Filed under: general
not…
so last week love-of-my-life karen shared a little story about some not-so-stellar customer service… well i have one too…
i’m of the belief that customer service is really really important… and if you treat me poory chances are you’re not going to enjoy my business for long…
well we recently moved… from seattle to toronto… and in the process we sold our old house and bought a new one… and on the selling side we went through a program that involved getting some cash back from a lender if we used one of their referred real estate folks… a pretty good deal and it’s a significant chunk o’ change… (all parties in this little yarn will remain anonymous… not because they don’t deserve to be called out as poops when appropriate but because the last time i mentioned my frustrations with a company i got an inordinate amount of emails from folks somehow thinking that i worked for ‘em and wanting me to fix their similar problems… that was interesting…)
well the check’s supposed to be in the mail 6-8 weeks after closing which in our case woulda been around
… i dunno… early-to-mid october… well it’s now mid-to-late january and we haven’t seen it…
so i call the seattle real estate guy… who’s been paid ages ago… and who’s out running around trying to sell other houses… and i ask him to see what he can find out…
after a week of follow up calls from me i’m finally told that the lender folks are gonna give me a call to discuss… which they do a day later… and the lady i talk to is really nice and apologetic and says yes, your check never mailed and we really want to try and rectify this whole situation for you…
well… i’m thinkin’ that’s a fine start…
why… i wonder… y’know… just out of curiosity… didn’t the check get mailed???… because the last thing i did when finalizing the house sale was to fax all of our new address info through… ‘cuz i’m a thinker and i wanted the whole process to be smoove like buttah…
as it turns out… it’s because we moved out of the country… and this generated all sorts of problems with their third-party-check-cutting-company’s ability to mail a check… and they most likely tried to send an email and if that didn’t work they most likely tried to call and if that didn’t work then… well… nothing… at that point it’s evidently up to whoever is waiting for the check to follow up and see what’s gone wrong and get the ball rolling again…
hmmnn… we didn’t exactly move to the countryside of madagascar and not leave a forwarding address i point out… we moved to the biggest city in canada and i took pains to tell you exactly where to send us mail…
yes yes… well but there’s evidently some sort of automated mailing thing in place and it has more than a little trouble with foreign addresses… ok fine says i… so how are we going to fix this???…
well… the nice lady says that they’ll process the check within 2-3 weeks and could i please give her an address in the states where they can send it just as soon as its ready to go???… well… uh… no lady… you can’t have an address in the states because as i think i may have mentioned to you we don’t live there anymore…
ooh… well that might be a problem she says… at which point i pointed out that i was sure she could figure something out as she essentially had the power and might of the united states postal service on her side in this whole thing and that i knew from personal experience that a real live person could walk into any, if my inkling was correct, united states post office with an envelope and an address and quite successfully mail it to just about anyplace in the world, let alone the biggest city in canada, her neighbo(u)r to the immediate north…
well she’d have to get back to me on that one… which she did a day later… she left a very nice message saying that she had it all figured out and thanks for my patience and when the check was ready they’d overnight it to me… well i thought that was nice… and when someone in the world o’ business does something nice and goes out of their way to try and treat you right i think they should be thanked… so i called the number she’d left me to say thanks…
and believe it or not here is where my customer service experience turned sour… i can accept all the other stuff… things happen… their system’s flawed but i told ‘em about it and they’re ultimately going to find a solution…
so armed with a toll free number and an extension i call to say thanks… and this is the number and extension she’s told me to use if i need anything… have any questions… etc…
step 1… phone tree… bad start but expected i suppose… listen to all options to see if i can punch in an extension… hmmnnn… bad luck… got three options… identify yourself as a bank… a realtor… or a consumer… well i guess i’d be a consumer…
step 2… excruciatingly bored-sounding and slightly-hard-to-understand lady picks up the phone and asks if she can help me… sure says i… i’d like to talk to candice at extension 5385…
easy right???… step 3 should be go on hold for a second or two… then candice picks up the phone… i say thanks for being nice and solving my problem… we both feel good, hang up, and get on with our lives…
err… step 3 actually is having the excruciatingly bored-sounding and slightly-hard-to-understand lady ask me if there was anything she could help me with… well sure there is… and i just told you what it was… you can transfer me to candice…
hmmnn… evidently not gonna be that easy… she puts me on hold… she comes back… she again asks me if she can help me out… and i again tell her that she can best meet my needs by transferring me to my old pal candice who has already been working with me and i’m calling to follow up on something and i’m actually kinda busy so if you could get on with it that’d be real nice… puts me on hold again…
she’s back… do you have a loan with us she asks… what???… look lady… i wanna talk to candice… can i get your loan number she asks… so i can identify you in our system… ‘cuz company protocol states that i have to do that before i can transfer you…
what?!?!?… i’ve got an idea… why don’t you shove it???… i give her the quick synopsis of the situation… tell her that gee sorry but i don’t have all my documents at hand… and again ask her to get me to candice…
she puts me on hold again… and at this point i’m looking around for the hidden camera ‘cuz i’m sure this is a prank…
after two more holds and two more tries by her to get info from me i’m done… i ask her if she knows what a post it note is… she says yes… i ask her if she has any… she says yes… i tell her to write “thank you - cj” on it and walk over and stick it on candice’s desk and i hang up…
and i’m left thinkin’… wtf was that???… number one i’m pissed because excruciatingly bored-sounding and slightly-hard-to-understand lad totally sucked and totally frustrated me… number two i’m pretty sure that the whole deal was her trying to poach business from my old pal candice and that’s just not friendly… number three i’m wondering if any company could possibly be as f’d up as to not be able to just transfer you to an extension if you ask…
fer chrisasakes… i just wanted to say thanks and let her know i appreciated her efforts…
and i wonder about all this for a while… and then karen tells me about all her dhl woes… and i realize that i’ve just asked these folks to send this big check to our house overnight and there’s about 90% probability that they’ll use dhl to do so… and that sounds like it’ll go smoothly…
the more i think about the whole situation i realize that a) i need to tell ‘em to send the check to my work address… and b) i really want to see if i get a repeat performance from someone else…
so… i… call… back….
and after pressing the appropriate number to say i’m a consumer another lady picks up the phone… and transfers me to candice at which point i give her my work address… say thanks for her efforts… and we both hang up and get on with our lives…
endnote #1… excruciatingly bored-sounding and slightly-hard-to-understand lady… you blow…
endnote #2… it’s been a week… i hope the check comes…
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