iTunes Rips-off South Park Fans

Software companies, especially online services, have typically had very poor customer service. iTunes apparently is no exception. Apparently iTunes advertised a South Park season pass for season 10 for $11.99. As the season got underway, Comedy Central, which produces South Park split the season in two with a five month hiatus. It is becoming more common for networks to do this; the TV show Lost has a 3 month hiatus. These have been considered parts of the same season in the past. Since the season was split, iTunes decided to split its season pass into season 10A and season 10B. This came as a surprise to those that purchased the original season 10 pass. They soon found out that their season pass had now been retroactively changed to a half season pass and if they wanted the second half they would need to shell out another $11.99. iTunes' response is that they reserve the right to change content as they see fit and no refunds are possible. Since so much time has passed, disputing the original charge is no longer an option on your credit card. You are at the mercy of iTunes. It's their reputation at stake but as more money is spent on web services, a company's customer service department will have to step up to the level normally reserved for retail companies.

South Park: Season 10
From the iTunes Deception website

Those of you who own an iPod or purchase music and movies on iTunes may have noticed something a bit strange in the past month if you are a fan of South Park. iTunes had the genius idea a while back to begin offering the Season Pass for television series. This Pass would allow you to pay a one time fee to purchase all the current episodes of a season of a particular series, as well as having the added benefit of automatically downloading all future episodes to your computer. iTunes decided to apply this concept to Season 10 of South Park, offering what was supposed to be the entire season for $11.99. Of course this idea was quite enticing! I would get all the episodes in the season for about half the price of the DVD set, AND I didn't have to go through the painstaking process of converting the DVDs for use on my beloved iPod. I decided...
I would have to be a sucker not to follow through with this. So I did it, I charged it to my card and BAM: within minutes I was enjoying the removal of Chef's face by a bear and a mountain lion. Everything was fine, going great, within 24 hours of an episode airing on Comedy Central I was sitting at work laughing my ass off watching it on my iPod. Until the episode "Tsst" came out. Little did I know that as I was losing breath laughing at Cartman being prodded like a dog, iTunes was planning something devious to take this joy away from me.

South Park went on hiatus after "Tsst" for about 5 months, which was fine, I understand that shows go on hiatus for one reason or another; I just had to find other things to entertain myself with. When South Park came back they were still calling it Season 10, and I was excited to think that instead of sitting around aimlessly browsing mySpace at the library the next day, I would be able to better observe the pimples that Stan and Kyle developed during their epic battle of World of Warcraft. I was sorely disappointed when I went to go see if my new South Park episode had downloaded. To my horror, I had discovered that iTunes, in its INFINITE wisdom, had decided to name the new set of episodes coming out to "Season 10B", and what I had already downloaded was now sporting a new title: "Season 10A".

Now I was pissed; I was promised ALL of Season 10 not just THE FIRST SEVEN EPISODES. I know it sounds ridiculous to complain this much over $11.99, but iTunes doubled it's profits instantly by cheating hundreds of customers out of what they were originally promised. I went to go spit some fire at the iTunes representatives to try and get my lost episodes, but I'm short of time and I'll get to that on my next post. Until next time...

see his website for the email conversation with iTunes