Is it just me? Am I the only one around that is just completely and totally fed up with our global-all-things-to-all-people-call-our-overseas-call-center-and-everything-will-be-just-peachy corporate customer service push-button society?
You’d think that with all the technology at our disposal and all the advancements made in recent decades, that we’d be getting the best-ever service from companies we decide to do business with.
I don’t know about you, but I find the exact opposite to be true, and the customer service experiences I have on a continuing basis just plain suck. It is a genuine challenge for me to find someone to help me that it not an idiot when I find myself in need of help with a product or service I have paid for.
That’s not to say that I am laying all the blame at the feet of the front-line workers out there who are answering the phones. There are some real bonehead decisions being made at the corporate levels as well, and since the higher-ups do the hiring, create the policies and make the big decisions, I single them out as the most prominent idiots.
You may have seen my earlier post regarding TracFone and the problem I encountered due to the way they track (or, more accurately, fail to track) the airtime customers use.
Well, I just had another enormously satisfying experience as a TracFone customer that I can’t wait to share with you!
Only a few moments ago, my telephone rang. Caller ID did not display a name but did display an 800 number, which always sends up red flags as a warning that this could be a telemarketing call.
After saying ‘hello’ about 5 times and preparing to hang up the phone, I finally heard something. It was TracFone with a recorded telemarketing message for one of their lame promotions.
Oh sure, I’ll buy another 400 minutes and hope my phone doesn’t die so you can tell me that you can only give me 150 minutes on my replacement phone because your service is not capable of tracking how many minutes I actually used. Yeah, right.
What TracFone does not realize is that there is one thing I hate worse than spam ‘ and believe me I hate spam about as much as you can possibly imagine ‘ and that one thing is telemarketing! And I hate recorded telemarketing calls most of all!
After all, a recorded telemarketing call is like saying: ‘Hell, we don’t value you enough to actually have a real, live person call you on the phone, so we’ll make a recording and stick it in a machine that just dials all of our customers so we can convince them to purchase more airtime minutes that we are unable to track, so we hope your phone does not break anytime soon.’
So they ring my telephone which essentially demands my immediate action and attention so I can hear a lame telemarketing pitch? They don’t want to pay a real person to call me on the phone because it’s too expensive, so they let a machine do it and apparently don’t care about interrupting whatever I happen to be doing at the time?
You would think that my experience with their sending spam to my phone in the form of text messages and my response to that would provide them with a hint that I am not the kind of person who appreciates sales pitches and that it may have occurred to them to take my name off the telemarketing list. Apparently not. See what I mean about lousy customer service these days?
I am happy to say that putting my telephone number on the ‘Do Not Call’ list has just about eliminated telemarketing calls to my home entirely. It is a very rare event around here these days.
Alas, as the ‘Do Not Call’ list does not apply to companies that you have a ‘relationship’ with, they can still call. Presumably, until you tell them to stop, which is what my recent e-mail message to them just advised them to do. Among other things.
My ‘relationship’ with them, however, is about two months from coming to an end. When the current airtime minutes on my phone expire towards the end of September, I intend to fetch the biggest, heaviest hammer I can locate on my workbench and smash my TracFone to bits with one mighty blow.
Boy, is that ever going to feel good. Come to think of it, I may grab my video camera and record the event and post it here on the site for the amusement of my visitors.
I guess that pretty much sums up my feelings about TracFone and their service, don’t you think?
[tags]tracfone, pre-paid wireless[/tags]
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