aubreyturner.org

April 14, 2004

Customer Service Quickies

When I deal with various companies as a customer I'm fairly easy to please, but at the same time it's easy to lose me (it's also easy to lose me before I become a customer). I had a few incidents over the past week or so that by themselves weren't big enough for posts of their own. Here they are:

  1. Requiring a phone call for simple things is something that tends to turn me off. I've dealt with so many poorly organized phone mazes that have wasted so much of my time and left me so frustrated that I dread calling any company these days.

    The knob on my washing machine broke recently. It was made out of plastic, so I suppose it was inevitable, although in Whirlpool's favor is the fact that it lasted nearly 9 years. I went to their website to see about ordering a replacement. It took me a while to find the section on parts, but all it did was give their 800 number. It seems to me that ordering parts should be a simple operation that can be automated. But no, Whirlpool was mostly interested in trying to help me find a local service center. I found another vendor online that stepped me through the process of identifying the part. Interestingly enough, they had a replacement part made by a third-party that used metal threads and was $6.00 cheaper than the plastic Whirlpool part. From the front they were indistinguishable (at least in the pictures on the website, which were well done and used a grid pattern underneath the part for visual reference).
  2. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently left a complimentary paper on my driveway with an offer for a six month subscription for $30.00 (including weekends). I decided to take them up on it, since they cover North Tarrant county fairly well (their national coverage reeks of bias, and don't get me started on their editorial cartoons, though). A few days after I subscribed I got a phone call. It started with a recording that said it was the Star-Telegram's customer service department calling to confirm my subscription and that I was happy with it. It then asked me to wait on the line for the next available operator. I said a few bad words and slammed the receiver down. There's nothing that infuriates me quite like being called by a machine and then put on hold. If you're going to call me at least do me the courtesy of having someone on the line when I pick up. I almost called back to cancel the subscription, but I counted to 10 first. I noticed that they finally had a human call me today to follow up, though. Maybe if enough of us refuse to deal with automated callers they'll get the message.
  3. Ignoring my express wishes is a good way for a company to be on my shit-list forever. Rainsoft called a few months ago and I told them to put me on their do-no-call list. For the past week they'd been calling again on a daily basis between 6:00 and 7:00pm. I'd been ignoring them based on the Caller ID until last night. When I picked up they said the exact same thing they said before ("we'd like to welcome you to the neighborhood, etc..."). I told them I'd asked to be put on their do-not-call list previously and that my number is on the national and state do-not-call lists. It's always a bad sign when a company ignores the do-not-call list, so I did some checking into them. From what I could find it appears that Rainsoft is a high-pressure telesales firm that sells water softening equipment using questionable tactics (and at inflated prices). If they'd have left me alone I'd have never bothered to look them up. Now they're on my permanent do-not-use list and I'm writing about them here.
  4. Calling me after I've made an order to try to sell me more stuff is a generally bad idea. If I'd have wanted the other stuff I'd have bought it already. Thompson Cigar did this to me. At first they pretended the call was to follow-up on the order and give me status. Then they started in on trying to sell me a membership in their club (where they ship you cigars every month). I don't smoke enough cigars to warrant any kind of club. Given my habits, I'm probably better off going to a local shop anyway. That way I can buy singles and try out new brands. With online/catalog ordering you frequently have to buy a whole box (or a minimum of 5 or 10, depending on how expensive the brand is).
Update: Added last item after the entry was published. I got distracted while writing the post and forgot to add this one.

Posted by Aubrey at April 14, 2004 12:47 PM | TrackBack
Comments
Site Meter