If you’re tuning in late and never saw the video, you’ll probably never see the video. I took it down because the story has a happy ending, at least for me.
I received a call from the president of Xoom.com and spoke with him at length. It was the kind of customer hand-holding that I desperately needed in the first place. The kind of customer hand-holding a customer needs when his money vanishes into the ether. The kind of customer hand-holding that the president of a company should not have to provide personally. They pay people to do that stuff.
At any rate, it was a nice conversation and there are several positives from this:
One, Xoom sent me a check for the full amount of the transfer, even though they’ve yet to find out where they sent the original money.
Two, they recognized fundamental flaws in the way the company was presenting itself to new customers.
Three, they realized they had a problem with the Polish banking system that needed to be fixed in a big way. Imagine this scenario: You send money digitally to some clerk at a bank in Warsaw who then prints out a piece of paper, hops on a motorcycle and drives seven hours to the recipient’s branch. Insane? Yes, yes we know.
Four, customer support needs some tough, tough love.
So, kudos to the way Xoom’s president handled it. Assuming they iron out the bugs, I would in fact be willing to try them again because theoretically it’s the best and cheapest way to send money to Poland.
Brian Sack
I started Banterist in 2003 after this conversation with my cat. It led to all sorts of good things.
This is absolutely brilliant. I would be homicidal if this happened to me. Did you send the offending company a link to your video?
[ I thought I’d wait until the view count suggests they have a public relations problem. -B. ]
I think you need to do a similar video for your washing detergent company – It appears to have turned all of your t-shirts the same grey colour. I noticed that over the entire fourteen day period or so, your clothing pantone reference appeared to remain constant.
Great work, as always! And I agree, if you haven’t sent this to the company in question, you should.
Hilarious.
I’m amazed that you used a 3rd party to transfer money though. I don’t even trust Paypal.
Good luck getting your money back.
P-Diddy, why do you put up with this?
[ Diddy sorry he do. -B. ]
The obvious solution to your problem is to stop sending your money into oblivion. Just stick some cash inside one of your books and post it to me. I will hand-deliver it anywhere in Central Europe faster than Xoom.com (so within ~15 days) and will only charge for my time, fuel, tax, coffee, a new GPS and anything else I can think of. When compared to the alternative it’s a good deal and more reliable, too!
PS: For an exceedingly small additional fee BradCoMoneyHandlers sp. z O.O. will change your badly devalued US dollars into hard, reliable Polish Zloty.
I should have made a similar video for HSBC Credit Card Services when I couldn’t log into my online account after I changed my address, and every “Non Logged in Inquiry” I sent generated a canned e-mail response from persons named Santosh, Kiran, Sunitha, Sangeeta, Sridhar…telling me that in order to answer my question I would need to log into my account and resend it. I was forced to make three international calls from Taiwan before they finally fixed the problem.
OMG What country’s small claims court has jurisdiction over this mess?
[ Ours, I guess. If I want to fly to San Francisco and file it. -B. ]
Small Claims Hell?
lets band together and take these suckers down I am also a victim and judging by the complaints on the web many more out there! E-mail me at….. Rferrentino7@aol.com
Good luck exhuming your money from Xoom’s dollar graveyard. On the bright side, maybe they’ll use your $725 to buy a Web 3.0 domain name and thereby lead us into a bright and annoying future.
Do you think that they know that they offended the author of “In the Event of My Untimely Demise?”
I look forward to the addition of this new Chapter in the future 2nd edition of the book.
[ Yes to the question and the book already had a second printing… so you must be talkin’ ’bout next year’s paperback version, Willis. -B. ]
Congratulations. Now you can buy yourself a technicolour t-shirt!
Well done!
How many hits did your vid get before they fixed the problem?
[ 700 or so. But it was the email from CNN to their corporate headquarters that prompted some action. -B. ]
Congratulations on selling your comedic soul. Can we REALLY not find that video nowheres? Or did they waterboard you with money (your own, no doubt) to make you pretend the video doesn’t exist any more.
It was one of your better works…
[ Hmm. I wonder if there’s a way to share without denigrating the company. -B. ]
Sharing is good. It’s one of the things that Fulghum guy learned in kindergarten.
Well, as of May 11, 2009, I have been unable to send money (after 3 attempts) using Xoom.com. It keeps getting “cancelled” without explanation. Customer Support send canned responses which don’t even answer the question – why are the transactions cancelled? Googling for “Xoom.com complaints” shows plenty of people having ongoing problems. I suggest sticking to Western Union, Bank Draft, or electronic funds transfer.