Customer Service

I guess I am once again going to talk about customer service. It just took 45 minutes on the phone to accomplish something with my cable company. Mind you, the thing I accomplished was to schedule a service technician to come to my house. I didn’t address any of my concerns or questions about my cable service, just got a tech scheduled to come to my house.

Last weekend my wife and I were talking about the fact that we were paying for some options on our cable service that we were not using and others which were not functioning. Being a man of action I pulled out the latest bill which informed me that I could call or contact them by email. Since it was the weekend I opted to send an email. I wrote out my concerns and later that day I received an auto-reply telling me that my email had been received and I would hear from someone within two business days. That’s a good joke.

On Wednesday, three business days after the auto-reply, I wrote another email asking if anyone was going to call me about my email. On Friday, five business days after the auto-reply, I gave up on email and called the customer service phone number. The first person who answered the phone, after five minutes wandering through the phone menu and sitting on hold, informed me that my account showed nothing about my email and my concerns. This was disconcerting since I had listed my name and account number as part of the email the weekend before. To help this young lady out I pulled up the email I had sent to her company and read it to her. Her reaction was that maybe I should be talking to tech support and they could walk me through my issues, this of course would require me to be sitting in front of my TV and cable box. Not much help I told her, I was not sitting at home but at my office on my lunch break, the crunching sound you hear is me eating my carrots in an effort to lose weight, lower my blood pressure and address my cholesterol.

After almost ten minutes I asked to speak with a supervisor. I was again put on hold and about ten minutes later, I did check the time and it was actually eight minutes, that’s close to ten. The man who came on the phone, I later learned his name was Dallas, had such a thick accent I first asked him his name and then where he was calling from, based on what I was hearing I figured I was talking to someone in India. Dallas assured me he was in Seattle and would help me. Again I found out that the people answering the phone for customer service could not access the request for assistance I had sent by email almost a week earlier. I read my email to Dallas.

As I described my issues Dallas asked what my TV screen said when I encountered the different issues. So, again I told Dallas, this time, that I was not sitting in front of my TV, after all it was the middle of the day on a Friday and I do have a job in order to pay for my cable service. Finally out of frustration I informed Dallas that the only way my issues were going to be resolved was for him to send out a technician/repairman, Monday morning would be a good time. We had two other repairmen already scheduled to return to finish appliance repairs after having to order parts. So Dallas scheduled the repairman to come out on Monday, at last something accomplished.

Friday afternoon, about an hour after I got off the phone with Dallas, I got an email from the technical services department of the cable company. It apologized for the inconvenience but it should all be good now that the technician was scheduled to come out on Monday. Basically, no harm no foul. Wow, great customer service.
The customer service saga continues. For two weeks our oven has not worked and our clothes dryer has been torn apart. This is why I pay for a home warranty. The repair of these items was covered under our home warranty. We called for service, the repairman were dispatched and came out at the time they said they would. Two different repairman from two different companies for two home appliances that either one of them could have repaired but two different companies just the same.

Both repairmen determined that they needed to replace parts on the appliances, the oven and dryer. Of course neither of these men carried the parts on their trucks, nor as it turned out did their respective companies have the parts back at their shops or warehouses. Then we were informed that the parts had to come from the home warranty company’s warehouse in Dallas, Texas. I’m in northern California but the parts are coming from Dallas, Texas. Makes a lot of sense right. The repairmen were at my house on Tuesday, on Thursday they both, coincidentally, called to say the respective parts were in but they were not available to come out until Monday. So, this would be our second weekend without an oven and a clothes dryer. What could we do? We set the appointments for Monday morning, my wife was able to take the day off so now she was scheduled to have three different repairmen in our home working on different appliances on Monday morning.

Could this get more convoluted? Those who have dealt with even the most minor of home repairs know the answer is yes.

On Sunday afternoon my wife received a phone call informing her that the man repairing the oven had to report for jury duty on Monday morning and may not be able to make it on Monday. My wife got off the phone and told me and I questioned this statement. When did courts start calling people on the weekend to tell them to show up for jury duty the next day? Every time I’ve gotten a notice to show up for jury duty I had at least two weeks notice. But what could we do?

Monday morning, before any of the service people arrived my wife received a phone call telling her that the serviceman repairing the oven had to report for jury duty that morning so they needed to reschedule the appointment to Wednesday and they were sure he would be at our house on Wednesday. The cable repairman showed up right on time and seems to have addressed the technical issues, we still have to address billing issues. About the time the dryer repairman was due to show up his office called to say he had been in an accident and they would need to reschedule. That was the final straw for my wife. After a few choice words the company assured her someone would be at our home that day to finish the dryer repair.

So, it is Wednesday afternoon. The dryer is working, the cable is working better, and the oven repairman was on his way to the house this morning at 10 AM. I haven’t been able to get hold of my so I hope that when I return home this evening I will find that our oven is working again.

Throughout all of this my wife and I have spent several hours on the phone with the cable company, the home warranty company and each of the service companies contracted by these people to complete the repairs. We have written checks to each company for our deductible, we have rearranged schedules and done everything we have been asked to do to get these repairs completed. In return we have been lied to, left hanging without return calls, asked to diagnose the problems ourselves, advised that we could probably fix the problems ourselves and ultimately been treated like we were spoiled children asking for one more treat after a day of gorging ourselves on treats. During all of this I had to deal with a car dealership where I had a gift certificate for service from my children, but that is another story entirely.

So, all of this again prompts the question what has happened to the concept of customer service?