VoucherGate.

Posted by Doctor Sinister on February 19th, 2009 filed in Anger, Life, Shopping

The saga of the meaningless Dell vouchers continues apace.  Here is a transcript of my correspondence with the Voucher website – readers may be particularly interested to read my latest response at the bottom of this posting.

Dr. S.

* * *

You are offering two codes from Dell for 20% off of a monitor – however Dell inform me that these vouchers are not offered by them but by a third party and they cannot honour them.

Explanation please?

* * *

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for getting in touch.

I’ve checked out the codes to which you refer and I’m afraid to say that, as far as I can see, they come from a legitimate source (the Dell affiliate newsletter) and are entirely valid. I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience with them but can only suggest you try again.

All the best,

VoucherCodes.co.uk Help

* * *

Hmmm, thanks.  I’ll contact Dell again as they deny all knowledge of them.

Regards,

Andrew.

* * *

Incidentally, why have my comments about the vouchers not working been removed from your site?

Regards,

Andrew.

* * *

Hi Andrew,

Your comments were removed as, as far as we can see, they were innaccurate and conveyed a false message to our users.

At VoucherCodes.co.uk we’re committed to maintaining the highest standard of content possible – no easy task given the number of merchants and 3rd parties involved in the issuing and maintaining of codes. If it ever emerges that any of our codes are not working, we remove them from our site immediately. In this instance however that conclusion has not been reached. As such, we see no reason to let stand any comments that could prevent a user from obtaining a discount.

We appreciate your comments and are sure that they were made with only the best intentions of the voucher using public at heart. I hope you’ll understand that our decision to remove them was likewise intended to benfit our users.

Best,

VoucherCodes.co.uk Help

* * *

Dear Sir/Madam,

I find your response confusing and somewhat less than satisfactory.

I dispute that my comments were misleading – in fact you’ll note that I strove to provide updates to the position as time went on.  Furthermore, I note another comment was present last night on another Dell voucher from another party which said essentially the same thing as my own comments –namely that that code didn’t work either.  That comment had not been removed, and yet mine had been.

The purpose of comments is to allow feedback on the vouchers.  Why else do you have an option saying “did this voucher work”?  If you don’t want people informing you (accurately) that the voucher did not work, then why provide the facility to allow people to do so? In fact, why have a comments box at all if you are just going to censor factual comments that don’t appear to be favourable, however factual the experience may be?

My comments were not “innaccurate” (sic) – the code did not work, that is a fact and therefore completely accurate.

You say that you saw no reason to let stand any comments that could prevent a user from obtaining a discount – allow me to reiterate, there is NO discount.  The code does not work.  How therefore can my comments prevent someone from securing something which already does not exist?

Would you like me to continue to argue semantics with you?  I am quite happy to do so – it’s what I do for a living.  Alternatively, perhaps I should be blogging this correspondence on my own personal website where I know it will not be unduly censored?

Regards,

Andrew.

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2 Responses to “VoucherGate.”

  1. Brian King Says:
    February 19th, 2009 at 19:02

    Sounds like you’ve been scammed! The bit about editing your comments is the clincher. Editing comments because THEY felt it was inaccurate is the epitome of censorship. Why not let the users determine if their product was working or not? Answer, because they don’t want to be liable for your problem!

  2. Doctor Sinister Says:
    February 19th, 2009 at 20:35

    Well, I have had another reply:

    * * *

    Dear Andrew,

    We’re not seeking to antagonise anyone, we’re seeking to ensure that our users have access to the discounts that, as far as we can see, are available to them.

    We can’t vouch for your particular experience with the Dell code. We’re sorry it didn’t work for you and, as we’ve tried to explain, it is the nature of the business of colating voucher codes that there are occassional confusions regarding their implimentation. Put simply, the codes don’t always work. Nevertheless, we do our best to ensure that our offer content is as high quailty as possible (this is one of the areas in which, we hope, we provide a superior service to the other voucher sites out there) which is why we followed up your complaint. On this occasion we have found that there was little reason, as far as we can see, for our users generally to think that those codes didn’t work on the basis of your particular experience. It is our experience that a voucher’s failure to work on one occasion, does not necessarily mean that it will not be effective on the next occasion.

    We have only limited resources and are not able to follow up every comment made on our site nor to verify the efficiacy of every code on site. This is a less than ideal situation and we’re looking at ways to improve our reporting on the functionality of codes. However, seeing as our service is free to our users, we’re not under any obligation to display contnent in any particular way. We provide a service that we think best serves our users’ needs and it’s up to these users to decide whether or not they want to use this service.

    We’re sorry that you’ve had a bad experience using our site, but we hope you’ll understand that we have to consider all the information available to us, not just individual feedback, when assessing what will best serve our users’ interests. In this instance we have, so far, gone with the Dell newsletter.

    If you have any further comments or complaints then please do feel free to get back to us with them. Otherwise, I hope you have better luck using VoucherCodes.co.uk in future.

    All the best,

    VoucherCodes.co.uk Help

    * * *

    Dr. S.

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