Ben Skelton's Blog

iTunes Customer Service

The iTunes Music Store has the best online customer service I have seen in a long time. A couple of days ago I purchased a DJ compilation and it didn’t seem to want to play. I tried purchasing it again to see if the second download would work, no dice. I filled out the online form and within a day I had the following email in my inbox:

Dear Ben,

I hope this email finds you well. Your issue has been escalated to me and I will be happy to help you from now on until I am sure everything is resolved.

I'm sorry to hear that "Kitsuné BoomBox (Mixed By Jerry Bouthier) - Single" doesn't seem to sound correct. I have posted the missing item to your account. Please follow these steps to download the item:

From the pull-down Store menu at the top, select Check for Purchases (if you're unable to upgrade and are using iTunes 6 or earlier, you'll find this option in the Advanced menu). If you can't find this option, you can also click this link to Check for Purchases:
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/checkForPurchases

Enter your account name and password, then click the Check button.

The missing item should begin downloading and appear in your Purchased playlist. If you receive an error message while downloading, try again after turning off any firewall or web-accelerator software that you may have installed. If the download process is interrupted for any reason, it should resume once you reopen iTunes.

Please let me know if your third download has the same problems. I will be happy to refund you for your duplicate purchase as soon as the transaction clears. I would, however, like to know if the third download works for you before I refund you for the duplicate purchase. I may need to refund you for both purchases if the content is still not up to par.

I appreciate your patience Ben and truly wish you nothing but the very best. If you have further questions concerning this issue please reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.

Fascinating... Not only was the email actually helpful, but it was also written in a way that didn’t make me feel like the customer service representative was selecting a canned response from a list. The third download worked great and I emailed the representative back to let her know that it worked. Within a day I had the following email in my inbox:

I'm pleased to hear that "Kitsuné BoomBox" downloaded properly.  I hope you enjoy your purchase.

I have also reversed the charge for the duplicate purchase. You will see a credit of $5.99, plus any applicable taxes, in three to five business days. If store credit was used for this purchase, you should see the credit after you sign out of the iTunes Store and sign back in.

In the unlikely event that you receive a download error in the future, please remember that it is not necessary to repurchase items when downloads are interrupted, because the items should still be in your account, waiting to be downloaded. To learn more, follow the steps in this article:

How to resume interrupted iTunes Store downloads
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93015

I hope you continue to enjoy using the iTunes Store.

This level of customer service is really impressive, especially when compared to organizations like CIBC and Air Canada. I have sent CIBC a number of emails within their online banking system and generally I receive crappy responses that do not have anything to do with the issue I contacted them about in the first place. Air Canada often tends to solve that problem by not responding to your email.

On a related note the album I downloaded from iTunes wasn’t very good… It would be great if iTunes allowed you to preview more of a song, especially for long club mixes or DJ compilations… Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all!

Grrrr... iTunes Canada

I love my iPod and I love iTunes but I can't stand the Canadian iTunes music store. The selection and special features are brutal. I am extremely happy that I have a sister who lives in the U.S. and sends me gift certificates for a store that actually has some product.

Today I got an email from the U.S. music store for their single of the week:

"Canadian alt-country singer Kathleen Edwards shines on her sophomore album, Back to Me. The title track is this week's free Single of the Week".

When I click on the link I get the following error:

"The item you've requested is not currently available in the Canadian store, but it is available in the US store. Click Change Store to view this item."

Harsh - the singer is Canadian and her single is not even available on the Canadian store. Good thing I can't stand country music :)