Customer Service

[hhfarang]

hhf,
Sorry a bit late to this thread as I was away when it started. Have you considered the possibilities as follows;
(i)Your emails never arrived;
(ii) Your emails arrived but their replies didn't;
(iii) Your emails arrived and their replies went into your email providers junk folder;
(iv) Your emails arrived and their replies went into your own junk folder (if you use a mail program);
(vi) A combination of any two of the above.

WL,

Maybe "emailed" the wrong term to use...

I "emailed" them from a customer service link "Contact Us" (messaging system) provided on their own web site and I do check my junk mail folders (and delete the real junk mail) daily in my own personal email accounts...

so..

as it was Thailand to Thailand (in fact Takiab to Takiab mail I know it could go around the world first to servers in many countries) I doubt it was blocked. To my knowledge I've never had that happen and I email a lot of people and companies around the world. I'm sure I would have heard from someone by some other means after five years if they weren't getting my emails.

Since it was written on their own web site in their own messaging system I can only ass-u-me that either their web designer failed them miserably (if they didn't get the message) or no one there is or was (this was some time ago, maybe a temporary problem) paying attention to the messages they receive.

But yes, I will write a company off if I use their own customer service contact system and it doesn't work. Sorry, but I don't waste my time chasing after someone to give them my money.

[Wanderlust]

hhf,
Just entertain me for a while longer, but what email company do you use? While I can perfectly see that this company might well have failed to contact you because of bad service, if you do use one of the ones I listed then there is a high likelihood that their reply to you never got through the filters.

[hhfarang]

Sorry Wanderlust,

I have accounts with hotmail, yahoo, gmail, mail.com, lycos, and ethailand and I can't say for certian exactly which one I submitted with my request although an educated guess would be hotmail as I use that account for most business purposes so that the others don't get out on the net to get spammed.

Before you say (write) it, let me remind you that I use this same account for all hotel bookings, flight arrangements, online shopping, and any other business (both in Thailand and abroad) that I have contacted in five years of living here. I don't remember failing to get an answer from any of the other hundreds of companies I have done business with or queried using it.

[Wanderlust]

hhf,
The problem with your comparison is that most bigger businesses will have email accounts/domain names that are US based ones. Very likely this small solar energy business has an email and/or domain name that is on a Thai server, and this WILL be blocked by Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and others. Try again using your gmail and I wouldn't be at all surprised if you get a quick response. As I have already said, the automated HHAD responses when someone signs up get rejected by Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo etc because it is an email originating in Thailand.

[Khundon1975]

WL

I have used Hot mail to contact many companies and friends in Thailand from UK and have never failed to get a response.

Maybe HH is right and the company has just failed to respond to his message, it would not surprise me.

[Big Boy]

WL

I have used Hot mail to contact many companies and friends in Thailand from UK and have never failed to get a response.

Maybe HH is right and the company has just failed to respond to his message, it would not surprise me.

What Wanderlust has said is very true. In the past I've had trouble contacting a couple of organisations in Thailand. I've asked the relevant question on HHAD, and the team at HHAD have acted as middle men enabling me to make contact.

Yes, I like you have made contact successfully numerous times without intervention, but on the couple of times that I haven't, I have been grateful for the assistance.

[Wanderlust]

WL

I have used Hot mail to contact many companies and friends in Thailand from UK and have never failed to get a response.

Maybe HH is right and the company has just failed to respond to his message, it would not surprise me.

Khundon,
The problem only occurs if the person replying to you has an email that is based in Thailand, not if the person/company you are trying to communicate with is in Thailand; very likely all those you have been emailing and getting replies from are also using Hotmail, Yahoo, gmail AOL or one of the other email services, or their own email from their domain name which does not originate from a Thai based server. If you, for example, set up a Hotmail account while in Thailand, you won't have a problem, but if you set up a website that is 'served' by Thai based servers and have an email with that domain name then you will have a problem with Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL etc blocking your emails to people on their systems. It is explained much better (I think) in the thread I linked to on HHAD, and we know it does/is and will happen because it happens with HHAD's outgoing emails, hence the thread warning people not to use those email providers when trying to contact HHAD.

Phew!

[hhfarang]

On another customer service issue, did anyone else notice that UBC/Truevisions came up with a way to make a few extra baht at around the same time they changed their name?

If I am calculating correctly it started in January 2008. I've had the same account with them for five years and we signed up for the account on the 7th of the month when we started back in 2004.

Up until 2008 our bill was always due and payable on or before the 7th of each month corresponding with the date we originally signed up. I keep a spreadsheet of my bills and due dates because the mail is so unreliable here and I don't want anything cut off because they didn't send me a bill... that's how I noticed this. I keep the sheet sorted in date (day of the month the bill is due) order so I can plan my pension payments and ATM withdrawals accordingly. I usually paid UBC early as the bill usually came (or didn't) three weeks ahead of time but sometimes when money was tight that month I would wait until after the 1st of the next month to pay as it was not due until the end of the first week of the month anyway.

Well, this is one of those months, so for the first time in a long time I closely examined the bill (which is in Thai). I couldn't find any date that looked like the 6th or 7th like I was expecting so I gave it to my wife to read and it is due and payable on or before the 27th of this month instead of the 7th of next month... a full 11 days earlier than it used to be!

I had the wife call them and they told her that they are on a 30 day billing cycle so that the payment date moves forward when there is a 31 day month or backward in February.

As I said, for the first 3 years my payment was due on the 7th so this policy changed around the beginning of 2008 (according to my current due date) from monthly billing to 30 day billing. That means your billing date moves forward now at the rate of approximately 6 days per year (7 in a leap year) giving them an extra months payment from every customer (probably millions throughout Southeast Asia) every 5 years.

S.E. Asian companies are getting smarter about stealthy ways to make more money!

[Khundon1975]

WL

I have used Hot mail to contact many companies and friends in Thailand from UK and have never failed to get a response.

Maybe HH is right and the company has just failed to respond to his message, it would not surprise me.

Khundon,
The problem only occurs if the person replying to you has an email that is based in Thailand, not if the person/company you are trying to communicate with is in Thailand; very likely all those you have been emailing and getting replies from are also using Hotmail, Yahoo, gmail AOL or one of the other email services, or their own email from their domain name which does not originate from a Thai based server. If you, for example, set up a Hotmail account while in Thailand, you won't have a problem, but if you set up a website that is 'served' by Thai based servers and have an email with that domain name then you will have a problem with Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL etc blocking your emails to people on their systems. It is explained much better (I think) in the thread I linked to on HHAD, and we know it does/is and will happen because it happens with HHAD's outgoing emails, hence the thread warning people not to use those email providers when trying to contact HHAD.

Phew!

Wanderlust

Thanks for that very detailed explanation.