Customer Disservice

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:38:11 -0500
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From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Subject: Customer Disservice

Customer Disservice
These Days, Consumers May as Well Keep Their Complaint To Themselves

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page F01

When Mary Culnan's three-year-old Kenmore washing machine broke in
February, it took three appointments before a Sears repairman showed
up. Before he even examined the machine, he blamed the problem on
Culnan, telling her that she had not only used the wrong detergent
but also the wrong cycle. The permanent press setting, he said, could
have burned out the machine's contacts. "I have no idea what that
means," said Culnan, a Boston area professor. The repairman finally
traced the problem to a defective circuit board, which fixed things
-- for a while.

When Scott Rozett bought a family cell phone plan last June, the
salesman assured him he could make and receive calls in San Francisco
at no extra charge. But in November, one month after the Idaho
resident visited the Bay area, he received a $160 bill for roaming
charges. When he called AT&T Wireless to protest, a customer service
representative told him the company was not responsible for promises
made by a salesman.

When an error in Manon Matchett's Sprint PCS bill caused her service
to be disconnected in December, she spent three days trying to get it
restored. She called at least twice a day, she says, and each time
was transferred from one department to another as she tried to get
credit for payments that had never been posted to her account. She
talked to at least nine people, but "no one could make a definitive
decision," said Matchett, an office manager in the District. Nor
could she ever reach a manager, even in the middle of the day. "I was
told no managers were available. It was pure hell," Matchett said.

Forget voice-mail hell. As Culnan, Rozett and Matchett have
discovered, customer service has deteriorated into a new kind of
purgatory, one in which companies pass the buck, frequently from one
corporate division to another. Or customer service representatives
pin the blame on other companies. Or even, worse, they fault their
customers.

...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28784-2004Mar27.html

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