It would seem to me that it was more than a little ironic
that right at the time I was writing last week’s column regarding advances in
electronic technology it was electronic technology that completely let us down.
Mind you, as usual, technology didn’t let us down- the operator of the
technology completely let us down. And our frustration wasn’t necessarily with
the technological breakdown as much as it was with the customer service, or
lack thereof, that became the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal.
It all
started when I bought my wife an iPhone for Christmas. Up ‘til now Deb’s had an
old flip-phone with buy-as-you-go phone cards and she was quite happy not
having to be a slave to her cell phone so I got to thinking that she should
really upgrade herself into this century and get a phone where she can Facetime
with the kids and grandkids and she can text and email and do all of those
wonderful things that only a new cellular phone can do for you. Of course,
these wonderful tools come at a cost. And not a low cost either, so in an
effort to cut down on the cost of our two-member household paying an enormous
phone bill we decided it would be a good idea to bundle up some of the phone
services that we were using, make one of our cell phones our home phone and cut
out our landline. Simple, eh? I guess not. Many, apparently, have done this. I
wish we hadn’t because that’s when the trouble really began.
We weren’t completely
advised of all of the details that this little adjustment to save ourselves a
few bucks would entail. We expected a couple of glitches, and there were more
than a couple, but when SaskTel completely lost our email account information
for four days we started to panic. Not only were we unable to send and receive
emails, we completely lost everything. And I mean everything! Anyone familiar
with email usage will know that it’s essentially a cyber filing cabinet and to
lose all of the information stored in there could be catastrophic.
And, yes, all of you cyber-geniuses
with your condescending head-shaking and all-knowing grin going, “tsk, tsk…why
didn’t he back up his information?” I’ll tell you this, NOBODY does! Okay?
NO-BODY. Well maybe the 1.6% of you cyber-geeks do it but besides them…NOBODY.
Anyway, we get on the phone, the
first time, for one-and-a-half-hours of waiting and going from this rep to that
rep to another rep all the while nobody can figure out where our stuff went and
“Oops, sorry, there’s not much we can do about it now” answers and…”Perhaps you
can send us the details of your problem in an email…” “YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!?
YOU LOST OUR EMAIL! (expletive, expletive)”
Then we’re on the phone the next
night again and they say they might be able to restore everything but “please
give us twenty-four hours to work on it”. Okay…twenty-four hours and two
minutes later we’ve got our email restored, with none of our old information by
the way, and a new/old email account to boot and then the stupid thing stops
working all together again.
Up until then we’d been fairly
polite when dealing with these people but now I’m past agitated and this has
been going on for, like, four days, and, believe me, I was in the retail lumber
business for over twenty years and I’ve had my share of ticked off customers to
deal with and I don’t like ‘em and I don’t particularly like companies that
turn me into a ticked off jerk customer, either, and it’s a real shame that you
sometimes have to be one to get any satisfaction but that’s just what happened.
I turned into a class A (as in ass) jerk and they restored our stuff a few
hours later. All of it!
I’ve always believed in the adage
that, “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, but, as with all
things, there are exceptions to every rule.
“The best customer service is if
the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just
works.”- Jeff Bezos (1964-)- CEO Amazon.com.
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