Oh dear. I feel a mix of awkward and angry. If Keira wasn’t at school, she’d probably suggest I’m feeling a combination of both words, angward. Why? Well I’ve just tried (and eventually succeeded) in cancelling a subscription to Virgin Whine.
Last month I tried one of these voucher offers. I got £40 off a mixed case so it only cost me £47, just under £4 a bottle (a little over £7 without the offer). Sounded good. Oh, and there were no strings attached. There would be the small matter of a case every quarter being picked and delivered to me, but I can either send it back if I don’t want it, or cancel the order. I think they call this inertia marketing?
I placed the order. It wasn’t easy, the system got a bit confused by the voucher code, and in the end I had to phone my order through. Not great, but not bad. I’m getting £40 off so maybe I should expect a little glitch or two. The delivery was fast, I appreciated that.
I tried the wine. It’s….not bad. Not bad at £4, but for £7, I’m thinking maybe I can do better down my local shops?
Then I started to get bombarded with emails inviting me to buy more and more wine. They did say something about drinking responsibly but come on folks, you’ve only just dropped off 12 bottles, steady on. I logged back onto Virgin Whine to turn off the torrent but it wasn’t clear how to do this and if I did, would that mean cutting off all correspondence?
The whole thing was just registering a bit too high on the inconvenience scale so I decided to cancel my account. Guess what? You can’t do that online. So I called the contact centre and asked them to cancel. As soon as I said the magic word ‘cancel’, the tone changed. What had started as warmly as a room temperature red quickly became a very chilled white.
“OK then we’ll come and collect the case of wine.” Said Virgin Whine. “Why’s that then?” says I. “Well you’ve used the voucher, you haven’t given us a chance so we’ll take the wine back.” What ensued was a confused awkward conversation. I said something about “Wot, no strings attached?” Virgin Whine didn’t like that and though they agreed the offer was no strings attached, they kept saying “You’ve not given us a chance so we’ll come and take the wine back.”
I paused before explaining that my decision was in part taken because the wine just wasn’t all that. Yes, I’ve tasted the product. I began to fear that Virgin Whine might turn up with a stomach pump. I’ve still got five bottles left, will that save me from this fate? With that the conversation ended. I was told my account was cancelled, call over.
And now I’m left feeling…angward. Awkward because I feel I may have inadvertently taken advantage of Virgin Whine. And a little angry too. Angry because of the way the call went and angry with myself for attempting to be reasonable in the face of what felt like a pretty unreasonable way of playing “no strings attached”. I need a drink.
Photo c/o WTL Photos