| Friday, December 15, 2006 |
23:50 - Make with the nice-nice
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In my mail just now:
Dear Brian,
Thank you for purchasing the South Park Season 10A and 10B from the iTunes Store. We know that the decision to split South Park Season 10A into two parts created some confusion for our customers.
We strive to create a perfect experience, so please accept this code good for seven $1.99 music videos or TV shows of your choice. Redeem the code below by clicking on the following link.
. . .
We sincerely thank you for being an iTunes customer and we value your continued business.
Sincerely,
Kate Wormington
Sr. Manager, Customer Experience
iTunes Store
It did indeed create confusion. I bought the "season pass" at the beginning of the season, and for seven episodes I got an e-mail when each one was ready for download, a couple of days after it aired on Comedy Central. It was an up-front $10.99 charge (I believe) for episodes that would magically show up in my iTunes as they became available, like podcasts.
But then the season cut short on TV, and so did the iTunes releases. That's when we found out that for reasons still unclear, Trey and Matt decided to do Season 10 in two chunks, their Comedy Central premieres separated by a few months. And when the Season 10B episodes started being released, they appeared on iTunes for à la carte purchasing, without generating season-pass e-mails or popping automatically into our download queues. It made sense, I guess, considering that low low price; and there was a fair amount of grousing in the review pages on the South Park Season 10 download page in iTunes, which (much to Apple's chagrin, I'm sure) also serves as a discussion forum of sorts. People complained that the "season pass" was only for half a season, which they felt was a bait-and-switch; and other people pointed out that they'd paid for seven episodes and got seven episodes, so what's to complain about? It was apparently even mentioned at the outset that it would only be for half the season, but that fact seemed to slip past a lot of people, including me; still, the weird splitting of the season on Comedy Central probably was nobody's idea of business-as-usual, including iTunes'. So when they didn't offer the season pass again for the second batch of episodes, a lot of people—like me—bought those episodes under our own steam.
But apparently that confusion's worth real moh-nay to people, because now they're passing out these coupons worth the price of what the season pass for Season 10B would have been. Seven free episodes of whatever. I'll bank 'em for later, and I'll be sure to use 'em.
Because hey—free stuff is free stuff. As far as I'm concerned, this gesture wasn't necessary. But that's perfectionism and eagerness-to-please for you. Or at least appeasement.
Maybe next I should annex the Sudetenland or something.
UPDATE:
Well, shoot! I knew there was a catch...
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Brian Tiemann
