National Geographic Society

Review: Initially National Geographic informed me that they will be charging sales tax on clothing that we would not be taxed on in PA. It took me an hour to finally talk to an individual that redirected me to customer service after I requested to talk to their supervisor about their contradiction in their own charging procedures . Their procedures require to charge taxes that the customer's state mandates. When I talked to the individual in their customer service they informed me that this was a "new" procedure to charge 6% sale tax. She reported that she was going to credit my account. My concern is that few people would take the excessive amount of time to rectify this " new" procedure that National Geographic are collecting taxes under dubious practices.Desired Settlement: This took approximately 2 hours to resolve.

Business

Response:

Dear **. [redacted]..thank you for your communications regarding a complaint filed by **. [redacted]. May I explain that I only handle magazine related concerns. Since this complaint involves another of the National Geographic Society product lines, I have forwarded the background on **. [redacted]'s problem to the appropriate division for attention. I am sure that the Revdex.com and **. [redacted] will be contacted very soon to resolve this matter. Thank you for your patience.

Review: I've been trying to get a hold of someone since 2012 no one has responded I finally started calling all the NG numbers someone finally said they would take care of it & now & 2014 they started billing my account. My daughter stared using membership cards in 2012 just cause I didn't want them to have my card info cause I felt it wasn't safe on the internet.Desired Settlement: I think they need to respond to customers stop avoiding & robbing people when someone wants there card info removed remove it.

Business

Response:

Dear Revdex.com, Smart Bomb Interactive (publishers of Animal Jam) keeps customer service requests for about a year. The progression from their tickets and records are as follows: - Initial Purchase was made on 5/23/13, all purchases are recurring until they are turned off via the activated Parent Dashboard. The Parent Dashboard is still currently not activated by the parent and tied with an email ([redacted]) that was not used when the parent submitted the following requests. The following requests and the Revdex.com complaint are tied to ([redacted]): Contact 1 (Ticket #[redacted]) June 1, 2013:[redacted] Jun 01, 2013 08:43My daughter wants a gift card I want my card info out of your system it won't let me online & after spending a 1/2 hour on hold your system keeps hanging up on me I'm getting sick of the aggravation & I'm to the point I'm ready to tell her she's not allowed to play this anymore. We respond asking him for required billing information to locate the account/info he'd like removed on the same day, 7 hours later. We didn't receive any response back from [redacted].-The first recurring purchase happened on 6/23/13.-Gift cards were applied to the account on 7/6/13, 7/14/13, 12/29/13 for an additional 9 months membership. The recurring charge had been postponed due to the fact he purchased gift cards, applied them to the account, thus pushing the recurring date out to pick up when the gift card memberships expired. Contact 2 (Ticket[redacted]) November 27, 2013: [redacted] Nov 27, 2013 09:32Look I've been trying to get through on the phone for months noone ever anwsers my daughter uses a gift card I want my credit card number out of your system & now my daughter hasn't been able to get on for 3 day's it just say's loading I'm tierd of being on the phone till your system hang's up on me you need to call @ 386-698-3999 about my credit card info or the next tie I contact you it will be my lawyer.We again responded asking for more billing information to locate the account/card/info he'd like removed on the same day 11 hours later. We should have also offered to call him back at this point, and we didn't. The agent who handled this has since been demoted for QA issues and is simply answers basic gaming questions. We also get thousands of email from children claiming to be parents and with the errors, punctuation, and tone it could have been viewed as a child as well.Contact 3: (Ticket [redacted]) Jan 21, 2014:[redacted] Jan 21 18:47my little girl says she heats the new animal jam so bring back the beta daysWe simply responded with a thank you for your feedback macro.Contact 4/5/6: (Ticket [redacted]- customer left voicemail 6:19 am, returned call and we left voicemail at 10:03 am & [redacted] customer called us back 11:29am) April 22, 2014:Customer calls us and we speak for 18 minutes, 3 seconds. We have the recording if needed.The customer says in 2012 he called and could not get any help from us or reach us. He then called National Geographic and said a "top person" from there would handle his billing issues regarding removing the cc info from Animal Jam's system. He was then billed and over drafted due to the $5.95 charge from us as he only had a dollar something balance in his account. Says he spent all of Aug 2012 trying to reach us not able to get us. He went on to describe how he went to try and get on his parent dashboard, but none of his info could be found. When he spoke with Nat Geo, he assumed it would be taken care of. He also goes on to give his current email for the account which we find is not what was on the account, but that he did create the acct on his daughter's behalf as she really had no idea how to do it. He said he waited for two hours and couldn't reach us.-Our automated hold time is set to max out at 15 minutes (then it goes to voice mail). It's not possible to hold for two hours. We have a few calls from the caller via a number search, but no voicemails were left.-We were now able to retrieve billing info, give him a refund for his most recent charge and cancel the recurring. We also gifted his child a customer service gesture of gems. We offered to black list and remove his credit card info. The customer seemed happy with the resolution with our agent.-We have verified his credit card, name, email and address have all be blacklisted and will be unable to purchase via credit card. They are a valued customer and their desired result is "Complimentary Service".-We have included a code here for a 3 months of membership, 6000 gems, and 10 diamonds, [redacted]. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance or provide any additional information to you, National Geographic, Sandy, or [redacted].Thank you,[redacted] Manager, Customer Engagement - Smart Bomb Interactiveskype: [redacted]