How was your weekend?
This is not how you are suppose to spend your Sunday afternoon.
One hour and 45 minutes on phone with wireless phone company disputing erroneous charges on your phone bill. The company shall remain nameless as I refuse to give them any publicity – either good or bad – until our contracts are up.
There will be a separate lengthy post at that time since I’m not willing to pay $1000.00 to get out of our five-phone contract. Oh yes, I have it all documented.
I can promise that I have enough material for a bad sitcom.
46 minutes on phone with phone company who provides your internet service because their outage caused your wireless network to stop working and only one computer can send things to the printer now.
Said technical support did attempt to blame computers and printer but I was prepared since computers and printer do work – please let me say this again, s-l-o-w-l-y…
“They all stopped working together when your company had a service outage.”
Seventeen years as a customer and he wanted to send me to the “Fee-based support desk” because my problem was beyond their free basic support. PhilBillPaul asked if paying our monthly bill constituted fee-based support.
If there was any fun to be had it was in relaying back to PhilBillPaul the ignorant canned response of Mr. Tech Support about my problem being out of his scope of service and that I had spent 46 minutes on the phone with him so he could tell me what I already knew when I called. Our printer doesn’t work within the wireless network and yes, it did in fact work with all computers up until their outage.
Thank you for reminding me of the problem I called about 45 minutes ago.
Apparently hearing what he said repeated back to him in my voice must have struck a chord on how idiotic it all was. He offered to overnight a new router to help us “isolate” the problem before we talk to the “fee-based support desk.”
Um, yeah, okay – great idea.
Could we have done that in the first 5 minutes?
32 minutes on the phone with cell phone manufacturer explaining that your teen son’s phone screen is broken and his father was with him when it happened so yes, we are sure it wasn’t from misuse or liquid or being carelessly dropped.
Side note: We happen to be experts on the liquid damage as two phones have gone through the washing machine and one has been dropped in the toilet. All done by teens at our house.
Lucky for us, the phone is under their warranty and of course, you must deal directly with the manufacturer, NEVER the place you actually purchased the phone. That would actually make sense and resemble customer service.
Well, I take that back. PhilBillPaul reminded me that we can pay the unnamed wireless phone company $35.00 to look at a broken phone under warranty.
The good news? I don’t have to make these calls on Monday morning when the hold time lasts into Tuesday. Sometimes I have called and listened to a company greeting that actually recommends that you call back on another day – seems like a staffing issue to me.
The bad news? It felt about the same as spending the day with defensive teenagers who seem to say every single day, “It’s not my fault” and “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maybe I’m still cranky from Sunday.
I swear I start out nice on these calls because I do feel sorry for these people who have these jobs and have to work on Sunday and have people like me call them.
But by the end of the call it is hard to be nice as I am exasperated and exhausted.
I think it is only fair to tell you as I rant about this that many, many years ago I was actually a customer service manager at a cellular company. In fact, it is where I met PhilBillPaul and he was the service center manager at the same company. We do know a thing or two about providing excellent service.
Customer service suggestion:
If companies want to really improve their customer service, how ’bout if they start paying the customer for every minute they have to waste talking to customer no-service whenever they screw up your bill or your service?
One more question:
Is it really that hard to provide excellent customer service?
Maybe I’m just hormonal. So really, how was your weekend?
One year ago..
Again, I will say…
Sherra, I love you! You put my life into perspective with some of your posts and I appreciate that.
Since you are on the topic of customer service I just had to give a shout out to a restaurant we ate at in Destin because I have never had such excellent customer service…Fat Clemenza’s Pizzeria in the Holiday Commons shopping center. My mother had ordered a diet coke that never arrived. Because the food was so outstanding and we had water glasses being refilled after every few sips, we did not care about the missing drink. When the bill came and we were charged for it, the person taking care of the check apologized. Then the manager apologized, telling us how that was unacceptable and that they were so very sorry. Then our waiter, Mimoo, also apologized. And, the best part – they were all sincere and appeared genuinely sorry that we missed out on that drink. I have never experienced service as good as they offered and the fact that the food was so outstanding just made it that much better. If you are ever back in the area (and not looking at we@#&*rs), perhaps you can stop by. I recommend the chicken parmigiana or the fettuccine Alfredo! Fabulous!!!
Tammy » Ann and I will be sure and eat at Fat Clemenza’s Pizzeria in Destin next year and not just because we love the name. Ann would also like you to know we were not looking at we@#&*rs – they just seem to FIND US!!! Ann’s words today on the phone, “We are we@#&*rs MAGNETS” You and Ann must meet!! ROFL
Let me just say, “Welcome to Ruby Tuesdays!” LOL
Ann » It’s probably not using our best manners to have inside jokes on the blog but thanks for making me laugh! The Ruby Tuesday reference is because 3 staff members stood at the hostess station in Nashville two years ago and never spoke to us until I announced, “Welcome to Ruby Tuesday’s, 4 for dinner?” to help them out with their job and interrupt their deep conversation. Ahhh more customer no-service. Yes, we do hold a grudge.
Unlike you, I will name the name of my BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE PLACE OF BUSINESS. OLD NAVY! I encourage everyone not to go there and to tell their friends the same. As I reminded their worthless customer service person, “a happy customer tells one person, an unhappy one tells 30″….my list is just beginning, but you can be sure I will tell way more than 30 and you should do the same.
We need a customer service revolt!
Now, as far as the kids….I can’t help- and I don’t think that swapping would make either of us feel any better. Maybe moving….”no forward address?”(They’d probably find us)
nancy » I think you may have just told more than 30 so I hope you feel better! Venting can be healing
Sherra I believe I know who that wonderful company is because I have them too. One Monday when I had to call them because my bill was out of this world I had to remind them that every month since November I have had to call them to go over my bill (that takes a minimum of 1.5 hours). I have had to get credits from them for errors on my bill since November. I told them for the number of times that I have had to call them I could possibly make a lot of money if I was on their payroll. I just don’t understand their lack of customer service.
What happened to those days when people really cared about doing a good job and servicing the customer.
You know how there are etiquette classes you can take maybe someone needs to come up with that type of class for customer service.