subject: Blair Rewards Complaints Have Been Addressed by New Web Cancellation Service [print this page] Blair Rewards Complaints Have Been Addressed by New Web Cancellation Service
Sometimes even companies that offer a compelling service slip up, and judging from the slew of Blair Rewards complaints received last year, this membership service had a customer relations issue on its hands. While one approach is to ignore the grumbling as being just a small percentage of customers who found one aspect of the service confusing or inconvenient, I think the right approach is confront the issue head on and address it. Blairrewards.com has done this by creating a new web page specifically for customer wishing to cancel their memberships. By doing so, they've simplified the process as well as making it faster and more convenient.
For those who aren't familiar with Blair Rewards, this is a membership site that offers its customers discounts on a wide range of services including groceries, prescriptions, restaurants, hotels, cruises and pretty much anything else you might want to buy. When I was first approached by some of their former customers with Blair Rewards complaints, it turned out that this wasn't a wave of people who were unhappy with the program itself. After all, $14.95 per month seems quite reasonable for the opportunity to take advantage of discounts of 20 percent on gas, 20 percent on dining and up to 50 percent on hotel stays.
The problem turned out to be administrative. With any membership program, there are going to be people who change their minds, and blairrewards.com is no different. Some people simply don't take advantage of the discounts sufficiently to make it worthwhile, or their circumstances change and they don't want to pay the monthly membership fee any longer. Blair Rewards had already structured their program to be a monthly membership instead of annual, making cancellations easier. However, as it turned out the actual cancellation process was too difficult and left some people feeling frustrated. They let the company (and me) know about it. They weren't sure what phone number to call, they'd get annoyed if call volume left them waiting and they couldn't find any information online.
I think that Blair Rewards took the right approach in addressing these concerns rather than ignoring them. Just because the majority of your customers are pleased with the service you provide doesn't mean you should rest on those laurels. By creating a cancellation web page, it's a simple matter of filling in a few fields and submitting a cancellation request. I reviewed it myself and I'm satisfied that the company has done everything possible to address the issue and I suspect that Blair Rewards complaints are a thing of the past.
