I don't buy music these days. When do I get a chance to listen to music radio? So I'm not going to go into HMV or Virgin to spend fifteen quid on a CD that I've not heard a single track from, am I?
So when it became possible to download music from the Internet I thought 'Brilliant! Sample a track then buy it' and 'discover new artists through the 'you like that so you might like this' functionality'. So I went to MSN Music (where else do you go if you don't own an iPod?) and stuck £20 on account so that I could sample and download tracks at will.
Anyway, needless to say, along with 95% of the population I was too busy earning a crust to find the time to decide what to buy. After a few months, to my complete surprise, I received an email from MSN saying that if I didn't use up the money I'd deposited by X date, they would take it away. WHAT? Maybe I was a little naïve, but I had thought this was like a bank account. I would put my money in, and later I would spend it on music. But no. Not so simple! Somewhere buried deep in the smallprint there must be a clause saying "If you don't use up the hard-earned money that you put in your account within a timeframe that WE decide, we'll take it off you".
And so it was to be. In fact I even put aside some time on the day they specified, to make a real effort to buy some music. But they had already confiscated the cash - by 10am! They didn't even give me until midnight! THIS IS THEFT!
I call upon Sharon Baylay the Director of MSN for the UK to right this wrong and stop MSN stealing our money! Your legal people may well put an escape clause into your small print, but this doesn’t make it right. Recognise this and act!
If you have had a similar experience, please let me know. If there are lots of people out there who have been robbed in the same way, I will approach Sharon on our behalf, demand a refund and ask for the system to be fixed.
