Monday, March 29, 2010

Customer service? A tiny rant.

So, I have a credit card with a large box electronics store with a blue and yellow logo involving a tag, not to name names. Their billing is handled by another company, and apparently has been outsourced. I opened my statement today to pay my bill, and my last payment was not applied to my account, although the check has cleared my bank.

Now, I have posted cash in a past life, and occasionally a person can make a mistake and post a payment to the wrong account. We're all humans, not a huge deal, and easily fixed. I have researched and handled these problems before.

So, I called the customer service number and reached a CSR who did not help me. At all. I explained what had happened, and asked if I could give him the check number so he could research my problem. He said he could not access that information. I have to get a copy of my cancelled check and send it to the customer service address. I asked if they needed a hard copy of the check, and he replied, no, they needed a copy of the check mailed to the customer service address. Okay, we were not communicating well. Frustration.

I got online with my bank, and this unnamed store processes payments as echecks. There is no copy of a cancelled check. I've sent an email to my bank asking for some sort of hardcopy of the transaction so I can try and get this taken care of. I am not a happy MAB right now.

Here is my point: I have worked in customer service and accounting, and have taken two hundred million (approximately) phone calls in my life. At no point would I have refused to help a customer or research their problem. An unhappy customer will stop being your customer. At this point, I will hesitate to ever buy from this company again. If they can't back up their sales with decent customer service, then I don't want to deal with them.

When it comes to my etsy shop, I will do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. That is part of my job, and usually one of my favorite parts of my job. That is also why I like to shop from etsy and other smaller businesses. They value my business. 99.4% of the time, there is no problem. The shop gets their money and provides their service or product, and they never hear from me, except for good feedback or other praise and appreciation. Heck, I take the post office people brownies on a regular basis, because they're so wonderful to me. But, when it comes to that 0.6% of the time when there is an issue, I want, and we all want, service that at least makes us feel like we're valued. If we don't get that, there are plenty of places out there to shop.

Okay, I feel better. Hopefully, my bank, which has always given me great service, will be able to provide me with the info to clear this up. If not, this unnamed store has not heard the end of me.

3 comments:

  1. Nice Vent, Laura :) I think I feel some relief too :) More and more it is getting harder to even get hold of a CSR. I think the store in question is going to be around for a while unfortunately they do not have any strong competition right now.

    I always insist on talking to a supervisor as soon as I get the run around, I figure if they are going to give me a hard time, I can return the favour.

    Although, I have had CSRs hang up on my before now.

    Hope it all gets resolved soon, :) T.

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  2. Ugh.. that sounds like a nightmare.. I hate when companies have sucky customer service. Hope it all gets sorted out without too much more grief!

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  3. Get 'em, MAB!!!!!! Put raw tuna in their cars . . . . um, if you happen to know where in the world they live and what cars they drive, and feel like spending the money to go there and stalk them and put tuna in their cars . . . . .probably not the best plan. Why the heck did you suggest we do that???

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