Customer Service Worse Than Ever!

This thread is making me feel better. Customer service has been the bane of my existence for a while now. I must be dealing with the wrong companies.
I haven't tried Amazon. Good to know that someone is having good customer service somewhere.
 
The absolute worst experience I had with office staff was at a doctor's office. It was an eye doctor, and not my regular one. I had to go because I had an emergency and they had seen me there years ago. Anyway, I had another appointment booked two hours later, not realizing that I would spend two hours in the eye doctor. When I got out, I had barely fifteen minutes to make it to the next appointment, and had to go to a check out window first. There was a line of about five people there, and the person at the window was being very slow. I saw that if I waited my turn, I would be late for my next appointment. I had the check out paperwork in my hands and decided to just leave and bring it back the next day or ask if I could mail it.

When I got home, it was too late to call, so I called the next day to apologize and explain what happened. I never got a chance to complete my sentence. The woman who answered the phone started screaming at me. Yes, screaming. Saying you had no right to do that, blah blah blah. I hung up and ignored her instant call back. I mailed the paperwork, accompanied by a letter telling them some thoughts about their customer service.
 

Customer service where I live (middle of Canada) is truly dismissal. I could go on and on and complain "until the cows come home" but to save my sanity I just want to give 2 little examples of a much bigger and more depressing problem that is getting worse and worse as the years go by and I'm getting older and older:

1. Whenever I order something from Amazon, they always want me to write a little review of the product. I got something I did not like (can't remember what) and wrote this negative review telling Amazon how unhappy I am with their product. They wrote back to me "MY REVIEW IS UNACCEPTABLE." Ok, that was the last review I ever wrote for them. I suppose that just want a nice "kissy, kissy" type of review and I failed to provide this.

2. I have belonged to CAA (Canadian Automobile Association) for many years. Service was good but this winter my car needed boasts 2 times as the battery was showing it's age. When I phoned for help, I just got a robot instead of the live voice they used to have. After the boast, they asked me for a review of their service. I told them it was lousy and if I was in the ditch in -30 C weather at night with a high wind, I would like to talk to a human being. I told them I would not recommend their service to anyone! After my 2nd service call, they no longer asked me to review their service. I guess I must of disappointed them and did not follow the politically correct answer I should have given. Trouble is sometimes the truth hurts.

But that, my friends, is only the "tip of the iceberg."
 
I have had several very positive customer service experiences with Amazon. They truly have the
"customer is always right" attitude.

My absolute worst experience was just in the past few weeks with USPS (post office). I bought something that needed to be returned. The company emailed a USPS prepaid return label. I had requested a UPS (United Parcel Service) label but this company only used post office for returns.
I took it to the post office, got a receipt on Saturday 2/12, and the package fell into a black hole. It was never scanned further, and was never returned to the company. I filed a claim form (they call it Service Request)with the post office on a Tuesday, received a claim number, and they would email me in 3 days which would have been Friday 2/25. I heard nothing.

On Monday of this week, I received an email survey asking about my "service experience" I answered the survey with all that had transpired. End result? I am out $110, and the return window has expired.
 
Am I the only one who has never had a bad experience with customer service at Walmart? Or for that matter, no bad experiences with asking Walmart employees for help finding something? Maybe it's because my mama taught me that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

As far as having to call a customer service number, I start out being nice. If I'm getting nowhere or connected to someone who doesn't speak/understand English, I escalate. I've never been told that a supervisor wasn't available.

That could all change...
 
With a couple of exceptions, I have had very good experiences with customer service reps. First of all, I approach the situation cordially, not yell at the reps, no matter how frustrated I am. I always get the desired result and sometimes even better than I expected. I was on the phone with a Sprint rep years ago....seems we always had to call Sprint about mistakes in our bill and we'd get them to credit us saying we were business people (my husband was) and had to waste so much time when calling (long waits, calling more than once, etc.). Sometimes we'd get a $35 credit. When speaking to the last Sprint rep, I was a little annoyed at first because his accent made it hard for me to understand some things. He asked if he could put me on hold to check my bills. He came back and said that over time Sprint had overcharged me (us...3 were on the account) by $200! He immediately issued that credit toward our bill.

I just filled out a survey today and gave a high rating to the Samsung rep that helped me last week. I also had a positive interaction with a rep at one of my brokerages.
 
Personally, I have lost all faith in the USPS. I know that Covid has impacted service, but there are also slackers who use this as an excuse to do a poor job. At least three times in the past month I have been expecting a package, only to see that the postal person claimed that they "couldn't access the property." I don't live in a gated community, all they have to do is come up the stairs and stick the mail in the slot on the door, and leave packages on the porch.
 
Georgiagranny said:
Am I the only one who has never had a bad experience with customer service at Walmart? Or for that matter, no bad experiences with asking Walmart employees for help finding something? Maybe it's because my mama taught me that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

As far as having to call a customer service number, I start out being nice. If I'm getting nowhere or connected to someone who doesn't speak/understand English, I escalate. I've never been told that a supervisor wasn't available.

That could all change...
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No you are not the only one.... It is a shame that people think all of one store / or locations are the exact same.....

I have been in many locations of different stores or restaurant franchises and have seen some bad and some good it reflects on that location only IMO.

In my experience the ones who say "no supervisor available" are often service representatives that are NOT doing well. Many places count how many times a customer escalates against the original phone rep.
While call centers were moved overseas often so they can pay very little it should be a requirement that they can be understood over a phone and in the language of what ever country is calling.
I have worked with many people whom English is a second language ............. some do not care that they can not be understood thinking it is YOUR fault ........not theirs for not speaking clearly and effectively.
 
Gaer said:
Walmart? Here, If you ask a question like, "Where would I find . . . . . .? You get a blank look and then they walk away. hahaha!
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The article the OP posted is about customer service via a phone call. Makes sense they save money by making the experience intolerable.

As for Walmart's in-store customer service, they started saving tons of money after they eliminated their 2-week paid employee training classes that they used to require. The last few days of that was "cross-training", when you learned what items were in every department and which shelves the items were on.

Walmart isn't at all concerned about losing customers. When you storm out because you couldn't find that $36 item, Walmart had already saved hundreds of thousands in training costs.
 
Well, maybe cannibalism is a bit much, but I still like the idea of them in a boiling pot.. Yet, there are some, who should be in that pot. My doc cut one med. My pharmacy keeps "automatically" re-ordering it. I click open their site, and remove the med from the the "automatic renew" section. Next day, it's back. I've gone down to the pharmacy and they removed it. It's back. This has been going on for months. I am on a bunch of meds, so I don't check what meds I'm picking up. But I keep getting vials of that med. It's their system. They own it, I'm not responsible for their errors. Yet, they think I;m supposed to pay for a med I never ordered!!!.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Well, maybe cannibalism is a bit much, but I still like the idea of them in a boiling pot.. Yet, there are some, who should be in that pot. My doc cut one med. My pharmacy keeps "automatically" re-ordering it. I click open their site, and remove the med from the the "automatic renew" section. Next day, it's back. I've gone down to the pharmacy and they removed it. It's back. This has been going on for months. I am on a bunch of meds, so I don't check what meds I'm picking up. But I keep getting vials of that med. It's their system. They own it, I'm not responsible for their errors. Yet, they think I;m supposed to pay for a med I never ordered!!!.
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I don't see how they can force you to pay for something if you don't want it or don't pick it up. Especially when you went to the pharmacy to remove it and they know there's a problem with the "auto renew" program.
 
I had a bad experience with Verizon for a bad internet connection. The guy in India I ended up speaking to got mad when I would ask him to repeat what he was saying because of his bad English. Then I had to wait after the problem was finally dealt with to talk with his supervisor for quality assurance. Trying to resolve problems online is bad too.
 
Murrmurr said:
The article the OP posted is about customer service via a phone call. Makes sense they save money by making the experience intolerable.

As for Walmart's in-store customer service, they started saving tons of money after they eliminated their 2-week paid employee training classes that they used to require. The last few days of that was "cross-training", when you learned what items were in every department and which shelves the items were on.

Walmart isn't at all concerned about losing customers. When you storm out because you couldn't find that $36 item, Walmart had already saved hundreds of thousands in training costs.
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So true! Back in 1999, I used to work part time for Radio Shack. The training was extensive! We had to read a manual on each type of thing sold in the store; electronics, telephones, cell phones, computers, etc. Then we would have a test with multiple choice answers. It was fun to learn those things. When a customer had a question, it was answered!
 
carouselsilver said:
So true! Back in 1999, I used to work part time for Radio Shack. The training was extensive! We had to read a manual on each type of thing sold in the store; electronics, telephones, cell phones, computers, etc. Then we would have a test with multiple choice answers. It was fun to learn those things. When a customer had a question, it was answered!
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That was their slogan, right? "You've got questions, we've got answers"

My youngest son made a career of managing businesses. Radio Shack was his first gig. He's been with Walmart for over 30 years now. He's the guy who got a call when a customer says "I wanna see a manager!" And the thing is, he always took those calls. Most managers say they aren't there. Most of them hang out in the back all day. He's told me that. He'd not only take the call, he'd go to the customer personally and make things right.

I'm talking in the past-tense because Walmart got so bad over the past 5-10 years, he got sick of it. Got too old for it, imo. A few years ago he demoted himself to a lower management level and only works nights now, managing the trucking and warehouse crews. And now that's turned to crap, so he's just basically putting in the time until he decides to retire.
 
Companies often surrender to a very limited idea of what makes business work. You can make business work without treating people poorly. In fact, if companies do the opposite, they can make things work even better...and for everyone.

Just have to step out of the fear that competition and dominance is the only thing that works...and step into faith in simple decent human interactions. My cousin was an average guy, average intelligence. Made millions as a liaison in the ad game. He made millions because he was nice and fun...and everyone just loved working with him. Used that to develop a huge client base.

It can work.
 
JonSR77 said:
Companies often surrender to a very limited idea of what makes business work. You can make business work without treating people poorly. In fact, if companies do the opposite, they can make things work even better...and for everyone.

Just have to step out of the fear that competition and dominance is the only thing that works...and step into faith in simple decent human interactions. My cousin was an average guy, average intelligence. Made millions as a liaison in the ad game. He made millions because he was nice and fun...and everyone just loved working with him. Used that to develop a huge client base.

It can work.
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It did work when there was competition. Now that dozens of huge companies like Walmart and Starbucks have killed the competition, being nice cuts into their profits. "Being nice" involves employee training. When you employ hundreds of thousands, and you have a large annual turn-over plus expansion so you have to hire hundreds of thousands of new employees every year, plus hundreds of thousands of holiday temps, then providing one or two weeks of paid training for each and every one of those new employee is costly.

When you're a customer who happens to talk to a nice customer service person, it's only because they happen to be a nice person. That's random. You got lucky.
 
I would remain open to possibilities. I really don't buy into the standard kind of reasoning around these issues. I just think that companies don't want to do the work to find another, better way to do things. I think just doing the same old, is easier.

Maybe it is just laziness?

I mean with a better atmosphere, there is more employee devotion to the job. Opportunities arise because other people want to do business with a company that is, in a human way, just more enjoyable to engage.

I still think there are ways to make a kinder world work.
 
JonSR77 said:
Companies often surrender to a very limited idea of what makes business work. You can make business work without treating people poorly. In fact, if companies do the opposite, they can make things work even better...and for everyone.

Just have to step out of the fear that competition and dominance is the only thing that works...and step into faith in simple decent human interactions. My cousin was an average guy, average intelligence. Made millions as a liaison in the ad game. He made millions because he was nice and fun...and everyone just loved working with him. Used that to develop a huge client base.

It can work.
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JonSR77 said:
The British comedy team, Little Britain, did a bit on horrible customer service:

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Just like a Monty Python routine! Thanks for the laugh.
 
JonSR77 said:
I would remain open to possibilities. I really don't buy into the standard kind of reasoning around these issues. I just think that companies don't want to do the work to find another, better way to do things. I think just doing the same old, is easier.

Maybe it is just laziness?

I mean with a better atmosphere, there is more employee devotion to the job. Opportunities arise because other people want to do business with a company that is, in a human way, just more enjoyable to engage.

I still think there are ways to make a kinder world work.
Click to expand...
I agree with your viewpoint! But the article says that training does not stress whether or no you are nice to people. I swear that talking to some of these people is like talking to a computer that has not had an update in ages. They stay inside a tiny little box of answers and won't deviate one inch!
 

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