The Null Device

Under The Influence update

A while ago, I bought a copy of Morrissey's Under The Influence compilation CD, only to find that the disc was copy-protected and all but defective for my purposes. I sent off a letter of complaint to DMC. Today, I received an email from them, apologising for the situation and offering to mail me a newly pressed Red Book-compliant copy of the CD (sans artwork/liner notes) to replace the drink coaster I had purchased. Now that's what I call customer service.

There are 4 comments on "Under The Influence update":

Posted by: benjamin http://www.carnagevisors.net Fri Jun 27 05:37:07 2003

Cool that is customer service, and kinda nice. I wonder how long though that all compact disks are crippled.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Fri Jun 27 05:43:04 2003

All major-label discs, you mean?

Hopefully it'll only last until the majors go bankrupt and whoever buys out their back-catalogues at fire-sale prices releases them in a more amenable format.

Posted by: bignose Sat Jun 28 02:46:29 2003

It's nice that they did that in response to a written complaint. It doesn't change the fact that selling deliberately flawed audio discs (they're not CDs, they don't meet the CD standards) is wrong in the first place.

Even if they replace a disc for every person who asks, people shouldn't have to ask in the first place. They make certain claims (by using the "Compact Disc" logo) that are not met. False advertising.

Praising them for customer service doesn't get us any closer to removing the things from the shelves.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Sat Jun 28 08:59:39 2003

Well, they did say that they won't copy-protect any of their future CDs, and presumably a fresh print run of Morrissey Under The Influence CDs is coming out to the shops as well.

Not sure what they'll do; perhaps they'll recall the existing items, junk the discs, replace them with the new discs and put them back in the shops or something. Otherwise they'll have the issue of apologising to pissed-off consumers for ages to come.