IP: I have been there also -- from TELECOM Digest

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Subject: Frustrating "Customer Service" 
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 23:18:16 PDT 
From: tad () ssc com (Tad Cook) 


> From Salon, August 27, 1998: 
http://www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/tisd/ 
ANONYMOUS FORCES ARE ROBBING ME BLIND, AND CUSTOMER SERVICE 
IS TELLING ME TO DROP DEAD. 
BY SALLIE TISDALE 
I read my bills carefully these days. My telephone company, U.S. West, 
provides me with a bill often several pages long, broken down in the 
abbreviated style of computer coders everywhere by "chg" and "srv." A 
few months ago, I noticed a charge of $14.41 on the last page labeled 
"Consumer Access," a name I didn't recognize. At the top of the page 
was a logo for "US Billing" and 1-888 number. 
It wasn't easy to get through ("Your call is important to us and will 
be answered in the order in which it was received"), but when I did, I 
found out "US Billing" is merely a kind of collection service for more 
than 200 essentially unregulated long-distance carriers of various 
types. They passed me along. Eventually ("We are experiencing an 
unusually high volume of calls"), I found a company that had issued a 
long-distance credit card to someone who had given them my telephone 
number as his own. 
Well, OK. No, it wasn't that easy. The woman on the other end of the 
line -- I finally got her name but still have no idea where she was, 
what state she was in -- didn't think it was her problem. I suggested 
that her company might want to check whether or not the numbers given 
are legitimate. She said, and I do quote, "We have thousands of 
customers, ma'am. We don't have time to check them out." 
She wanted me to just pay the bill and stop complaining. 
So I didn't, and eventually the charges were credited to my account. I 
thought we were done -- until the next month and the month after, when 
I found charges for a few dollars here and $10 there labeled "Telco 
Partners Serv Chge," under the logo for "US Billing." I reached my old 
friend eventually ("All circuits are busy now"), and she informed me 
-- rather tartly, I think -- that her company is not Telco. Back to US 
Billing. On to Telco? 
I think not. I tried ("Please call back; we are unable to access that 
number at this time") but finally went back to U.S. West. That is how 
I found out, after a time ("Please hold; your call is important to 
us), that I'm in trouble. So are you, if you have a telephone. A 
reasonably nice fellow I found eventually told me that his company is 
required by the government to provide "billing opportunities" for 
fly-by- night companies in unknown locations and that I am required to 
pay my bill. That some of my charges are fraudulent is not his problem 
and not the problem of U.S. West. Unless I want to go delinquent with 
my phone company, I had better pay up. 
So next week, I'm on to the state Department of Justice and the Public 
Utility Commission, the same agencies I dealt with last year when I 
was "slammed" out of MCI by Sprint. I was surprised on a business trip 
in another state last summer by a polite recording telling me that my 
MCI card was invalid, and surprised again when I came home and found 
that all the long-distance charges I'd made in the last month were 
being billed to Sprint. I went back to MCI, didn't pay Sprint and the 
charges finally disappeared, but it took weeks and a lot of calls. 
The same with the $50-some charge on a credit card for a Los Angeles 
billing service I'd never heard of before, for an e- mail service I'd 
never used. The same with the restaurant that billed me twice on 
another credit card. The same with the department store that failed to 
credit me for returned merchandise and then billed me a collection fee 
because I hadn't paid for it. All the same: "Your call is important to 
us, we are experiencing a high volume of calls, we cannot access that 
number at this time." 
I've quit using credit cards almost entirely, partly because of this 
problem. That doesn't help me with the telephone company, of course, 
but I'm not yet willing to give up my phone. 
So this week I'm on a cash economy, writing a personal check at a 
local department store. And the mysterious machine by the cash 
register rejects it. The clerk gives me a little slip with a 1-800 
number and the words "YOUR CHECK WAS NOT APPROVED BY TELECHECK," all 
in capital letters, like a command. I used a credit card, drove home 
and called Telecheck ("Your call will be answered in the order in 
which it was received") and in time spoke with a woman who declined to 
give me her name but who insisted she could not help me until I gave 
her my driver's license number, birth date, checking account routing 
number and home address, at which point she informed that there was 
nothing wrong with my check, it was just that Telecheck machines 
didn't like the checks themselves. 
"The machines have trouble reading your checks," she said. "This has 
happened before." And then she named the last four merchants to whom 
I'd written checks, who'd been kind enough to take them anyway. 
In a way, I was relieved. No one had stolen my identity and left a 
trail of fraud across the West, as I'd feared during my long wait on 
hold. No one had emptied my account. 
"So, how can we stop this from happening again?" I asked. 
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "You can't. If it happens again, you can 
ask the merchant to call us. Sometimes they'll do that. Not always, 
though." 
What strikes me in these increasingly frequent periods, standing in 
the kitchen on the telephone listening to the insincere chorus of 
recordings, is that an essential part of the dehumanization of the 
economy and the decline of service is the rising attitude that one 
shouldn't complain. One is supposed to be gracious and, above all, 
acquiescent. After all, the invisible people who answer my calls tell 
me again and again it's not their fault, it's a policy, a regulation, 
a necessary result of volume, it's just the way it is -- they're 
working stiffs like me and no, they aren't going to give me their 
names, and no, the supervisor is not available. "We don't have time to 
check them out," the woman told me, with just enough frustration and 
impatience in her voice to let me know that, as far as she's 
concerned, I'm somehow at the root of this problem myself. If I'd stop 
complaining, she seemed to imply, there wouldn't be anything to 
complain about. 
After all, it's just a few dollars. 
Somewhere in between the meek willingness to be used and the tide of 
rant and annoyance I keep to myself is the art of the gracious 
complaint. That is the firm and steady voice, words of persistence and 
determination delivered in a calm and courteous tone. We are fools if 
we accept the gargantuan pattern of profiteering abuse built into the 
information economy, the destruction of privacy, the conspiracy 
between government and conglomerate to steal a few dollars more. I am 
slowly pulling myself out of the economy in all the ways I can find -- 
though I still want a telephone and a checking account -- but almost 
every day gives me the opportunity to practice the art of gracious 
complaining. It is an art we all might do well to develop. 
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some calls to make.