Rants and Raves
I must be getting old. I now find myself ranting about ...
Lately, I have found myself becoming increasingly displeased with the level of customer service at some institutions
and companies. I don't know if this is just a sign that I'm getting older and grumpier, or whether customer service
really is becoming a lost art. It must be a combination, but the latter is definitely a large part of it. I recently
saw a report on TV about self-serve checkout at the grocery store: You pick it out, you scan it, you bag it, etc.
In any case, I really have no tolerance for poor customer service and for poor service in general, from wait staff at
restaurants to airlines to repair shops to long distance companies to e-commerce. So, this page shall serve as my
pulpit from which I rant and rave about both the good and the bad in the world of the consumer. So, check out the good,
the bad, and some customer-service-related links.
CDnow has been pretty nice to me. My best customer service experience with them came about
through a potentially very bad experience. I ordered two CDs from them. They had to be shipped
from different warehouses, so they were in different shipments. Well, one arrived, but the other
somehow never made it into my mailbox. I e-mailed CDnow customer service and told them about the
situation. They asked me to wait till five days after the shipment and then contact them again.
OK, fair enough, sometimes the U.S. Postal Service takes its time. After the five days passed
without a CD in my mailbox, I e-mailed CDnow again and they kindly and promptly re-sent the missing
CD. I have no definitive proof, but I suspect the USPS
of losing my shipment.
Most of the books I've bought in the past couple of years have been bought through Amazon.com.
On occasion, they have upgraded my shipping to USPS Express or something like that. Very nice, good customer service. Unlike some places,
they're quite responsive.
As a former employee of MCI and MCI WorldCom,
I now feel free to say that MCI WorldCom's long distance
customer service ranks at the very bottom of my experience. As an MCI and MCI WorldCom employee, I did receive a
$25 credit towards long distance charges each month. That was nice. I had selected the MCI One Net Savings Plan,
which is 9 cents per minute Monday through Saturday and 5 cents per minute on Sunday. The invoices for long distance
charges were automatically billed to a Visa card. It was all very nice and convenient, until ...
In Oct. 1998, I moved from one city in Colorado to another.
I imagined that transferring my current long distance plan would be relatively painless. However, I continued to
receive a bill each month for my previous phone number. The only charges on that invoice, of course, were
various fees and taxes, since I wasn't making calls from that number. That issue was cleared up relatively quickly,
but then I started receiving two invoices per month for my current account, one on the seventh and one on the 22nd of
every month. And not only was I getting these two electronic invoices per month, but I was also getting billed for these
charges on my U S WEST local phone bill! Looking closely at these invoices, I realized that the per-minute rates I was being charged were insane!
Rates per minute as high as 24 cents per minute!!! Nobody in their right mind pays 24 cents per minute for residential long
distance service! I have been complaining about this ridiculous situation since December or January with no
results except the occasional credit when MCI WorldCom will admit that there is "a known billing problem" with my account.
Well, things have not improved with MCI WorldCom long distance. Their customer service people have practically
stopped responding to me and, when I did get a manager on the phone, she told me the same old story. They have no
idea when the problem will be fixed. They can offer me no assurances. Frankly, I am sickened by this. A big thumbs down
and a raspberry to MCI WorldCom! I have left them for AT&T, Cable & Wireless (you get 7 cents per minute weekdays
and 5 cents weekends if you also use them as an ISP).
As of this writing, August 22, 1999, I am still disputing various charges from MCI WorldCom. They are still charging
me for "Personal 800 Number Service." It's a minimal amount, but it's still insane.
This is the apartment community where I live. Let's start at the beginning. When my girlfriend and I moved in,
we discovered an apartment with dust bunnies along the corners on the carpet. Worse, the painters (using some kind
of spray device), had managed to get little paint 'dust' on the wood doors and on top of the aforementioned
dust bunnies! There were some small cracks in the ceiling, small pockmarks all over the bathroom floor linoleum.
Well, after I made a visit to the leasing office to complain to the manager, things were, in general cleaned up, but
there's no reason why our apartment was not in better shape when we moved in.
Soon after we moved in, we were informed, via a piece of paper left on our door, that the late fee would be increased
by five dollars. We were instructed to sign this piece of paper and return it to the leasing office. Well, I'm sorry, but
I signed a lease that states what the late fee is. According to the lease, 'community policies' may be changed if the
change is in writing and distributed to all units. In my mind, the late fee is not a 'community policy, but a term of the
lease. According to the management company, Carmel, an Arapahoe County judge decided that the late fee was a community policy,
and that the rent and the term (duration) of the lease is the only thing which requires a signed agreement between the lessee
and the lessor. I have not investigate this alleged court decision, but I intend to.
More recently, I came home one day to find a notice on my door that the parking lots were going to be "restripped [sic]"
the following day and that all cars must be moved before 8 AM of the following day or else they would be towed at the "owners [sic]"
expense. You may wonder how a parking lot can be "restripped." It turns out that what they meant was "re-striped," as in
the stripes denoting the parking spaces would be repainted. (As an aside, I have found that the spelling and grammar
abilities of apartment management personnel are atrocious at best.)
Well, far be it of me to complain or anything, but less than twenty-four hours notice that all cars must be moved or
be subject to towing fees is ridiculous, irresponsible, and downright inconsiderate. Having arrived home minutes before the
leasing office was to close, I rushed over there with the notice in hand. Another resident arrived soon after I did, also carrying
the notice with her. I asked the representative, "What the hell is this?" After arguing with her for a few minutes, I got nothing
from her except the telephone number of the Carmel Company, the company that owns/manages Greenwood point and the name of someone to
speak to. The other woman was also there to complain. Her husband and she were leaving town for a week the following morning and
were taking one of their cars to the airport and leaving one at the apartment. What were they supposed to do. My thoughts were the
same, "What if I had been out of town this week on business!?!?"
The following day, I attempted to reach Joe Saunders at Carmel Company as well as Greenwood Point. Trying to reach anyone at Greenwood
Point was pointless. They were probably not answering their phones at all that day. So, I wrote a rather scathing letter to them and
faxed it to both Greenwood Point and Carmel Company. Trying to reach the Mr. Saunders at Carmel Company was
also rather difficult. I left two voicemail messages for him. Late in the afternoon, when he apparently was in the office,
the receptionist gave me an attitude when I tried to get him on the phone.
I finally did get to speak with Mr. Saunders. I expressed my displeasure with the management and this recent travesty of "restripping"
the parking lots. He basically let me vent my frustration and told me that people whose cars were towed would not be charged. He was
the one who informed me about this alleged court case in which a judge ruled that they can increase the late fee without requiring the
lessor's signature. I told him that I have absolutely no intention of ever leasing an apartment from any Carmel Company property.
Putting absolutely no trust in Carmel Company, Joe Saunders or Greenwood Point, I visited the leasing office when I got home from work
that day. I asked the representative who was there if any residents had been towed and, if there were, would they be charged for the fees.
She told me that "no, we're not charging them," and with an annoying arrogance, "but we really could have." I not-so-politely told her
what I thought of the management of Greenwood Point.
When I first got my own apartment in Colorado, I got hooked up to U S WEST for local phone service.
At the time, having just gotten a job in Colorado, I did not have the $160 deposit necessary to get
long distance service. So, I thought, I'll just save some money for a few weeks. However, when I
got my first phone bill, there was a $2.00 charge for "long distance blocking!" What? I didn't
request "long distance blocking!" What kind of a "service" is long distance blocking? Well, after
speaking to a U S WEST customer service rep, I was told that U S WEST is "allowed" to charge this
because I didn't pay the $160 deposit for long distance service. I'm sorry, but it makes no sense
to charge people $2 per month for a NON-SERVICE.
There's a whole long story behind this one. Basically, Impulse! was a "middle-man" between
consumers and other merchants, including Egghead. I made an order for a Philips Brilliance 107
monitor through Impulse!. I wanted to get a real order confirmation and a tracking number for
the shipment. I never actually got one after a few weeks of attempting to get answers from
both Impulse! and Egghead. Basically, Impulse! said they'd sent the order to Egghead, and Egghead
was of no help with anything. I finally did receive my monitor and dropped the matter, since I
was exhausting myself trying to get these people to give me a simple confirmation, a tracking number,
an order total, including shipping, etc.
A somewhat minor complaint, but a fair one: I requested that a tracking number be e-mailed to me when the scanner I purchased had been shipped.
Since Shopping.com does no distribution itself, they had to get it from whatever third party actually sent the thing to me. Well, I went to lunch
one day while I was at work. When I got back, I had a scanner waiting for me in my cubicle. Also in my email Inbox was an e-mail with a tracking number.
It's kind of pointless to have a shipping tracking number when you already have the package.
Tom Martino's The Troubleshooter: "Dedicated to helping consumers [...] fights rip-offs, cheats, con artists and anyone else preying on consumers. He also provides valuable information for preventing problems."
More to be added soon.
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