Popular woodworking customer service is horrible :(...

[john davey]

I have subscribed to the Popular woodworking shopclass on demand videos for a while now. over time with all subscriptions my online credit card needed to be updated to renew the subscription. I received an email that the card failed and needed to be updated. I updated the date on the card and it has not been re processed. I have sent several emails to their customer service email in their contacts and all I receive is a canned message with information on things to try. I keep replying that I have not forgot my password, I know the link and actually can log in. I just cannot watch the videos because they need to re process my card. All I ever get from them is the same canned email. It is obvious no one is reading my email and it is very frustrating. I actually enjoy the videos + Roy and am disappointed that it is this difficult to get them. It is so obvious in this day and age that web content is taking over for news and magazine in print and it is hard for me to believe this company can survive if they do not pay any attention to this.... Anyone else have similar problems or know of a way to contact them??? I half posted this as I know some of them actually do pay attention here and maybe this will get through to them. Sorry for the rant...John

[Mike Holbrook]

John,
I tried several times to use the Shopclass on demand videos. I had many problems trying to get things set up and always seemed to have trouble signing in. The various areas within Popular Woodworking that require sign ins IMHO ( in my humble opinion ) are just too complicated and inconsistent. Like you say, support was horrible and they did not understand the terms refund or credit. I got frustrated and stopped using them for a while. When I came back I found I had misunderstood the subscription time frames due, IMHO, to horrible documentation. My subscription expired before I could figure the process out and get it working, despite considerable effort. I have not tried using it again and have no plans to. If I buy anything from PW these days it is DVD's and I often find buying those frustrating. Why pay a subscription fee for information one can pay for one time and be done? Unless there are constant additions to the content and improvements...

[Daniel Rode]

I did the trial subscription for ShopClass on demand. While the content might be good, the site it's self is unusable and relatively expensive. I canceled after just a couple hours.

It's as though they don't want customers to use it. The PWW site is slightly better but I'm concerned that thay will end up shutting down like their sibling American Woodworker. That scenario is not good for anyone.

FWW is the only site that seem to be well executed and it's still far from ideal.

[Jim Koepke]

Currently the only defense may be they are all off at some show. At least that is what some of the emails from the 'free' subscription has been saying.

On the other hand they do need to get a better handle on doing business on the internet.

I ordered a DVD and didn't receive any confirmation or shipping notice. All was quiet until it arrived in my mail box. It was slow for snail mail and my email inquiry was unanswered.

jtk

[george wilson]

I quit subscribing to them,but for reasons other than yours.

[Jim Belair]

Megan Fitzpatrick is a member here (is she still editor?). You could shoot her a PM and she might be able to help even though it's not directly in line with her responsibilities.

[Mike Brady]

Megan would be helpful, but I believe her blog states she is also away at this time.

[Simon MacGowen]

FWW is the only site that seem to be well executed and it's still far from ideal.

Agreed. Many woodworking business sites are horrible and not user friendly. LN's is better now with its new website than in its old days but is still no good; many others are equally bad and you can hardly find things quickly and that means lost sales. I am not saying they should have the Google ability but their check-out, shipping info. navigation, etc. are really bad. The best? No one is near Lee Valley in terms of search feature, product organization, etc. They must have spent a lot of resources on maintaining it, but their user-friendly site also generates a lot of sales for them, I am sure. Of course, Lee Valley can improve its site further as sometimes I couldn't find an item by the name that appeared in the packaging.

This isn't the first time I heard about the problem with the PW site and it has nothing to do with people away from their offices but the unwillingness or inability of the owner of the site to make changes. To commit to make such changes means financial resources and not many woodworking businesses could afford to do that. Lee Valley is an exception and knows IT is critical to serving its customers.

Simon

[Frederick Skelly]

I quit subscribing to them,but for reasons other than yours.

George, even with all YOUR skills and experience, you subscribed to (what I think of as) a hobbyist magazine? You ought to be a Contributing Editor there, writing articles to teach the rest of us. That surprises me Sir.
Fred

[Megan Fitzpatrick]

I'm sorry to hear we're still having trouble with customer service and with the ease of using the Shop Class site. I'm still away, but as soon as I'm back, I'll make sure the right people are aware. And if you ever have trouble with any of our sites/customer service/etc., please send me an e-mail (you'll find my address, and contact info for all the editors, in every issue, and my name is linked to my e-mail at the bottom of each blog I post). I'll make sure to get the problem addressed.

[paul cottingham]

Yeah, I guess I'm too late here at the party, but I have found PW's customer service to be spotty at best. A couple times it was resolved, several times my emails were ignored, and a couple of issues were just dropped without comment. Now that I think about it, that's pretty poor.
On the good side, Megan herself once resolved one of my problems!

[John Crawford]

Similar experience. I had some problems with a streaming video product that I paid for. Got several canned responses that did not at all address my question. The canned responses were spaced a week or so apart. Personally, I would prefer someone to say "I will not help you" or "I am unwilling to help" instead of a robot response that does not even address the problem. This was regarding a product that cost very little, but it made me wary of actually spending any more money there. I was surprised, as most of the modern high-end woodworking-related businesses these days have over the top excellent customer service.

[Ron Kanter]

I was an early subscriber to Shop Class on Demand. Because I subscribed early, it is relatively inexpensive for me otherwise I would not continue to subscribe.
Content varies from excellent to superficial. Navigation and searching are often awkward and often impossible.
Firefox is my standard browser software, but Shop Class didn't recognize me as a subscriber when logging in on Firefox. When I use Safari as my browser, I have no problem logging on.
I corresponded with Megan about this problem probably a year ago. Firefox still doesn't work.
Megan, if you are reading this, I would be happy to work with your IT people to solve this problem.

[john davey]

Well, sadly I guess I am not the first to experience this. I am going to lean positive here and hope since Megan has responded she will hopefully resolve my issue and put some time into bettering their product. I am a fan of the content they put out and do want to renew. So hopefully this can get resolved and will make the issues go away for future subscribers. Thanks for the reply Megan and I look forward to hearing from someone that this is resolved.... John.

[Megan Fitzpatrick]

John, I asked the group who handles that site to get in touch with you and others on here who have had trouble – if you don't hear from them very soon, please send an e-mail to to rocky.landsverk@fwmedia.com – he's the guy who can get it fixed...and he'll work with customer service to ensure they know who can resolve problems in the future (though I hope we're getting these ironed out and there will be no more problems, of course!)