*AmongMany

Well, there’s another company going down in the annals of “making the customer’s life difficult”. I’ve been a fan of Valentine One for years. Their technology is above and beyond most other radar detector manufacturers (let’s not get into a moral discussion on the issue here). Granted, at $400 a pop, you pay for the privilege.

Two days ago, I placed an order for a new Direct Wire Power Kit (about 1/2 way down the page) to replace the one that came with my unit. I had installed that one in a previous vehicle and, at $13 for the kit, it’s easier to simply leave it in place and buy a new one than it is to remove all the necessary panels to retrieve the kit. The online purchase experience was satisfactory, though the lack of any confirmation email was a little annoying.

I didn’t think any more of it until the call I just received from their customer service department. They needed a “little more information” in order to process my order, which was odd since their purchase form didn’t ask for any information that I opted not to give them. The woman wanted the serial number from my Valentine. I asked why she needed it and tried to explain that I didn’t have the unit handy to retrieve the number, to which she replied that it was for fraud protection for the customer in case the Valentine were stolen.

Now, I understand that radar detectors are an oft-stolen item and I respect their interest in trying to protect the consumer. But the fact of the matter is that once the thing is stolen, that person can buy whatever they want to go with the unit. They’ll HAVE the serial number right there in front of them in order to verify it. So, in reality, their “fraud protection” program has done absolutely nothing for me, the customer, other than make my legitimate purchase more difficult.

Granted, the woman on the other end of the phone was very insistant that I couldn’t possibly place an order without giving her the serial number, and that this was in my best interest. No matter how much I tried to explain that my Valentine was not easily accessible and that I had purposely created this situation to make my life easier when I went to install it, she wouldn’t budge (and became increasingly rude to boot).

This is incredibly frustrating! Companies, I implore you. If you’re going to put policies in place that benefit your customer, make sure they actually benefit your customer. I run into this type of issue all the time, and frankly it’s getting old. If you’d take ten minutes to think through your policies and approach them from the customer’s point of view, you’d save both you and I a lot of headache. What you fail to realize is that this is just as much a part of the “user experience” of your brand as visiting your website or calling you directly.

Valentine, you wouldn’t have to call to ask for more information that you could have just as easily asked for when I placed the order, and I wouldn’t have to get angry at your utter incompetence in understanding my situation. And as for your “privacy policy”? Well, you screwed that one up: