I had an old satnav (GPS thing) which I kept as a spare and decided one day to update. Went on to TomTom’s website, plugged satnav into laptop and tried to download. Here’s where it gets nasty:
Their website leads you through the update sequence and at one point mentions casually that if your unit doesn’t have enough memory for the update, you will be advised of options on another page. What the thieving scumbags don’t tell you is that this information is only given after you have paid. With some reservations I paid the £40 for the update and then was told that the unit had insufficient memory and I would need to buy a bigger memory card. Not wanting to spend more money on what was just a spare unit I called them to cancel and get a refund.
The guy on the phone was friendly but evasive and said he’d get back to me. Thirty seconds later I get an email from their legal department telling me to read the terms and conditions, specifically the bit about no refunds.
So that’s it. Their website deliberately encourages you to pay up front, regardless of whether it is in your interests to continue then they hide behind the T & C’s in order to keep your money. And it’s done in such a way as to lead you to believe that options (including cancellation) will be available to you further down the line.
So well done Tom Tom. You’ve screwed me out of £40. I hope you are happy about that. As a taxi driver I’ve told hundreds of my passengers what a shower of shit you are and I’m very happy about that.
I hope that whoever set up the website to rip people off and whichever management toady sanctioned it die a horrible death and spend eternity in hell being buggered by silverback gorillas.
I’d call back and talk to a supervisor. The person you dealt with was a lower level Customer Service person and just did the automatic “T&C reply”, which sucks but makes sense from a business standpoint (except for the angry customer part). If you can take it up the ladder, I suspect you’ll have a refund in no time.
Appreciate the suggestions but this was a while back and I’m out of time on it.
I did try disputing it with my CC company but their comment was “you should have read the T&C’s”. Despite claiming that they were misleading to say the least I got nowhere.
Are you on Twitter or Facebook? I understand a lot of companies are starting to get really careful about protecting their images in social networking sites.
If you call back and talk to a supervisor and threaten to dispute the charge they’ll likely cave. Just receiving a dispute (regardless of the outcome) costs a business around $40 in the US. I don’t know the current exchange or how it works wherever you are (UK?) but it’s probably in their best interest to avoid getting your credit card company involved.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they called the bluff. With so many people not buying stand alone GPSes any more since they have smartphones or built in navigational systems, companies like TomTom are probably in danger of going out of business. I wouldn’t be surprised if a stunt like this is a sign of them in their death throes.
Taking a quick glance at the first page of their 2011 Q4 financials (PDF), they don’t seem to be doing well.