Naxos customer "service"
Mon, Nov 22 2010, 12:11AM
I know they're a budget label, but outside of its marketing and its actual recordings, the way Naxos runs its business is bizarre.
The booklet accompanying their issue of Stepan Razin is missing the first five to ten minutes of text. So I went to their website, the Website From Hell, spent ages wrestling with their antediluvian server and got nowhere. There is no text to be found. So I wrote to their Canadian office (my copy is a Canadian issue) and got an immediate "out of office" response from one Kelly Hudson. That was October 26th. Nothing since.
Today I tried to contact their customer service directly, via the Website From Hell. You enter you message, fill in all the fields and submit. At which point it tosses you out to a page asking if you have an account or want to create one by filling in fields you just filled in i.e. name and email address. I don't, so I filled in the two fields necessary and submitted. And ended up back at the page from which I started. Four more tries at this and a couple of tries trying to enter as if I already had an account, just in case, and I gave up.
All very Kafka-esque. You can't contact customer service unless you create an account, and you can't create an account. I doubt they get many complaints.
I need a drink.
Mon, Nov 22 2010, 11:13PM
#2
RE: Naxos customer "service"
(cough)
Tue, Nov 23 2010, 8:24PM
#3
RE: Naxos customer "service"
I wasn't looking at you John. I know this site hasn't been trouble-free, but you're giving timely responses to your customers and that's at least half the battle.
In the end, Naxos came through in spades and very promptly once I found a responsive person (Joanne in customer service, many thanks).
For the information of any other person who bought a Canadian-made copy of the Shostakovich Stepan Razin, cd#8.557812, the first page of the text is missing. If you contact their customer service dept. and quote the cd number, they'll forward you a pdf file of the missing piece.
Tue, Nov 23 2010, 10:55PM
#4
RE: Naxos customer "service"
A tale of a customer lost in the labyrinthine website from hell with a happy ending sounds like a modern opera in the making.
How do you rate Stepan Razin? I had it on a double LP with the 7th symphony conducted by Kondrashin, I think, which succumbed to a ruthless cull I had a few years back.
Wed, Nov 24 2010, 8:25PM
#5
RE: Naxos customer "service"
How do you rate Stepan Razin? I had it on a double LP with the 7th symphony conducted by Kondrashin, I think, which succumbed to a ruthless cull I had a few years back.
I'd better say something nice about the work after kicking up such a stink, eh?
I truth, I think it's excellent Shostakovich and having text for the first six minutes of the piece has made a big difference. After all, we're talking Yevtushenko's poetry here, not some composer's aunt or next-door neighbour. For me, the quality of text set by composers is so fundamental to enjoyment of a choral work. Stepan Razin is very 13th Symphony-ish. The Naxos performance is superb with a strong bass-baritone (Charles Robert Austin) and the Seattle Symphony Chorale managing to sound pretty authentic.
The whole disc is very interesting. It includes Op. 131 October, sounding like a post-script to the 12th Symphony (one of my guilty pleasures) and Five Fragments Op. 42, which sound like sketches for The Nose. Altogether, a nice cross-section of the composer.
I thought the old Melodiya Stepan was coupled with the 9th Symphony? I certainly could be wrong, as my wife will tell you.
In fairness to Naxos, they're now on the case. Although how they got my message yesterday, with their website monkeying me around, lord knows. I know from my own work experience that few computer gurus spend time testing their own sites from a consumer standpoint. Strange. It's your shop window, your front desk, your chief point of contact with your clientele. Yet so many companies manage to put their worst foot forward on the internet.