Thanks to Sid Prince for sending me a link to a Wall Street Journal article that’s a mirror image to my ongoing eFax problem. In the article, Jason Zweig relates his story about a defunct AOL account that had somehow incurred charges. When he received a call from a collection agency, Jason decided to call AOL. It went downhill from there. In an almost identical way, the company argued that he, not they, made the mistake/ordered the service/is in big trouble. Reading his story, I became frustrated all over again. And I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it.
What’s upsetting me most is that this is becoming the new business model. Some companies – big ones like AOL even – are adopting a “customer is wrong even when we are” attitude. For some unknown reason, these companies are operating under the premise that squeezing unnecessary charges out of new customers, former customers, or existing customers is somehow going to help them reach their profit margins.
What’s funny about this is we talk to each other. In fact, social networking is so ingrained in our psyches that we not only blog about it, we Twitter it, Facebook it, Link it In, and send our upset out in multiple ways to multiple thousands, who then pass the word down the consumer food chain. In both these examples, neither AOL or eFax will be getting business anytime soon from readers of Jason’s publication or this blog. If someone posts the link to his blog or mine on Twitter, it’s doubtful those readers will want to spend quality time with these merchants. So exactly where is this hard line with customers going to take them? Is that flushing I hear?
So, you guilty companies, hiring cheap help from another country to man your customer “service” lines and argue endlessly with your customers – how is that saving you money? Creating an unwelcome, unruly atmosphere around your products and, more to the point, your services is already starting to bite you in the backside. Who wants to deal with people who are building a reputation of bullying, hiding charges, and doing all they can to help their customers part with their money unnecessarily?
Readers – what are your horror stories?
UHaul. For a long time. But I'm free, I'm free, I'm free!
Chase Bank. Don't even get me started.
Dell — which outsources everything and their phone techs say things like, "women in my country do not make demands" and "I get to decide if you get a home service tech and you don't" –even though there's a 3 year at-home service contract bought and paid for.
UHaul is resolved — it's on the record that I left because of irregular accounting procedures and lousy customer service.
I switched to Mac and am in the proces of ending my relationship with Dell, and don't plan to be back.
Chase will take a little longer, but it will happen.
And I'm dealing with more of the mom-and-pop individual businesses; to hell with corporate America! I will only spend money on businesses that VALUE me and give good customer service — while keeping jobs in the US and hiring people who respect US contracts. I'm tired of dealing with abusive customer service personnel who believe that, because THEY are not based in the US, they don't have to abide by the contracts their company made with the customers. It's happened too often.
And I'm tired of employees hiding behind "company policy". If you do something wrong, it is still wrong, whether it's company policy or not.
Oh, thank God, Devon! I was wondering when you'd get that resolved. Had no doubt you would, but it's insane the amount of wrangling we have to do to get satisfaction these days.
On the bright side, my local Home Depot seems to be bending over backwards to be helpful. Hubby and I were in there last weekend and couldn't find the lower cost air filters we usually buy. A Home Depot worker was trying to help us find them, but was unsuccessful. We were reaching for the higher priced ones instead, when, on the spot, he discounted them for us 50% – and let us buy a case of them at that price. We were pleasantly surprised, but we also had a cart full of other stuff so perhaps the guy figured he could afford to discount.
RCN has overcharged me for the past three months. They gave me a wireless router without telling me I was going to be charged a monthly rental fee on to of my monthly internet fees. I then called and said "I don't want the router, come pick it up!" They refused, so I mailed it back (with insurance) at my own expense. Even though someone has already confirmed that it was received, I continue to be charged for the router that I no longer have!
The worst part is that every time I call I get a different person and they refuse to connect me to someone I've talked with in the past (I always write down the peron's name), so I have re-explain my entire history (which is inexplicably not recorded anywhere in my file). Usually they act like I'm lying to them and eventually they tell me they'll resolve the issue. But then I get charged for the router the next month and there's no credit for the previous months when I should not have been paying for a piece of equipment I don't have. I think they're counting on the fact that I'll eventually give up fighting for my $4.95 + tax per month. They underestimate my sense of righteousness!
My favorite game to play with these companies is the repeat your story 50 times one. I call to get something resolved and I get bounced around to several departments with statements like, "That's for the Accounts dept." which tells me, "That's for the service dept." and it goes on and on. I get to tell my story over and over and over again.
My local telco and ISP. Returned from family visit over Christmas last year to find our internet connection dead. Really dead. I confess, I could have been a phreaker when I was young, so I tested the line myself. Yep, dead, dead, dead. Called the telco on our other line to report the problem. Telco says their files show everything's working fine. They won't help me until I go out and buy a new modem/router. I argue, but they insist, so out I go into a cold, dark Canadian winter. Phone company checks with the vendor for proof of purchase, because they can't detect it on the line (yeah, 'cause it's DEAD). Company says they sent a guy to check and everything's fine, so now I gotta do a bunch of stuff to my computers and network or they'll have to charge me for the service call. Your guy's a vampire, I wonder? I mean, otherwise, how would he have come up our walk and checked the line without leaving footprints in the snow? It goes on like this for the better part of two weeks, until one morning I look out an see a phone company van parked in the alley. "How's it goin'? Cold enough for ya?" "Line's dead," he replies. "Looks like it broke back that way somewheres," he adds, pointing toward the frozen horizon. I'm still waiting for a refund for the service I didn't get for those weeks. Don't even get me started on their call-display database debacle that resulted in hundreds of dollars of expense plus paid-for-but-never-got services before that.
Where to start?
SBC – I called in with a simple question and discover two weeks later that my voicemail was disconnected. I was wondering why I hadn't had any voicemails for a while, then one night I couldn't get to the phone and it rang six, seven, eight times. When I called SBC, no one apologized for the error. In fact they claimed I'd ordered them to disconnect my voicemail, my very lifeblood. In fact, they said there would be a $10 fee to reactivate the service I had never canceled! I made it clear that was not acceptable. They finally found several "credits" to balance it out. This was just one of many customer service problems I had with SBC and SBC/Yahoo within about a six week period.
Comcast – I caved and "upgraded" to digital cable when they had a promo for a free digital box and no price increase for 12 months (after that it's only supposed to be $1.25 more per month). Free box. Free shipping. Yet my next bill included an $11.95 charge for shipping and handling. One call and it was resolved. But how many people just paid the bill without reading it first?
Illinois Department of Revenue – I just got a letter saying I underpaid my 2008 state taxes by something like $30. I reviewed their statement and finally found where I'd made my math error. It was on one of those convoluted steps, like: "If the amount on line 12 is more than the amount on line 7, subtract the amount on line 6 from line 22, and multiply by 3.25%. Enter the greater of the values on line 14." I accept my math error, and even the 18-cents of interest. What I don't accept is a $3.50 "late payment fee" when they've already cashed my check for the bulk of what I owed.
This is why I check every bill very closely – these days no companies are above adding new fees and charges to bulk up their bottom line.
Susan, don't get me started on RCN! I watch their bills like a hawk every month becuase they're committed to increasing my bill however they can.
I think I explained in a recent post that I'd called them about 4 months ago to reduce my bill. They said they had a new plan that would reduce my bill to $110 a month. Great. I signed up.
Last month, though, I was back up to $140 per month. I called and asked why, and RCN had broken out about 20 cable channels that I got as part of my $110 package and started charging $16 a month for them. I had to cancel them.
My bill was reduced to $120, but I'll be watching carefully because I'm sure they'll add new charges.
And, Susan, did you read your latest RCN notice? It purports to be able to charge you a $5 fee for downcharges. In other words, if you catch RCN upping your bill and call and cancel the services they've added, they'll charge you $5 for the pleasure.
If I hadn't already been using my RCN Internet account for business for the past five years, I'd dump their butts pronto!