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Resolving customer service issues is designed by corporations to be convoluted and abhorrently difficult in order to make customers give up resulting in the loss of the customer’s money and/or the product or service.
I’m not planning on spending weeks detailing all of my customer service problems. Google would kick me off eBlogger. I just have a few more choice examples and a big finish so stick with me.
I bought a security screen door for $64 and by the time I got it partially installed I ended up spending $350 for it and it took a year. I fought a variety of issues with this project including store policies that were insane. I have the door now but I still have to put weather-stripping on it. I have put some on the door but I didn’t like the way it was working (which they suggested) so I recently purchased more and will soon affix it. I was given wrong information from day one on this project and I made dozens of phone calls and store visits and NEVER got it resolved. NEVER. I had to pay someone else to install it and NEVER got my money back I gave the store to install it. I fought and fought and fought and finally had to give up because by this time I had other more pressing issues to deal with than a screen door. Sometimes I have multiple customer service and product problems running at the same time. They require prioritizing and some of them must die a slow painful death of non-resolution. I never give up on the big issues.
Resolving customer service issues is designed by corporations to be convoluted and abhorrently difficult in order to make customers give up resulting in the loss of the customer’s money and/or the product or service.
I spent over a year on horrific Dell computer issues including my computer dying a miserable death and I lost EVERYTHING. Since then I purchased an external back up drive that is large enough to run a small airport. I had 99 phone calls, chats, and emails. My computer was sent to the factory and returned with a note that said it checked out perfectly. When I turned my computer on it crashed. I took vacation days to sit on the phone with technicians all over the planet. Eventually they sent a technician to my office and he sat in a small cubicle and replaced everything. He did not speak to me though I had dozens of questions. It was unbelievable. The computer then worked great for a while and then it died another horrible death. But----I had it all backed up on my external drive. I only had the computer about three years and I only got use out of it for about a year give or take. My daughter had the same exact computer and did not have the issues I had. We bought them during the same week.
Eventually my daughter bought a new computer and we gave her old one to my mother. It crashed and died immediately and we had to spend $350 to get it up and running. If you doubt any of this because Dell has such a great rep, go online and you will find THOUSANDS of unhappy customers. For quite some time I printed out many of these messages, until my printer died.
My daughter has had cell phone problems from the first cell phone she ever purchased. Each new cell phone comes with new problems.
I bought a new computer, a Mac, and I’m having daily trouble with it. I really can’t go into it because my stomach hurts.
Before I retired I had a list of suggested things to do prior to that happy day. One great suggestion was to replace older appliances. So I bought a dishwasher, a heavy-duty garbage disposal, a vacuum, and a few other things. I purchased these items a few days before Thanksgiving when I expected my family for the event. Two days before Thanksgiving my dishwasher flooded my entire kitchen and part of my dining room on my new carpet which was also on the list and was only a few months old at the time of the flood. The store told me to call a plumber and they would reimburse me. The plumber came (but not until after Thanksgiving) and gave me my receipt and I went to the store—and they wouldn’t reimburse me. The store manager said he didn’t have that authority. I asked why he told me to do that and he said he didn’t though I had written his name down when I called with the flood report. I NEVER got my money back. I got a puny store credit. It’s another store I’m not welcome in. I was vocal using my ever so fetching banshee style voice. (The vacuum stopped working slightly under a year and my mother bought the same vacuum and it too is sitting in my closet, broken. Of the items I bought at that store only one is working—the garbage disposal.)
Here’s the good part: the guy who installed the dishwasher originally was a psychopath. I’m only slightly exaggerating. He was supposed to be here at noon and got here at 6:00. He didn’t finish until 8:00. I called my daughter and made her stay on the line with me the entire time. He was scary and surly and scary. Did I mention scary? He made many personal calls and I heard partial conversations. They were unpleasant. He asked to use my bathroom and of course I said he could and while he was in there for a very long time I heard doors and cupboards opening and closing. When he left I threw many things away in my bathroom including my toilet paper and I washed everything down and laundered ALL of my towels. I tossed my toothbrush.
When I called the store after the great flood they tried to send him back. I refused to have him in my home. The store plumber then started calling me about every 15 or 20 minutes until I called the store and told them I was terrified. I told them I was going to call the police. There are MANY additional details to this horrible story but my nice plumber told me it was the worst job he had ever seen. I learned later the store plumber was relieved of his duties. I secretly went back to the store and pretended to shop for a dishwasher and got a different sales clerk. I told her I’d like it installed but that I heard they had a terrible installation guy. She said, “Oh, yes, he’s gone. They had to let him go.” She said this with wide eyes and exaggerated nodding of the head. I told her thanks and said I’d come back in a few days. I had to sneak in to do this because of the aforementioned vocal expressions on my last visit.
I can’t continue detailing all these problems. There are so many. The bed I bought that I was charged twice for (for over a year and ended up in collections), the car lube and oil when the plug was improperly replaced (three months to get a new engine and a trip to the lube and oil place with a police officer to demand they give me my car back which they had hidden in an effort to try to “fix” it), my roof leaked when my house was about three months old as did many others in the neighborhood (and we never ever were able to get a hold of the builder), my mother and daughter both were charged “club fees” of $14.95 a month when they purchased something online and after the purchase they were automatically registered in the “club.” [After research I learned this is a very successful con. Most people do not notice a mere $14.95 on their bill. Hundreds of thousands of people pay this before they find it and of course the company removes it immediately so that this way they won’t get into trouble, but they do not refund what was taken. How much do they make prior to discovery?]
These issues do not cover daily customer service contacts we’re all subjected to from unhappy customer service reps. That would take more blog space than I care to contribute. Except for the mouthwash incident in part 1, which I absolutely had to share. CSRs are often poorly trained and are on the receiving end of customer abuse all day every day. The very nature of the position is adversarial.
CSRs are not paid well, many do not have benefits, and many are on their feet all day. I get it. But some will move on and leave those jobs and build careers while others will remain in service jobs forever. I can say this because I’ve had a few low-paying demoralizing jobs including customer service jobs and having been in those positions for a time I soon made plans to get out of them by going to night school and acquiring skills to find better work with better benefits. And I did. Youth is a gateway to all types of employment abuse and degradation.
And now Toyota. For years they have been held in the highest esteem but in reality they just had excellent customer service and kept their problems concealed by fixing problems on a case-by-case basis. They also did not outsource parts as much as they do today which they’ve done to lower costs. This dangerous debacle was too big and they were too slow to hop on it. I’m sure the hearing can be viewed online if you have a strong stomach. I think YouTube has the entire hearing. Catch the interview by Mr. & Mrs. Smith. You’ll want to buy a horse.
We are controlled and owned by disreputable corporations and most of them are not even owned or operated in our own country. Everything is outsourced and we have homeless people and people living in poverty who can’t find decent jobs because corporations don’t care. Every time someone criticizes Michael Moore or Ralph Nader or Greenpeace or any organization that fights the battle for safer goods and a clean planet should remember that the next time a family gets wiped out on a freeway because of a defective car part made in China. Some customer service issues are much more dangerous than a faulty bottle of mouthwash. And I can’t even begin to go into the Saudis and their oil hold on the world while they live in luxury that is obscene and absolutely criminal.
And Congress. Can you say lobbyist? Corporations contribute to their longevity by barely operating within the law to elect these people. Many in Congress have wealth based on stock in corporations who screw us.
For those interested in how our goods are produced watch “China Blue” below. Almost everything we purchase and use is made in China. If watching this show doesn’t hurt us to our soul then there’s no hope for us. We have hoards of unemployed in our country due to outsourcing and people in China are literally being enslaved for “wages” of cents a day. Many of our large stores contract with China for these goods, visit the factories, and accept the lies of management even though anyone with eyes could see the truth. Watch this show and study the expressions of the corporate visitors. Prepare to puke.
/www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/
The following article in “Business Week” explains the “China Price” and how it affects Toyota and corporations. No one can compete with China as the “China Blue” documentary points out only too well.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_08/b3921062.htm
Resolving customer service issues is designed by corporations to be convoluted and abhorrently difficult in order to make customers give up resulting in the loss of the customer’s money and/or the product or service.
Just yesterday (3/6/2010) I viewed a news story that Whole Foods’ “organic” line of some items are made in China. It’s written on the bag. Would YOU eat food made in China?
I’m going to plant flowers now.
http://www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
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