It’s hard to believe that I am still having issues with KQED, but I am!
They started billing my (dormant, which brings plenty of additional issues with it) credit card again!
I fought my way through a horrible voicemail system (‘If these menu options haven’t helped, please call back later’, huh?) to a real person eventually. Though she was helpful and polite, I ended the call still feeling as though it was my fault (Oh yes, I see you cancelled, but your record wasn’t marked to stop charges). Time will tell whether I really am off the KQED hook!
This has been one of the saddest sagas of the blog for me. I love the content and programming – for the most part – of public radio and KQED, but they really have become a corporate entity that is divorced, totally and utterly, from the membership. The corporate beast seems to have become self-serving rather than serving the members. And as such, I need to stick to my principle of ‘vote with your checkbook’, though it really pains me to do so.
It pains me all the more because every attempt to point out why I am unhappy has simply been ignored – in most cases not even an acknowledgement. The only person who engaged in any way was the new media guy who saw one of my earlier blog posts and contacted my via a blog comment. He is the person who got my membership cancelled – but not the payments stopped – after several months of letters to people who are paid to care about such problems, the general manager and the head of membership.
Sad, sad, sad.