Customer Service: Is your job really, that hard?

stevetheupsguy

sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
Being a UPS guy, I usually don't get home till 6:30pm or 7:00pm at night. I say usually, because as we all know, we don't have steady hours. This being the case, I'm inclined to speak up about issues I've had with representatives of other companies.

My home phone service, (AT&T), is where I will start. Customer service closes at 7pm. I've gotten home and called them at 6:45pm, gotten bounced around with the automated system and finally ended up speaking to someone at 6:57pm. The person I end up speaking to, inevitably tells me that I have the wrong department, transferring me to the "right" department. Needless to say, after being tranferred, I end up getting a message that the office is now closed, to try again tomorrow.

Last night I discovered that AT&T had, without my permission, upgraded my DSL, to the next fastest, whatever that means, because I haven't even noticed a difference. I keep getting calls from foreign countries, telling me about the wonderful "bundles" I can have that will save me money. I always ask where the person is calling me from, because even though they tell me their names are John, Mary or Henry, they sound like they are from The Phillipines or Sri Lanka.

Anyways, I call AT&T yesterday, at 6:45pm, because that's when I remembered that I had to call them. Automated put me on hold till 6:53pm, at which point I speak to some woman that says I need to be transferred to another dept. In my head I'm like, here we go again. The next person picks up, asks me for all my information (again) and proceeds to ask me what it is I'm calling about. Mind you, I've already explained, in detail, about what's going on, to all the other people I've spoken to.

I explain my situation, thinking it will finally be resolved. After I give her the info, she says, I'm gonna transfer you to the right dept, that will be able to help you. At this point I tell her, WAIT, I've just gone through this and if you transfer me no one will pick up because it's now after 7pm. She says, well you can leave a voicemail. I say, why leave a voicemail, when I have you on the line right now? She says, sorry, I can't help you, you need a different dept. At this point I start asking to speak to her supervisor. She says, no one is here right now and continues to try and transfer me to a voicemail.

She picks up the phone about 30 seconds later. I say hello? She says are you still there? I say yeah, I want to speak to your supervisor, at which point she says hold on. I hold, hear the familiar clicks, and then, that annoying sound you get when you leave the phone off the hook. My wife looks over at me and says, did she just hang up on you? I say, yup, as I put the phone back on the base. Long story short, I called again today and took care of my issue. You may want to take a closer look at your billing statements in light of this and what happened in another thread.

Whatever happened to customer service? Don't these people realize that there are other companies out there that provide the same service? Is this the kind of service "runners and gunners" provide?

I'd like to hear from everyone about the quality of service they have received. The good, the bad and the ugly. What was the best or worst service you have received and what did you do about it?
 

scratch

Least Best Moderator
Staff member
Its funny you brought this company up. I have been with BellSouth/now AT&T for all my life. Home phone, DSL, and five cell phones. I dumped my cell phone for Verizon last week and can't wait until all the other contracts run out. This is all because of problems we have had with their Customer Service since AT&T bought them out. I will probably go with Comcast for my land line, internet, and cable TV. Verizon will get four more new accounts from us.
 

Paid-over-in-Maine

15 more years of this!
I have Verizon for my cell service and I love it. The carrier I had before was horrible to say the least. They were in a hurry to sign me up and the coverage for the area I needed it in the most was worse. The only problem I had with them (Verizon)was, I paid my bill at the Kiosk they have in the store. Put in my info, slid my card in. Had to renter my pin 2 times as I mis-keyed it the fist time. Paid my bill, was asked if I wanted a receipt, or "go green" with no receipt. Feeling one with nature, I opted for no receipt. Fast forward a month when I get a text message that my bill was overdue! It seems that the bill was not paid like I thought because I had entered the WRONG pin! My bank didn't pay it! Good piece of mind that the bank will not pay it cause the pin didn't match. But the thing I didn't understand is why the machine opted to give me a receipt even though I gave the wrong pin number. The associates in the store said they couldn't help because they do not operate the Kiosk...it's an outside contractor. So I'll be paying my bill at the counter next time.
 
Last edited:

Re-Raise

Well-Known Member
I had trouble with Sears. I bought a new lawn mower last year and they had a deal where you had no interest and no payments due for a year. They issue you a credit card and send you a monthly statement.

The total was about $2500 so I had made a couple of $500 payments. A couple of months later I needed new tires on my wife's Sequoia. The Sears guy said he would order them but I needed to give him a Sears credit number. When the tires were put on I paid him with a Visa card so as not to put a charge on the Sears card. It is not my first rodeo and I knew if I used the Sears card they would apply my payments to the interest free part first.

Well they applied the charges to BOTH cards. It wasn't too tough to get that fixed but then they started charging me interest and trying to add late fees for the lawn mower charge. I made at least 5 calls to explain the tire charge was their mistake and I don't have to make a monthly payment to no avail. I finally paid the mower off and they gave me credit for $10 instead of $1000 even though I had the cancelled check. Then they sent me a refund for $1000 TWICE so at one time I was $1000 ahead.

It should have been easily fixed but their customer service people were unbelievable, and each time I called I had to start my story all over. I cancelled my card as soon as they finally got my balance at zero and will never use another Sears card.
 
Last edited:

dilligaf

IN VINO VERITAS
I have Qwest (home, dsl) and verizon is billed directly through Qwest. Qwest split off from AT&T years ago. I have never had a service issue with them and they have always been extremely helpful and courteous. I think they have the customer service part down pretty good!
 

Rhinoman

Member
Customer service telephone centers are not usually UPSers, a straight 8 and no O/T, I'm sure, maybe during peak and January for tracers. There is a union UPS CSTC in Johnson(ville?), TN that took the ones from North Cal, like my friend Celia (are you out there?). I'm sure the non-ups ones work very hard for a lot less than we are making... The real lazy ones are some of the account execs - generally a bunch of overstuffed, overpaid and underworked supervisors and managers. Apologies in advance to my hardworking ex-partners in North Cal... Some of you ARE the greatest, and I thank you for your hard work and our shared successes.
 

Babagounj

Strength through joy
When Verizon started FIOS service to my town it took me countless calls to get them to wire up my condo building. They sent engineers & a crew to start the work but never sent anyone to connect the wire to the pole. I went online to anti-verizon site and read enough until I found the secret. All it took was a couple of letters to the regional & corp offices with something like presidental appeal written on them to get someone to really talk to me. They called me several times with constant updates on every detail.

I love FIOS.
 

collegepreloader

Active Member
Steve, I would document each time you call, remember to ask for the person you are talking to for their name. Then whenever you do get to speak to a supervisor you can say who hung up on you, couldn't help, etc. In my opinion these people should be trained to deal with every situation. I've had several bad experiences with customer service.

I remember a few years ago I was at circuit city looking to buy a HDTV, I was probably 19 or 20 at the time. Working so I had money saved up.I remember going up there several times and no one even asked me If I needed help, the store associates would help the older adults but never me. I'm sure they figured I was just a kid that didn't have the money to buy. Oh well though look where they are now.

We also had a horrible experience with Sprint for our cell phones, text messages not working, signal sucked, and we could never speak to the same person, kept getting transferred to Canada. We kept dealing with different people, that we had to explain our situation all over to. Needless to say we sent the phones back within that trial period and they credited us back 100% of what we paid for the phones including the monthly plan rate.
 

edd_tv

Cardboard picker upper
my dad and i had a conversation similiar to this the other day.
i am in the process of re-plumbiing my bathroom, and i needed a copper fitting to match up 2" copper pipe(yea my houes is that old) down to a one inch . went to the local Lowes store looking for the pieces. pushed the assistance button three times only to get a 17 yr old kid who knew nothing about pipes tell me he had no clue what i needed.

my dad tells me to go to this mom and pop hardware store few miles down the road. the clerk there fixes me right up and even soldered the piece for me at no charge. from now on i dont care how much i might be able to save by going to a big box store,i would happily pay the extra just for the service and know how i was given.
 
P

pickup

Guest
I have sprint for my cell phone provider and my contract is going to be up. As in the past, I will continue using the service without the contract (same conditions apply as under the contract). When my phone finally dies or is lost(could happen, hasn't happened in along time) then I will go down to sprint and get a new phone without charge for signing a new 2 year contract. However, I now receive phone calls from them (in the daytime when I am trying to sleep) . I do sometimes shut the phone off but sometimes would like to keep it on in case of an emergency from a relative) And I am making sure that they don't sign me up for a new 2 year contract(without my verbal ok) like they did a few years back. Got wind of it when using my phone to see how much money I owed and something was amiss in the voice prompts which caused me to check on line to discover they arbitrarily signed me. I took care of it after spending 2 hours on the phone with someone in india. It wastes my time to keep an eye on this company to see if they are going to pull this stunt again and it will definitely waste my time to fight it again as I listen to "John" or "Mary" deal with my problem as they try to continually upsell me.
 

stevetheupsguy

sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
I have sprint for my cell phone provider and my contract is going to be up. As in the past, I will continue using the service without the contract (same conditions apply as under the contract). When my phone finally dies or is lost(could happen, hasn't happened in along time) then I will go down to sprint and get a new phone without charge for signing a new 2 year contract. However, I now receive phone calls from them (in the daytime when I am trying to sleep) . I do sometimes shut the phone off but sometimes would like to keep it on in case of an emergency from a relative) And I am making sure that they don't sign me up for a new 2 year contract(without my verbal ok) like they did a few years back. Got wind of it when using my phone to see how much money I owed and something was amiss in the voice prompts which caused me to check on line to discover they arbitrarily signed me. I took care of it after spending 2 hours on the phone with someone in india. It wastes my time to keep an eye on this company to see if they are going to pull this stunt again and it will definitely waste my time to fight it again as I listen to "John" or "Mary" deal with my problem as they try to continually upsell me.

LOL!
 

backinbrown

respect my authority
Being a UPS guy, I usually don't get home till 6:30pm or 7:00pm at night. I say usually, because as we all know, we don't have steady hours. This being the case, I'm inclined to speak up about issues I've had with representatives of other companies.

My home phone service, (AT&T), is where I will start. Customer service closes at 7pm. I've gotten home and called them at 6:45pm, gotten bounced around with the automated system and finally ended up speaking to someone at 6:57pm. The person I end up speaking to, inevitably tells me that I have the wrong department, transferring me to the "right" department. Needless to say, after being tranferred, I end up getting a message that the office is now closed, to try again tomorrow.

Last night I discovered that AT&T had, without my permission, upgraded my DSL, to the next fastest, whatever that means, because I haven't even noticed a difference. I keep getting calls from foreign countries, telling me about the wonderful "bundles" I can have that will save me money. I always ask where the person is calling me from, because even though they tell me their names are John, Mary or Henry, they sound like they are from The Phillipines or Sri Lanka.

Anyways, I call AT&T yesterday, at 6:45pm, because that's when I remembered that I had to call them. Automated put me on hold till 6:53pm, at which point I speak to some woman that says I need to be transferred to another dept. In my head I'm like, here we go again. The next person picks up, asks me for all my information (again) and proceeds to ask me what it is I'm calling about. Mind you, I've already explained, in detail, about what's going on, to all the other people I've spoken to.

I explain my situation, thinking it will finally be resolved. After I give her the info, she says, I'm gonna transfer you to the right dept, that will be able to help you. At this point I tell her, WAIT, I've just gone through this and if you transfer me no one will pick up because it's now after 7pm. She says, well you can leave a voicemail. I say, why leave a voicemail, when I have you on the line right now? She says, sorry, I can't help you, you need a different dept. At this point I start asking to speak to her supervisor. She says, no one is here right now and continues to try and transfer me to a voicemail.

She picks up the phone about 30 seconds later. I say hello? She says are you still there? I say yeah, I want to speak to your supervisor, at which point she says hold on. I hold, hear the familiar clicks, and then, that annoying sound you get when you leave the phone off the hook. My wife looks over at me and says, did she just hang up on you? I say, yup, as I put the phone back on the base. Long story short, I called again today and took care of my issue. You may want to take a closer look at your billing statements in light of this and what happened in another thread.

Whatever happened to customer service? Don't these people realize that there are other companies out there that provide the same service? Is this the kind of service "runners and gunners" provide?

I'd like to hear from everyone about the quality of service they have received. The good, the bad and the ugly. What was the best or worst service you have received and what did you do about it?


This post may be monitered for quality assurance
 

Channahon

Well-Known Member
I had consolidated billing for 2 cell phones and my land line, which one would think would be the way to go to streamline bill payments. One bill - one check - one envelope - done, right?

Wrong, when I moved out of state and had to cancel my land line phone, the nightmare began. The company had no idea how their internal billing worked, and how to apply payment to all three accounts.

Long story short, I finally got a supervisor on the phone, who did a great job after a week of frustrating phone calls, and received a check for a double billing issue. I was so appreciative, I sent a complimentary email to her boss.

I still have the 2 cell phones, but pay the bills independently, as there is no way, I would consolidate the bills again.

My husband at times, will ask me why I get so upset, with poor customer service, and I tell him after working at UPS for 28 years, dealing with customers, over issues that were important enough for them to call UPS, I did whatever it took to satisfy the customer concern. And expect the same in return as a consumer.

I generally will make a phone call to address a customer service issue, and follow that up with an email. Nothing better than saving the emails, when having to follow up and go to the highest level in the company. I've learned that if you put in the subject line of an email, customer concern or customer complaint, you finally get a phone call, from a supervisor or manager.
 

City Driver

Well-Known Member
i have a Compaq computer and ive spent many many hours on the phone just trying to get an actual person to pick up

and its always somebody on the other side of the world like India but they use very american names....well the problem is i just cant even understand what they are saying sometimes

i get mad but i dont take it out on them, i know its not there fault those jobs aer outsourced and they are just trying to make a living like the rest of us
 

backinbrown

respect my authority
i have a Compaq computer and ive spent many many hours on the phone just trying to get an actual person to pick up

and its always somebody on the other side of the world like India but they use very american names....well the problem is i just cant even understand what they are saying sometimes

i get mad but i dont take it out on them, i know its not there fault those jobs aer outsourced and they are just trying to make a living like the rest of us


Thats what bothers me you call somewere to get an issue resolved and i cant understand what is being said to me on the other end of the phone i dont know any figures but seems a lot of companies go over seas to have my questions answered.

I wonder how many jobs have we as americans lost due to this. before you go off on me it is just my opinion
 
Thats what bothers me you call somewere to get an issue resolved and i cant understand what is being said to me on the other end of the phone i dont know any figures but seems a lot of companies go over seas to have my questions answered.

I wonder how many jobs have we as americans lost due to this. before you go off on me it is just my opinion

I agree with you.
 

stevetheupsguy

sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
Thats what bothers me you call somewere to get an issue resolved and i cant understand what is being said to me on the other end of the phone i dont know any figures but seems a lot of companies go over seas to have my questions answered.

I wonder how many jobs have we as americans lost due to this. before you go off on me it is just my opinion

True, but if you notice, they try everything they can to get your issue resolved, before giving up. I don't think they sit there, looking at the clock, and then, hanging up when it's close to their quitting time.
Not saying I approve of the outsourcing, but the work ethic is a bit different. mho
 

Sammie

Well-Known Member
Thats what bothers me you call somewere to get an issue resolved and i cant understand what is being said to me on the other end of the phone i dont know any figures but seems a lot of companies go over seas to have my questions answered.

I guess I don't care if a customer call center moves to Saturn, as long
as they can help me. But when we're down to 2 choices for the most part now; people from other countries or voice prompts that take you to "phone hell" where you'll freeze over, it's very frustrating.

I needed to talk to the IRS last year about some stuff. Never did get
to talk to a human. So I wrote letters. For eight months. Finally got
a letter from them that resolved the issue (I hope), but it took that long.

Problems with the phone, a computer glitch, a broken appliance or a credit card? India. Not their fault, but their accent is often so thick I can't understand them after asking a 3rd time to repeat what they said. They might as well speak in their native tongue. And 90 minutes later, half the time on hold, still no resolution. But I learned a new trick. When the voice prompt at a company asks if you want to become a new customer, Bingo!!! An American Human Being!!!

I wonder how many jobs have we as americans lost due to this. before you go off on me it is just my opinion

I would assume this figure to be in the millions....
You figure any job that requires a machine, a telephone or a computer has gone or will go. Doctor's offices, (MRI results), State welfare offices, AOL, Dell, the Airlines, the credit card companies, Sprint, Citibank, IBM and H.P. to name a few employ India. JP Morgan Chase hires Indian stock analysts. And if you don't do your own taxes, chances are an Indian accountant prepares them for you...
 

BLACKBOX

Life is a Highway...
(MRI results), State welfare offices, AOL, Dell, the Airlines, the credit card companies, Sprint, Citibank, IBM and H.P. to name a few employ India.

I hope UPS is expanding in India. They must be the second fastest growing economy behind China. Well....at least invest in Bollywood.
 
Top