Wednesday
Miles: 9,951
Mood:
Confession #90- I hate customer service.
For once, the weatherman was right. It was a gorgeous morning. I rode in to work today on the motorcycle, and it couldn't have been more perfect. A crisp but comfortable 55 degrees and not a single car attempted to hit me. The only hitch was that I forgot my glasses. So, you'll have to forgive me if there are any severe misspellings, or if I've accidentally posted this to the Jewish radical Christmas boycott site.
Do you have your 2007 calendars yet? If not, go buy one now! No, buy 3. Use 1 and then put the other 2 in separate, secure locations. Sure, you think I'm mad, but here's a story that will change your mind.
A couple of years ago I decided I needed a calendar. It was around May of 2005, and I wanted a calendar that would go up on my wall so I could mark important dates. So I stroll over to Barnes & Noble and look in their calendar section (which, actually, was quite small...apparently calendars are 'seasonal'). Anyway, I look through the rack...and all they have are calendars for 2006. Not a single 2005 calendar. I thought it odd, but bought a book instead.
Later that week I ended up at the mall and went to a specialty calendar store. They only sell calendars. Again, no 2005 calendars, only 2006. So now I'm quite curious and I go ask the customer service guy at the counter.
"Where are your 2005 calendars?" I ask, and he immediately gets this look like I'm some kind of stupid moron. "Um, sir," he says oh-so politely because he's such a big-shot smart-azz all-knowing calendar guy, "we don't sell any 2005 calendars anymore."
So we talk for a minute about why that is. I'm confused, and he acts like its the most normal thing in the world. So finally I say, "Well, its 2005...I want a calendar, so you have absolutely no calendars that you SELL IN 2005 that actually HAVE DATES IN 2005?!?"
Yes! He says, and shows me an 18 month calendar that started in August 2005 or something, on through December 2006. But everything in 2005 was crammed onto one page with tiny little boxes that I'd need to hire a mouse to write in.
So finally I give up and say, "Look...are you saying that the calendar company is not making calendars that I can buy, go home, and actually use? I can't use any calendar I buy for 5-8 months??"
"Why would they sell 2005 calendars?" This guy was serious. He didn't understand why I could possibly want a 2005 calendar in the middle of 2005.
"Well, lets say that someone HAD a 2005 calendar. And they lost it. Or someone stole it. How would they go about replacing it?"
"Um...I don't know, sir."
Bingo. He had no clue, because it wasn't included in the 30 minute training video he watched when he was hired.
I hate customer service.
So this year for Christmas I decide to upgrade my wife's cellphone. The last thing I want to do is deal with a cellphone company, but what can you do? I go online and do the upgrade, everything goes smoothly, it reports that my new phone will be delivered to my house within 5 business days. Woo hoo! Gift accomplished.
Then 1 hour later my wife calls me up and tells me her cellphone just stopped working.
Oh for crying out loud, I think to myself. I upgraded her phone, so Cingular deactivated her existing one before we even got the new one in the mail. Good one, guys.
Later that evening I call up Cingular and talk to a rep. Her phone hasn't been working all day, and I explain the situation. She's happy to help, but says there's nothing wrong with the phone and it should be working fine. They didn't do anything, she claims.
So while I have her on the phone I decide to ask her about the $18 "upgrade charge" they are hitting me with. She starts giving me a reason, and I quickly realize that its the same script that was on the online automated help web program at their website. I suspect that she is just entering my questions into their own website and giving me the answers, but I say nothing.
Anyway, she says it's to cover their "activation costs". So I ask her how I activate the new phone.
"You can either put in the a new SIM card we will provide," she says, "or you can use your old SIM card from your old phone."
Right. I know how GSM phones work. If I just swap the cards, my new phone will have all the addresses, etc from the old phone, and it will work just like the old phone.
"So, since I paid for the phone, and the shipping for the phone, and I'm just swapping my SIM card, will you refund my upgrade charge?"
She laughs, "No of course not, sir."
"But you just said the charge is to cover activation. Cingular isn't doing anything, I'm doing all the work, so there's no reason for you to charge me a fee. Technically, I should be charging YOU!"
She laughs again, and reminds me that the $18 is discounted from the $36 they charge new customers.
"Yes, but with a new customer, Cingular actually has to do something to activate the new phone. So since we've established that there's no activation behind your activation fee," I say, "can I have the fee refunded?"
"No," she says, "everyone has to pay the upgrade fee."
AH HA!
We finally got to the root of this fee, and pretty much all other fees associated with anything else (including the telephone company's federal regulatory fee that the government revoked yet phone company's still charge us for)...since most of us don't speak "legalese", I'll translate the answer for you:
"Because we can."
Note to readers: Incidentally, less than 10 minutes after I hang up with Cingular my wife calls and tells me her phone is working again. Something smells fishy. On a side note, I'm terrified to see my next bill. Whenever you 'contact' the phone company, the reps do all kinds of crazy things to your account. Who knows what 'features' they added to my account without asking for them. As with all changes, upgrades, new service, etc, I dread the 2 months of constant calls to the service provider to fix whatever mistakes they made. How do I know? Well when I called to find out why her phone was working, the rep said, "oh, there's some other service they added and I'm removing that now". Right. I selected "my existing plan" in the upgrade and I read word for word the entire agreement and associated documents, and there was no mention of anything being added with the upgrade. But hey, they just do it anyway. Why? Because they can.
Neoprene gloves under Olympic winter riding gloves still didn't cut it. My fingertips felt like they were frozen solid. My next experiment will be to try using hand warmers inside the gloves. My quest is to get through the winter season w/o breaking down and buying $140 heated gloves. Raining and 50 degrees today. The experiment will have to wait.
there are only 2 kinds of bikes: It's a Ninja... look that one's a Harley... oh there's a Ninja... Harley...Ninja...
