In praise of the Condé Nast customer service

I received my copy of the March issue of UK Vogue yesterday. The cover was badly damaged. Since the wrapping paper was in a perfect state, I was pretty sure it happened at the printers.

I called the subscription hotline and explained my case. They immediately and very nicely offered to send the magazine again.

I had already called Condé Nast during the postal strike last autumn. My Vogue hadn't arrived, three weeks after hitting the news agent shelves. They sent me another one, most likely making up for a defective postal service. Of course I am sometimes kept on hold for an unnecessarily long time. However, the helpfulness of the subscription customer service is I believe a real sales argument, which is currently under exploited.

I've had quite a different experience with the French subscription hotline. The few times I've had to call them (four times in a row, all about the fact that money had been debited from my account but I wasn't receiving the magazines), the staff was rude, incompetent. They really should consider emulating their British counterpart.

Yours,

Mlle L

Quote on a Monday: on journalism

"Un journal, un bon journal, quel que soit son contenu, c'est une somme d'énergies tendues, aimantées vers un objectif qu'incarne plus ou moins celui qui le dirige. Un bon journal, c'est une passion."

A newspaper, a good newspaper, no matter its content, is the sum of tensed energies, aiming towards a goal more or less represented by the person in charge.

A good newspaper is a passion.

"Personne n'a envie de se défoncer pour un groupe financier"

No one wants to work really hard for the benefice of a corporation

"L'écriture ne s'apprend pas, elle se travaille".

You can't be taught how to write, you have to work on it.

'Le romancier est de tout le hommes celui qui ressemble le plus à Dieu"
Mauriac, 1939

Of all men, the novel writer is the one closest to God.

Mauric, 1939

"Il nous paraît en effet que le reportage fait partie des genres littéraires et qu'il peut devenir un des plus importants d'entre eux".
Sartre, 1945

We think reportage is a literary genre and that it could become a very significant one.

Sartre

Le journalisme "c'est là où bat le coeur du monde"

Journalism "is where the world's heart beats"

Ils croient se mettre à la portée de leurs lecteurs; mais il ne faut pas supposer à ceux qui vous lisent des facultés inférieures aux nôtres; il convient mieux d'exprimer ses pensées telles qu'elles sont conçues. On ne doit pas se mettre au niveau du plus grand nombre, mais tendre au plus haut terme de perfection possible: les jugement du public est toujours, à la fin, celui des hommes les plus distingués de la nation."
Germaine de Stael

All quotes from Profession Journaliste, Françoise Giroud (Livre de Poche, 2001)