they’ve bothered to lurk which, to avoid buying the proverbial pig in a poke, they should have. And anyone who pays it knows they can be tossed out ass-first at any time, because they are told so.
You post, and you refrain from being a jerk. Threatening to sue the establishment constitutes being a jerk. If you’re banned, you lose your money. If you walk away in disgust, you lose your money. Barring a complete long-term Board crash, they are NEVER going to give you back your 15 bucks and anyone who thinks they will, or even thinks they should, is a fool.
Just for a spark of reality: it is onbly $15. The cost of calculating the amount of a refund, authorizing, getting approval, searching to find the form of original payment (PayPal, Visa, Mastercare, etc) and then crediting the pro-rata amoung… well, even if that takes half an hour of someone’s time, it’s more than the $15.
I fail to see the point of all the winging.
Hildo’s treatment is absolutely in line with others whom have made similar threats. It’s precidented. It’s provided for in the terms, conditions, and rules. It’s not a mystery.
I have my beefs with the system and rules, but this isn’t one of them… Just as you can get tossed out of a club for poor behavior, without refund of the cover charge, so was Johnny H tossed from this club for poor behavior, cover charge not refunded.
Shake heads, move on folks.
Do you work in anything involving customer or client-service? Because this is completely at odds with my experience. The clients who get the most worked up over minor details and jump fastest to harassing or insulting people are the ones who are most likely to never go away when you give them what they want. They’re the ones who keep coming back with even bigger demands further and further removed from rational reality. Maybe they can act like adults in normal society, but whenever they get into a relationship in which they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they are entitled to something, they immediately turn into overgrown spoiled children who will never be satisfied. For some reason they never seem to understand that a business agreement involves cooperation by both sides, rather than just “I gave you money so I own you now.” Paying them off in the hopes that they will leave works about as well as giving your lunch money to the school bully “just this once” in the hopes that he’ll never bother you again.
Brief aside: when I reign over the Earth as an evil tyrant, this is exactly the slogan I want on my t-shirt…
Well, honestly, time-outs and pages not loading *are *part of the experience here. I’m not happy that they are, but they are, the same way frequent outages is part of my VoiP line, and insane bus drivers are part of living in Chicago. It’s my choice to pay for the services that, although they could theoretically be better, are good enough for what I’m willing to pay. If **Hildo **(or anyone else) used their guest membership, they’d easily see at least a dozen comments about time-outs in their one month trial, as well as see the Administrator and Moderator responses to such complaints. Caveat Emptor and you get what you pay for after that. This board has what this board has, and that’s what we pay for - the loading speed at 4chan is really irrelevant. Just because it could be better doesn’t mean it has to.
Back when projectors burned hotter and projectionists were skilled workers, it was indeed expected that when you when to went to the theaters, there was a very good chance that the film would break and you’d have to sit around guzzling Pepsi while they fixed the film. If it was up to me, if the film could be fixed in a reasonable amount of time (5-10 minutes, perhaps), then no, you wouldn’t really be justified in a refund.
People are not entitled to a flawless experience, because that’s now how the universe works. They are entitled to have someone sympathetic at least hear their story and make an attempt at an equitable settlement, but McDonald’s isn’t required to change their business model because some asshat demands a medium rare burger made of Kobe beef. They are McDonald’s, not a fine steak house. This is The Straight Dope Message Board, not a real-time surgical uplink.