OK, for those of you in North America who watch or listen to public broadcasting, you know what I'm talking about here--the rest of you can skip this post. Normal knitting and spinning content will resume shortly, I promise! :-)
Through our TV service here, we are lucky enough to receive 2 NPR and 2 PBS stations--more than I ever received when I lived in the US, so that's one of the odd perks of living in Canada, I guess. I've been a "contributing member" of various local PBS/NPR stations wherever I've lived (in Toronto we supported the Buffalo AM radio station, which we could frequently get on our car radio but never in the house!), because I do love their programming and appreciate their existence. Last year we chose to pledge to WGBH, since we get both NPR (sadly their music station, not the news one, but better than nothing) and PBS from them and since they were offering a thank you gift that we actually could use.
A few months ago we began receiving notices about renewing our membership, so I went to their website to see what we could do. I searched the thank you gifts to see if the same gift, and it wasn't. I emailed to see if they planned to make it available, and they said it would be offered in their August pledge drive, so I held off on renewing. This week the August drive resumed, so I went back to their website and still no luck. So I emailed again. And just hours later, they called me to say that although it's not listed, they could still offer it to me. So I pledged again! (I already feel bad--I just renewed at last year's level, I should have given more to reward their great customer service. Many for-profit companies don't offer service this good!)
Anyway, I was impressed with their customer service, and wanted to remind all of you who enjoy public broadcasting to pledge to your local station. I know pledge drives are annoying (one reason I do love getting alternate stations is that we can sometimes switch to a different feed and get our news uninterrupted!), but remember that we can all shorten the time spent on pledge drives if we contribute regularly. So go support the public broadcaster of your choice! :-)
Through our TV service here, we are lucky enough to receive 2 NPR and 2 PBS stations--more than I ever received when I lived in the US, so that's one of the odd perks of living in Canada, I guess. I've been a "contributing member" of various local PBS/NPR stations wherever I've lived (in Toronto we supported the Buffalo AM radio station, which we could frequently get on our car radio but never in the house!), because I do love their programming and appreciate their existence. Last year we chose to pledge to WGBH, since we get both NPR (sadly their music station, not the news one, but better than nothing) and PBS from them and since they were offering a thank you gift that we actually could use.
A few months ago we began receiving notices about renewing our membership, so I went to their website to see what we could do. I searched the thank you gifts to see if the same gift, and it wasn't. I emailed to see if they planned to make it available, and they said it would be offered in their August pledge drive, so I held off on renewing. This week the August drive resumed, so I went back to their website and still no luck. So I emailed again. And just hours later, they called me to say that although it's not listed, they could still offer it to me. So I pledged again! (I already feel bad--I just renewed at last year's level, I should have given more to reward their great customer service. Many for-profit companies don't offer service this good!)
Anyway, I was impressed with their customer service, and wanted to remind all of you who enjoy public broadcasting to pledge to your local station. I know pledge drives are annoying (one reason I do love getting alternate stations is that we can sometimes switch to a different feed and get our news uninterrupted!), but remember that we can all shorten the time spent on pledge drives if we contribute regularly. So go support the public broadcaster of your choice! :-)
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