Did you ever get upset with someone for what you perceive as their lack of competence or attention to detail because you just KNOW you're right? You know the types of situations I'm talking about, often involving mistakes made by vendors you do business with, and having to call their smarmy customer torture service personnel who are reading from a script so they're saying all the polite, correct things; but where you know they are secretly filing their nails, thumbing through the latest Vogue and smirking behind their headsets at your mounting frustration with whatever situation you're busy being right about. It's enough to make you nuts because you know you will be stuck on the phone with this person for at least 20 minutes, this after having waited 30 minutes navigating the company's voice mail system before being put on hold to speak to a real, live human being. A human being who, c'mon let's face it, doesn't give a crap about your problem, they're just doing that job until something better comes along. So as "nice" and "friendly" as they seem to be, I'm not usually buying it.
I've been on a weight-loss program (for now I'll decline to say which one but I promise to dish about it in a future post) that has been going very well and which has been easier to adapt to than I would have thought. It's a program that provides packaged entrees for your 3 meals (and dessert!) and and then you supplement with lots (and LOTS) of fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy products plus the odd low-glycemic index carbs. I'm getting excellent results (nearly 15 pounds gone so far!), feel great, and had to buy a belt -- something I haven't owned in years -- because my jeans are falling off my ass already. And it makes food shopping and prep a no-brainer, which is perfect for a convenience junkie like me.
They ship you the packaged foods once a month, either UPS or FedEx. The UPS shipments are stated to take "4-10 days" to arrive. I live one state away from the fulfillment center so my last shipment arrived in 4 days, and I was expecting the same this month, give or take a day. My order was to be processed and shipped a week ago, on 8/15. Yet as of today, there is no sign of it -- and I only have enough of the packaged food left to get me through Friday.
So, I go online to find the 800 number to inquire about the order... and see on my personalized profile page that the order did not ship until TODAY! A week LATE! I mean, what the HELL is that all about? I call customer service, prepared to do battle to find out why it took a week for them to send out something that was supposed to go out a full week ago. Incompetence! I thought. There is no excuse for this! Which is my usual reaction to incompetence, especially when you're paying nearly $300 a month for a product which is supposed to be on auto-shipments.
I get to the customer service rep after having to press several keys and a short wait on hold, and she tells me that yes, the order DID finally ship today, but the reason it was delayed is that they tried billing my credit card several times daily for the past week and it wasn't approved until today. Hmmm, I said, that's very strange because I know for a fact that card has more than enough room on it for this purchase. And how come your company didn't notify me by email or phone to tell me there was a problem with my credit card so I could look into it?
We did, the very polite customer service rep said. We emailed you every day at [my email address]. And I can email you a record of our attempts to bill your card, if you like. Which she did, and sure enough, there was a whole record of attempted charges that were declined. Bizaare!
Although I still cannot understand why these supposed emails never got to me -- I check email daily and check my spam filtered mail daily as well, and there was NO sign of any mail from this vendor in the past week, even though they have my correct email address on file -- she reassures me that my order should arrive before Friday since I live near the fulfillment center. I thank her and go to call my credit card company to find out why they kept declining the charges.
That customer service rep, also very polite and perky, can not find any record of any attempted or successful charges from this vendor, ever. Mystère et boules de gomme -- because I used the same card last month for my initial order from this company. As I am scratching my head and getting ready to blow my top, I look at the email from the vendor once again... and suddenly, I note that the last 4 digits of the card on file was NOT the card I thought it was!
Did you ever get really mad at someone else, convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are right and the other person will burn for eternity in their wrongness, only to find out that it was really your mistake in the first place?
Gulp. Oops. Face reddening. Looks like it was MY fault all along. I thought I had used this particular credit card for this vendor's auto-ship program when it turns out I used a debit card on a checking account that has very little money in it at the moment because I just paid a whole stack of bills and am waiting for some clients to pay me. I didn't worry about leaving money in the account to pay for the food shipment because I was POSITIVE the other credit card would handle it. So no wonder the charges were declined over and over again. (The new mystery is why my bank finally approved the charge after 7 days of declining it, since it put me in overdraft status, with a whopping $25 fee to go with it. But calling the bank to find out would me I'd have to fight with THEM, and frankly I just don't have the energy to do battle again today. I will contact them though, because for them to authorize a charge of that amount after daily repeated attempts SHOULD have been a potential fraud red flag!)
Mystery solved, and I accepted the accompanying embarrassment as my due. Now to do damage control, which involved calling the vendor back, actually being able to locate the same rep I spoke to earlier (because she thoughtfully included her full name, email and phone extension in her email to me!), and having her put in a reversal of the charge on the overdrafted card and re-charging the CORRECT card to make sure there will be no problems with them getting paid (since they did actually ship the package). And apologizing to her for the inconvenience, because if I'd gotten my ducks in a row to begin with, this wouldn't have happened.
This is what I get for being SOOOO sure I'm "right" all the time.
Of course that doesn't mean the next customer service person won't be a complete moron. I'll be sharpening my harpoon once I get through hanging my head in shame about this one.
FOLLOW-UP:
And for every 1,000,000 bad, apathetic or incompetent customer service reps, there are sometimes a few real gems hidden among the worthless rhinestones, people who do take their jobs seriously and who deserve to be acknowledged for not only keeping their cool with an irate customer but for going above and beyond.
After I wrote the above post I had not one but TWO such encounters. The first was with Marie at Wachovia Bank, when I called to find out why in hell they authorized a charge on an account that had insufficient funds in it, after TWELVE failed attempts. She not only got to the bottom of it, which was that their primary systems were down and the authorization got through their back-up system (that's still not comforting from a security perspective however), but she refunded the $25 NSF fee AND she offered to set up a conference call with the vendor to see about getting them to back the original charge off my card ASAP. She remained on the phone with me while we did that, even when we were put on hold so the vendor could research the issue further and we were forced to listen to endless looping advertising for the company's products.
The second was Maxine at the vendor company, who after checking into the problem further (with Marie on the phone as the 3rd party) and discovering that they could not back out the charge without forcing UPS to return the shipment to the company first (which would mean I would be without my special diet food for possibly up to a week while they straightened out the problem and reshipped the order) and dealing with my calm yet firmly disgusted request to speak to a supervisor about it, came back to tell me that they were going to let the shipment go through on time AND they would back the original charge off my debit card. Then when I asked, by way of confirming, that she would then bill the new credit card for the month's worth of food (remember, nearly $300 worth) she said, "Oh, no, we're just letting you keep the food."
She meant: for FREE. That I won't be billed at all this month. I couldn't believe it and I even asked why they wouldn't be able to just bill the other card and apparently their system isn't set up to bill someone AFTER the merchandise has already shipped out. So they're willing to take a loss on the food so I wouldn't be without it. Not only did I get my bank account straightened out and the overdraft fee refunded, but I got a real gift into the bargain, too. Who knew?
So somewhere out there, there are two top-notch customer service people out there (too bad these two can't train the rest of them) and I sure hope something really good comes their way soon, because they got some really good karma going today.
