I know one should extrapolate too much from limited experience, but I have consistently been receiving terrible customer service over the last couple of weeks, to wit:
(1) I've already blogged about my experience with Speakeasy.net, which led to several readers emailing me similar stories about that company;
(2) I purchased a ticket on the United Airlines website. I discovered that Orbitz was offering the same ticket for $15 less. I tried to take advantage of United.com's low fare guarantee. I emailed all the pertinent information, with a promised response within one business day. Two business days later, I received an email in the late afternoon demanding more information by fax by midnight. I duly sent that information. That was weeks ago, and I have not heard anything since, despite a followup email, to which I received a boilerplate response. And, it's nearly impossible to get to speak to a live human being, and even more difficult to speak to someone who speaks English in the American vernacular, if one calls United's "customer service" department.
(3) My moving company (which I won't name pending how it ulimately resolves the issue, which is currently "under investigation"), a respectable company affiliated with one of the national giants, promised at least three times that there would be "no charge" for a particular service. On moving day, I was told that there would be a $300 charge. A week later I was told that the charge would actually be $972.
(4) I called Comcast to set up cable installation. They sent a complete moron, who wanted to run a cable from the third floor to the first floor, by way of staircases and hallways. I called Comcast, and they offered to send a new technician two days later. No one showed up. I called Comcast, and was told the technician must be running late. He never showed. I called again, and was told that the previous two folks were wrong, that no one was coming to my house that day, that someone would call me that day to set up an appointment later in the week. Someone did. And then didn't show up for the appointment. I decided we can live without cable.
Is this a real trend, or have I just had bad luck?
UPDATE: I forgot about a fifth example: I learned last week that Alcon has recalled an eyedrop I use, "Systane Free", for safety reasons. Instead of offering a refund, the company is only offering an exchange for other versions of this drop; without boring you with the details, these other versions have different properties, and I don't want them. When I called Alcon's customer service, I was told they hired a third party to handle the recall, so I'd have to take it up with them!
"This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions."
As for Comcast, they are a joke. They are probably sending a technician from Bangalore to your home, which is why he hasn't showed up yet. (maybe he's disputing a ticket charge with United? who knows...)
I take it you found a place in Arlington?
When I called to cancel, they reluctantly agreed but didn't cancel the service. When I saw my next bill still had the cable modem service on it, I called, and they said the order to remove was on the account but it never got removed. They removed it. They amended my bill. They gave me a credit for my inconvenience.
Later, they tried to charge me $200 for the cable modem I had been issued; since a cable tech was coming out to install a new line anyway, we simply handed him the modem (along with all cables and connectors), and once again the bill was amended and a credit issued for the inconvenience.
I suppose I could complain about these two problems instead, painting it as an incompetent company trying to take my money, but that wouldn't be very honest. On each occasion, I made a phone call and they happily charged themselves $50 to fix their own mistake. Seems like a net win to me.
Of course, maybe it's because I have a $150 monthly bill before PPV. I don't just have cable, I have CABLE.
Reconcile yourself to that fact, and then just bend over.
Basically, I have given up expecting anything of anyone who answers phones for a living, or who works for under $10/hr.
The moving company isn't guilty of bad service, they are guilty of fraud.
This is a common scam. In each of the 3 times that I last moved, the company tried to tack on additional charges while all of my belongings were on the truck. I guess that what happens is that they believe that people will go ahead and okay the BS charges and then never follow up afterwards.
United doesn't announce it, and I'm not sure whether your situation would have let you take advantage of it, but their policy seems to be that anytime within 24 hours from the purchase of a ticket, you can get a full refund (and then rebook to your heart's content elsewhere).
A few months ago, I booked a nonstop (domestic) flight on United (through United's own website). A few minutes later, I realized that (1) the flight wouldn't give me a seat assignment, and thus appeared to be overbooked, and (2) for not much more money, I could fly on a flight with plenty of seats on a different airline, from a more convenient airport, and at a more convenient time.
I called United's reservation number--I think I followed the phone tree for "existing reservations"--and promptly got a human. (I don't know whether it helped or hurt that it was an odd time--late at night--in the U.S.; the phone rep had a noticeable Indian accent.)
Said human was able to cancel my whole reservation with no trouble; the refund processed promptly back to my credit card with no further action from me. I bought the other ticket on the other airline's website.
I was a satisfied customer both of the other airline and of United. Even with United, customer service experiences are not uniformly bad, it seems.
I'm guessing that we're about to see the start of a backswing. Phone trees and internet FAQs have pretty much reached the limit of their usefulness, and there's a lot of dissatisfaction with customer service in internet land. Plus stuff like the 'Technician asleep on my couch' video points out the potentially big problem with poor service. So hopefully 'good customer service' will become a competitive selling point, and corporations will compete on the basis of it.
While one might have predicted that the increase in unemployment would have increased the pool of available employees, many people who lost higher-paying jobs found those jobs so much more rewarding than customer service that they'd rather do anything else; or they are much more choosy about the companies they work for now. And since many of those people now have experience that's more prestigious than customer service, it's easier for them to find non customer-service jobs.
Maybe also you should ask yourself whether you've been willing to pay enough for products and services to cover the wages of the competent, trained, intelligent agents you want the company to keep on staff for you. Here you are willing to switch airlines because United charges $15 more for a ticket. Did you inquire about the quality of customer service from United vis-a-vis their $15-lower-price competitor before thinking the latter was a better deal? I'm kinda guessing not, not if you're like most modern Americans.
One hopes if you make your purchase decisions based pretty much solely on price that you are not super surprised when companies compete pretty much solely on price and let customer service go to hell. You get what you pay for. TANSTAAFL, as they say.
That'll be "press nine." ;^)
The form on their website HAD NO SUBMIT BUTTON. None. In either Firefox or IE.
As for cost-cutting, I didn't hire a cut-rate moving company, but a well-established major player. Speakeasy is a "premium" service, with charges to match. I didn't try to change my United ticket for $15, I tried to get them to refund the $15 as per their guarantee. And Comcast is a local cable monopoly. G
FYI, having been a contract install tech, (for data, not cable) i just noticed why the 'moron' wanted to run the cable through the hallway. In many places it requires the OWNER's consent to damage interior walls to run cable. If you are renting, he may have been within his scope of contract to not cut into the walls.
Just a thought....
Moving companies are something of a scam in general. The last time I moved with Allied I found that the people who pick up and deliver your stuff are fly-by-night contractors and not actually part of the company. So when I had a problem I called the original agent only to find there was nothing he could do because a different company was the source of the problem.
When I called the other company I couldn't reach anyone.
Anyway, my Dad, who was in the military and moved every three years, says moving companies have always been like that. He claims these companies are notorious for hiring ex-cons, and every move he ended with less property than he started.
I've had good experiences with kayak.com for flight and hotel price searches. Terrible experiences with the three major on-line travel vendors, and also with hotels.com.
I'm flying United tomorrow, and went to log in to check in today. They offered me a $46 upgrade to get a few extra inches of leg room, and I was ready to take it, but their website flaked out, and when I logged on a second time, the option had disappeared. So they may have cost themselves $46, or perhaps they just sold the seat within the two minutes I was off line.
I was ready to spend several hundred dollars to upgrade my Cingular service to include internet and email, and they wanted to charge me a $30 upgrade fee. I refused out of principle, they wouldn't waive the fee, so I discovered that I didn't need a Treo after all, and Cingular has lost out on $800 in revenue and counting. A shame they have an iPhone monopoly.
I get good customer service from Southwest Airlines, from Amex, from Citibank (which wasn't always true), from Linksys, from Nordstrom, and from the guy who sells me suits. Apple's software update corrupted my girlfriend's Nano a few weeks ago, and they replaced it even though it was just out of warranty.
David: how much are you paying to rent? (A $/sq.ft. ratio is fine, if you're sensitive about that info.) I'm curious what the price-to-monthly-rent ratio in Ballston is these days.
However, I also think you've had a real run of bad luck. My sympathies. Maybe you should play the lottery because it certainly sounds like you're due for some good luck.
Customer service in nearly every industry is a joke. I expect that. What really angers me is when I get bad customer service from companies that act like you are lucky they decided to sell you their product. Your United example is why I fly only on Southwest. I have called them on several occasions, and fixed my issues within minutes. They never once acted like I was bothering them, and have even given me "courtesy" changes when I have asked, without charge.
And, as for Comcast, I have actually had good service from them here in New Mexico, to my utter surprise each time.
Ah, Southwest. They infuriate me. They refuse to fly me where I want to go despite the fact that they fly there. I don't get it. All it would require is a layover in Houston and they do layovers in Houston but they still refuse. I even called to ask about it and no one could give me an answer about it except that they don't do that route.
I have been outsourced four times in four years, however, even though the average pay in my departments has been @ $8.50/hr. As an earlier commenter noted, you get what you pay for.
I am truly surprised that no one has mentioned the alltime king of the poor service hit parade, AOL.
My fiancee made an appointment to get 2 cable boxes put into our apartment. Her cell was the number they had, and as it happened, it was off when the guy came. He called and she did not pick up. Instead of ringing the doorbell, he just left. We were both home.
2 weeks later, he came again. He bitched and moaned the whole time, over the fact that we wanted 2 - greedy sonsa bitches! - cable boxes. That, I think, aggravated me more than his prior lazy idiocy. Duude! You put in cable boxes for an effing living! Ugghhh.
My most recent argument with some movers, (who tried to literally double the price of the move at the end), finished with their boss hanging up on me and refusing any money altogether.
It is so refreshing to talk to someone named Rob, believing him, and it not being 1 of 12 syllables of an abbreviated or fraudulent name.
A Linksys Tech support guy recently asked me if I was single, whether I liked to travel, and if I had any pets, while he was typing in my information.
"Hi this is Johnathan number 8043211, thanks for calling"
This question contains a false assumption and is thus invalid. There is no customer service in the US, it has been offshored.
I booked an international flight through them on both Virgin and BMI. Within 24 hours, I learned that the people I needed to meet on the other end would no longer be available at the scheduled time of my visit.
Calling Travelocity, I was informed that my ticket was not changeable, not refundable, and the only thing I could do was to book again at full fare.
Calling both Virgina and BMI, I was told that this was a problem of Travelocity's creation. They permit the change, but cannot do a change until Travelocity 'releases' the financial information. They do that only within 24 hours of departure, making it functionally impossible for the airlines to make the changes themselves.
I ended up eating the fare, rebooking directly with BMI and Virgin (at a lower rate than Travelocity was offering anyway). But Travelocity is the loser as they have utterly lost all my business, private and commercial, for all time.
Other than a failure to show to install at the first appointment, COMCAST has been okay by me. Sure, the service calls for Internet are routed to India or Bangladesh, but I can figure out what's being said easily enough.
On the moving company, it looks like your problem is not with their service, but with how much they are charging you. Two different issues.
On Comcast, two times they didn't show up. That was better service than when they actually did show up. Get Direct TV and count your blessings.
Actually, compared to 25 years ago, the cable companies offer pretty good service nowadays. It used to be that they would tell you they would show up sometime between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., and then not show up. Now they tell you they will arrive somewhere between 9a.m. and noon before not showing up. That frees up a half day.
Are you a victim of the Wright Amendment? (Does that even still apply?) I'd be interested in knowing your attempted itinerary.
I was doing 1st tier tech support on consumer ISDN modems, and every one of my coworkers were junior/senior computer engineering students. Kind of overkill for that kind of job, but we usually fixed problems the first time.
Here's some advice from someone who's been on the other end:
1. In most cases, the person on the other end of the phone knows less than you do. If your problem isn't fixed in a few minutes, you might as well give up.
2. If you're one of those aforementioned affluent people (or a not-so-affluent person who's frustrated), look on craigslist for poor engineering students selling their skills to make tuition. I did general computer repair/networking all four years in undergrad for 15/hour, and I actually felt guilty at the time for charging so much. College students tend to underestimate their abilities and how much they're worth.
3. If you find one of these college students, shower them with praise and tip them well, and they will be your personal slave. I had one customer who consistently tipped me an extra $20 (usually the bill was like $40) and I would have driven out to help him at 2am after that.
Of course 1 year out of college, I realized how crappy consultants are and raised my rate to $75/hour :)
1) Idiots in customer service
2) Customer service drones forced to stick to the company script
3) Lousy company policies designed to screw anyone who's not very persistent
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence; never attribute to either what can be attributed to profit-seeking.
http://www.movingscam.com -- can't say enough good things about this site.
As a former resident of NYC and, more recently, Arlington, VA, (I graduated from GMU LA but failed, alas, to take any class by Prof. Bernstein) and now of a small town in the South, I do believe that the urban environment has much to do with it.
and now of a small town in the South, I do believe that the urban environment has much to do with it.
Until WalMart comes to town. And then customer service will be every bit as crappy as it is everywhere else.
The hidden bonus came when we have had the occasional glitch or question: fantastic customer service. It's available all (or nearly all) hours and staffed with knowledgeable, helpful, fluent English-speaking staffers. I don't know if it's available in Ballston yet, but if not it probably will be soon, and I suggest giving it a try.
As smart and successful and flush with money as some are, they just can't convert that money into happiness with their products and services. You don't own the things, the thing own you.
Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat because you're less and less independent than the man who has a little less but can meet his own needs. Ususally this man gets to spend more time with family too, and is in better physical shape but I digress...
"You just can't find good help these days." lol
I suspect your attitude when dealing with customer service folks can be smelt a mile away, and is not rewarded. When you always think you're getting one up on somebody (the first rental that backed out and sold), people respond in turn. They don't want to do you any favors, because you think you're entitled.
"Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you." or "Treat another person doing their job as you would want to be treated if it was your child doing the job"
I suspect if you think of your daughter, how you'd talk and phrase your requests to her, you will see better service in return from those you are working with. No really... try it. Or live with diminishing returns on your investment.
But that is anj exception and in general I thnk that customer service has improved over the years, partly in response to the work of "the good Ralph Nader" and then to simple self-interest by business.
I have made it a practice to be BEYOND polite, sensitive etc. and my customer experience mirros the general drift of the comments. (19! appointments to solve the issue of why the cable cards didn't work? Maybe because NOONE set them up properly? Ya think?)
If customer service were only spottily bad, I would ascribe some of it to reactions by overwhelmed CS reps. But the ubiquity of poor service makes it obvious that there is something else going on.
It's also worth noting that not all customer service reps are created equal. I had a bad incident with Bank of America a couple of months back, called one customer service representative and got a complete run-around, eventually got fed up and broke off the call with her, called back again and got a different representative who had everything taken care of in 15 minutes.
Also, to those making an urban/rural distinction here: the Internet is basically ageographic, so for online services, that shouldn't make any difference. Likewise, most call centers are centralized. I think the corporation in question, not the location of the customer, explains a lot more, despite the variance in service levels between individual representatives at the same company.
If your perceptions are to the contrary, you are simply wrong.... Unless of course there is governmental regulation of any of the industries with which you've been interacting. Regulation is by definition a distortion of the free market, and clearly any problems you may be having are attributable thereto.
If you had always voted Republican, as you were instructed, such interference in the market would never exist, and your life as a consumer would be even more perfect than it already is.
I trust that you have learned your lesson for the day, and will adjust your voting behaviors accordingly in the future. If you have any questions, or need further information, please dial 1.800.URA.PEON, or visit our website, www.suckitup.com.
When I positively diagnosed a hardware failure of my own DSL line involving faulty wiring between me and the local office, my only recourse was to persistently go through Earthlink technical support daily for a week until the problem was escalated to the local phone company for repair. By the time action was taken, I was just past the planning stage to make the intermittent failure spectacularly permanent in a way that would leave no doubt about its condition and where the fault lay.
In '05, my phone had an intermittent problem with receiving calls. People who called would hear it ringing, but none of the phones in the house would ring. Eventually the problem went from intermittent to constant.
After doing some checks on my own to confirm the problem was outside of the house, I called MCI and was connected to the Indian call center. Explained the problem thoroughly and was told a tech would check it out. Tech came and went without attempting to contact us occupants. Problem still there.
Called MCI again and had to explain problem from the start (don't they make notes on the screen at the call center?). Repeat process for two months, at one time being told one tech had closed the ticket when he called the number and heard it ringing, despite the fact that I had said callers heard the ringing while I didn't.
Finally received a call at work from a manager in the U.S. who had the problem fixed the same day. Accepted reversal of two months of charges and kept the name and number of the manager.
1. I didn't read your post so can't comment.
2. You didn't want customer service, you wanted $15.
3. For $972, you could have gotten exactly what you wanted.
4. You are a renter. Cable installation requires drilling holes. Does your lease allow that or were you planning on defrauding your landlord?
5. Alcon did not prohibit you from using the purchased product.
The only customer service case was the cable installation where you wanted service that Comcast was willing to provide, but you refused because of you didn't like the offer. Maybe after reviewing the situation, they decided that they didn't want you for a customer.
I was about to suggest the same thing, but then I noticed that he said he was trying to fly from Houston Hobby, not Dallas Love Field. The Wright Amendment applied only to Dallas Love Field.
Most of the relevant provisions were abolished in late 2006, incidentally.
I would bet "C" was in fact a victim of the Wright Amendment. "C" mentioned a layover at Houston, not an origination, so I would bet his original start was at Dallas (Love), and from wiki (grain of salt and all that)
"For example, a person could fly from Dallas to Houston or New Orleans, change planes, and then fly to any city Southwest served — although he or she had to do so on two tickets in each direction, as the Wright Amendment specifically barred airlines from issuing tickets that violate the law's provisions, or from informing customers that they can purchase multiple tickets that would allow this." which would explain "C"'s comment that "I even called to ask about it and no one could give me an answer about it except that they don't do that route"
Parts of the Wright Amendment are still in place. Southwest cannot provide non-stop service from Dallas (Love) to areas outside the "Wright Zone" until 2014.
DavidBernstein: Lol. I don't know how to break it to ya buddy, but ... they tell me those service folks can actually pick up on the "feigning" part. Lol. Can you believe it?
See ... the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" thing? It only works when you're being GENUINE. Practice in front of the mirror. Practice with your friends. Do that little role playing exercise (genuinely!) replacing the service worker's face with your daughter's in a few years... Then come back and tell me if you truly get better service.
(Remember, you can't cheat your way through this with the "feigning". Lol.)
Strictly a guess...
Maybe that's true, but with Comcast Cable you get high prices and poor service. My story: two months ago my online payment to Comcast glitched somehow. I was not notified of this; instead my cable was turned off and I was charged a bounced check fee. After spending an hour on hold, a pleasant young lady told me all I had to do was bring in a statement from my bank saying it was not my fault and my account had adequete funds on the day of the EFT glitch (in other words, I did not bounce a check). Went in in person to do so, but had to deal with a royal jerk who repeatedly refused to honor this deal. Finally he made a great show of phoning his supervisor with whom he spoke for a long time, before agreeing to waive the fee, and then lectured me on the need to be financially responsible.
As for incompetent technicians not keeping appointments, there are some people at the Time Warner office in Canton OH who hope never to speak with me again after I dealt first with a tech who was barely capable of plugging in a toaster, and then four other appointments were missed altogether.
Re: Southwest and Houston
If you are trying to fly to Dallas there is, believe it or not, a law which does not allow anyone to fly into Love Field (Southwest's Dallas airport) from anywhere outside states continguous with Texas, and that includes connecting flights.
Travelocity:
Actually had good luck with them when my aunt's funeral had to be postponed a day and they agreed
to chance the reservation with just a $5 booking fee.
On my bad list though: AOL customer service. Someone in India also hopes never to talk to me after he utterly refused to listen to me, but insisted on reading from a canned script (and could not even understand the problem, let alone resolve it.) Also, Expedia, after they botched their system a reservation (it booked the return flight the day before the outgoing fight!) and they refused to believe their system could possibly make a mistake like that despite the evidence in front of their faces. And finally Uhaul, who were unable to honor a reservation I made: their "just in time" system should be called "Maybe, maybe not".
On my good list: Suntrust Bank. Anytime I have had any sort of banking problem, even when they were not the cause of it, they have fallen all over themselves to resolve it.
Oh, and re: DMVs-- since they went online I have had suprisingly good service from them, in Michigan and Florida both.
Gee, wasn't it just the other day you were all extolling the virtues of globalization and telling all those poor saps whose jobs had been outsourced to India or Malaysia to get over it and that everybody benefits from call centers staffed by people who barely speak English, make a sixth of what people do in this country, and work longer hours at odd times and are unfamiliar with our customs and culture just so the CEO can make an extra $5 million this year (or Steve Jobs can backdate his stock options).
Any Visa card: When I call the numbers on the backs of my Visa cards, I get great customer service. Many may not know this, but they will help you out A GREAT DEAL when you have problems with vendors. A mechanic put in a defective alternator when my truck broke down. The alternator went out a couple months later and I again had to get the car towed and fixed. The original mechanic refused to help me AT ALL and used the typical mechanic bullying to try to intimidate me. The credit card company worked to reimburse me the charges of repairing and towing the second time (presumably at the expense of the jerk mechanic). I have had a couple situations like this and if I get a bad product now with an uncooperative company, I immediately call Visa. I have also started putting nearly all major purchases on credit simply because of the customer service.
Amazon.com: The best customer service possibly on the planet. Every issue with them has been resolved either by e-mail or phone with a real live human being!! And (flashback time) at least once, they significantly expedited my items for no charge when there had been a problem. Now if they could just figure out that some people in this day and age still have P.O. boxes AND physical addresses and have their shippers send it to the applicable address, we'd really be in business.
Wells Fargo: I know a lot of people have their complaints about them, but I usually get what I want from them. This goes for the aforementioned credit card companies, but I do not ever remember paying any sort of late/overdraft/minimum balance/interest fee. While some are maddening simply because they shouldn't be there in the first place, others have been serious mistakes on my part. But I've found that they have been very helpful in erasing these.
In the end, Yes sometimes it takes a couple calls and Yes some things shouldn't go wrong in the first place, but the level of satisfaction that I have had with these companies means I am willing to be a customer of all 3 for life (and that's saying a lot at 21) unless and until something fairly egregious happens.
The worst one was a fast food chain at which I worked between high school and college. I would block off a day, come in, and a few minutes later be told that they weren't busy enough and that I should go home. They nickeled and dimed us in other ways. For example, they wanted me to pay for a name badge and were surprised when I said it wasn't worth the money to me. I treated the customers the same way. It helped that I knew that my time with the employer was capped at three months.
Part of the problem is that companies no longer show loyalty to their employees, so employees reciprocate. In "the good ol' days," more people stayed with a company for life. That mixed the employees' interests with their company's interests. Now, employees know that they can be fired during even a short downturn.
Call center employees (the real subject of this post) know that their employement is short. They know they are disposable. They also know that they can get another low-wage job at the drop of the hat. So why care?
Now that I'm in the government sector, it's clear that my first duty is to my clients, not my employer or my immediate supervisors. I think many government employees feel the same way. And that's one reason why the DMV works better than AOL.
Apparently, according to current FCC regs, the phone company is responsible only for providing a dial tone at the "interface" between their wires and the customer's wiring. If you live in a single family house, there's no problem. Either you or your electrician can hook you up to an interface you can reach. But I moved into a condo community that has multiple buildings, and the phone wires, like everything else, run undergroud from building to building. The phone company interface is in another building hundreds of yards away from my unit. They tell me there's a fine dial tone over there. But, I want a dial tone in my apartment, not over there. "Not our problem," says Verizon.
The condo board says that it is Verizon's responsibility. I checked the old offering statement from many years back, and it is very detailed in stating that the association is responsible for all the shared water mains, sewer lines, electical mains, etc., but says that the phone company provides phone service. But that offering was made back in the dark ages before the AT&T breakup. It looks like a situation where no one is responsible, which is probably the way everyone wants it.
The Comcast phone works fine, but costs a lot since I don't get cable TV (I don't even own a TV set.) And the worst of it is that you need a Verizon phone to open the gate to the community when someone is coming to see you, so I have to run out there myself and do it because I can't get anyone to take responsibility for making a phone available to me.
There are good and bad people in customer service in every field - and there are pleasant and rude people in the same fashion (and sometimes it seems that there's no correlation between attitude and knowledge). I find that it generally pays to hang up if I'm dealing with a customer service rep who is clueless (or whose accent is incomprehensible). The next one will probably be better.
Outsourcing to India does not seem to have changed the overall customer service experience much for me - and I deal for customer service mainly with ISL and internet companies. There are more frequent language problems (although I don't miss deciphering Mississippi drawls), but the attitude is better overall.
Nick
I wonder if it would be helpful, DB, to post on the positive customer service experiences you have had, where you really felt you were getting satisfaction on what you were paying for.
If you are correct about publicizing the negative experiences in private industry, to help them improve or die, would publicizing those really positive experiences help to also get the word out? Unless your point is that recently, you haven't had many of those to offset the negatives you experienced in travel and the moving experience?
I agree with you about customer service generally. If I have to hold on the phone for more than ten minutes to get through to them, if they don't resolve the problem immediately, or if they expect me to float them the balance while they begin an investigation of unspecified length, I hang up and go straight to the CC company. It works out great.
Do your best to concentrate your business on one airline and achieve elite status. American, in my experience, delivers fabulous, over-the-top service to its elite flyers. United also does well by its frequent flyers. Southwest is a pleasure for everyone. Stick with a major airline and, over time, your fares will be comparable to if not cheaper than discount airlines on many routes and you'll earn some great perks.
As someone who self-professes the virtue of the "do unto others rule", I would think your comments on Volokh threads would be less (at least apparently) sardonic and snarky. Maybe you market yourself on Volokh threads as a "common sense" person and think those who don't (i.e., other posters, e.g., DB) share your opinion are ivory tower idiots and are missing the simplicity of your view. Maybe you don't. Regardless, to me, your tone smacks of arrogance and barely hidden disrespect. I would hope someone thinking the same about me would let me know the same. No need to respond.
The service is called 321-CALL-LOG and it allows users to automatically record, authenticate, and notarize telephone and email conversations they have with customer service representatives. In order to be legally compliant the service announces to the agent every 3 minutes that the call is being recorded. When a call has been completed users are able to retrieve and email their calls to customer services reps through the website. In this way 321-CALL-LOG gives consumers a systematic way to make customer service reps accountable for what they say or promised to consumers.
Checkout the site at:
www.321calllog.com
Currently the service is on invitation only bases but you can request a BETA account and expect to receive an invitation.
Hope the tip helps!
Regards,
James S.
And finally, did anyone notice what phone service, cable service, airlines, and David's eyedrops have in common? They're all highly regulated by the government. You can get terrible service from the free market too, but it's much easier to find a better alternative if the government isn't forcing all the competitors to fit the same mold. Just don't expect to get good service and cheap service at the same place...
Maybe if there were more contrary opinions, there would be more solutions?
Maybe my voice of "common sense" would not seem so annoying -- or ring of such perceived "condescencion" if it were not so rare, and also so true?
I thought DB was kidding -- honestly -- with his crack at "feigning" niceness to customer service reps. Did you ever try -- honestly -- to view things through a service-person's lens? No. And most of the folks posting here are elite professionals, nothing wrong with that.
But if you ask a question about why a restaurant won't gladly supply you with a aspirin, or wonder aloud why you are noticing so many customer service slights -- then as men, you should be prepared for honest answers.
You know what: I would want someone to point out to me that "feigning" niceness may just be at the root of the problem. Perhaps to prod me to further examine my social biases, and lack of awareness of cultural norms in the aspirin questions.
I am sorry if this caused hurt feelings, that my honest answer may have seriously been viewed as "impolite". But why not think through the substance. Again, try out the method I suggested above DB and others who are seeking better experiences interacting with workers. If you really want a better solution and aren't in it just to "feign" niceness toward those you might feel ill disposed toward.
No need to respond, though I'm not telling anybody how to think. You seem to be the ones with the problems and questions asked publically...
They approach should be respect, not "niceness." If you treat anyone with respect, you are more likely to get a positive reaction. You can be both justifiably upset and respectful of customer service people. Feigning nicness is just patronizing.
b) If you are over 18, you should know that when you do business with ComCast, you will get screwed. Buyer beware.
Clearly, the unemployment rate is too low.
Of course, I had to take time off work and be held hostage for the agreed upon four hour block. The third time I had to wait a week for an Internet technician who walked straight to the outside box and fixed the problem in seconds without even speaking to me or entering my apartment, then checked in to see if I had service, I dropped them for my phone company's Internet. not the best, but never had an interruption. All three of the Comcast internet guys knew exactly what the TV techs were doing wrong, and all three of them said they'd reported it repeatedly.
Of course, when I called to cancel, the customer service rep went into his "what can we do to keep you?" speech. I don't know, stop sending people over to disconnect my service, maybe?