How much does a web account cost to maintain?
I haven’t logged into PartyGammon to play backgammon for a few months now. I use a Mac and PartyGammon’s software doesn’t run on it. (I asked them about this and they helpfully pointed out I could buy additional software and a Windows licence so that I could. Thanks for that.) Fair enough you might think, Macs haven’t been around for very long… not many people use them… and those who do probably aren’t stupid enough to gamble… or something.
Playing Backgammon
So my backgammon gambling usually takes place on rainy cold lunchtimes at work (where I do have Parallels) where I can fire up Windows and lose my money in a slightly convoluted manner.
PartyGammon seemed like fun, I signed-up and paid my money and I think they even matched my initial deposit as a singing-up bonus. I lost a couple of times, I won fewer, but mainly because there are other things to do at lunchtime I didn’t log in and play for six months. I don’t think this is unusual? What I didn’t expect was to receive an email telling me that “A £3.96 administration fee has been charged to [my] inactive account.”
I had to read the email a couple of times to understand quite what they meant. I hadn’t used my account for the last six months so they defined it as “Inactive” and charged me nearly four UK pounds to maintain it. And what’s more, they would have continued to charge me £3.96 every month until I made my account active again. And to re-activate my account and avoid any more penalty fees, I have to play more games or add more cash to my balance! I can’t just log in to keep my account active, I have to pay them more money!
Of course, reading carefully is something I should have done with the Terms and Conditions when I first signed-up – but fortunately PartyGammon were thoughtful enough to include a highlight of the relevant section of the terms and conditions in the email they sent me (do you think they’ve had complaints in the past!).
Unfortunately, the terms and conditions are pretty clear – I’m definitely guilty of not having played enough PartyGammon. My real question is, what is this money used for and why should should it have been levied anyway? Do the bytes that make up my account details, sitting on a webserver somewhere, cost that much? I expect it is possible to calculate how much holding my account costs PartyGammon in terms of disk space and electricity but I’d be willing to bet it isn’t nearly four pounds a month.
Certainly none of my other accounts charge me for inactivity. Why would they? Why would you charge people who don’t come back? What kind of incentive is that?
For example, I once had some photos developed at one online store and created an account with them in order to get it done. I probably haven’t used it in a year but do I get charged? No, I get promotional emails telling me about great deals for returning customers. This seems to be the sensible, obvious thing to do. Create customers who believe they are getting a good deal, don’t charge them for failing to use your product.
I’m always a sucker for winding myself up, so I thought I’d ask PartyGammon why I had been charged. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the first response was pretty much “you agreed to the terms and conditions”. The second was just obscure: “Please note that the inactive account charges were a business decision.”. Well…yeah. That’s a pretty easy business decision, I wonder how much the consultants were paind for that one? “You have users with cash in their account but aren’t playing? Get that money off ‘em in charges!”. An easy decision but a stupid one!
Summary
I know £4 isn’t a lot of money (and it really isn’t the point of this article) but I’m unlikely to ever play backgammon at PartyGammon again and my lasting impressions are negative ones. This isn’t how you should leave customers feeling. Is it?