RutSum

Chat With Live Customer Support At One.com

I’ve recently noticed that a lot of ads from one.com, a popular webhost, are appearing on RutSum. The ads said that they promised a 1 year free account along with the domain. Now when you read on a page by, lets say, Google, that it provides a free service, you know for sure that you won’t have to yield a single penny from your pocket, neither would you have to provide them with your credit card number.

But one.com chose to fool their customers by using fine print, using a small asterisk and putting this text, below, in a font about 60% smaller than the rest of the font on the page.

* Setup fee USD 13.80. All prices are without VAT. 1 year free domain + hosting offer is only valid for companies and individuals in India.

Now this was very very disappointing, and to clear things out I clicked a button that said “Click here for live help”. A customer support executive called Arjun popped up.

Arjun: Thank you for using One.com 24/7 Interactive Online Support. How may I assist you?
you: Your homepage lists that you would provide a domain and hosting for free, for 1 year.
Arjun: Hi
Arjun: Yes we do
Arjun: for the 1GB package
you: But there is a “setup fee” of USD 13.80
Arjun: Yes that is only the setup fee being charged, the domain and hosting is entirely free of cost
you: How is it free if you are charging me 13.8 dollars?
you: I do not know what this money is for
Arjun: This is charged because we need to setup your webspace, assign your IP address, register your domain, etc
you: Of course!
you: I know that takes money
you: I can go and buy it elsewhere
you: But how is it free if you are charging me for it?
Arjun: fine
Arjun: the domain and hosting is entirely free of cost
you: That is absurd
Arjun: Is there anything else I could assist you with?
you: You can use the word “free” only if the person can avail an entire service, in whole, without weilding a penny from his pcket
you: pocket*
Arjun: alright
Arjun: Is there anything else I could assist you with?
you: Yes. I would like you to forward a request to a senior at your company, to please remove the word “free” from your advertisements, as it is misleading, and instead, put a banner that says, “1 GB free hosting with domain for one year in $13.80 flat”. That would indeed get you more customers.
Arjun: Thank you for chatting. Good-bye.

I thought that companies cared about customers. I hope that with this post, you lose at least 10 of your potential Indian customers. With this, I am also banning you from advertising on my blog. I don’t care if I lose revenue from you. I do not believe in misleading people who visit my blog. I provide information, clear and open.

UPDATE : After I published this post, I went back to one.com and asked another live support executive to read this post and forward the matter to a senior at his company. When he opened the link, my amung.us logged the visit and the map over there told me that this executive was located in UAE (United Arab Emirates).

About an hour later, I get a comment from a guy called Akki, who says this -

Anyway, when u find out its not free just leave the damn company dont bargain !

This comment came from the IP address 80.227.44.122, a quick look up on which reveals that this IP too, belongs to Dubai, UAE. Of course it isn’t a coincidence.

That’s right. He called his own company damned.

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