Paula's Blog

Ok... I really didn't feel like writing lately, but I really need to get this out.

What happened to "being nice to customers and actually trying to help"??

I could throw a million cases here of bad customer service I seem to observe everywhere, from register people and waiters seeming to be bothered by customers presence or basically throwing your food or product in front of you, to really unpleasant experiences with people not willing to do their jobs and not even putting an effort to smile occasionally, or actually meaning it when they say "have a good day", or "good morning" (which right now seems to be just protocol).
It really brightens my day when someone smiles at me or treats me with respect and cordiality and I am always polite to people who are working with customer service, because really, they are there for you, the customer and they deserve respect. But it really upsets me when customers get treated like they are bothering the representative by just entering a store and asking about a service or product. A lot of customers representatives seem to forget that their job entails dealing with customers, and that their behavior makes part of the selling of a product. I honestly refuse to buy a product from a store that I have been treated poorly. Sometimes I wish some of them worked on commission, and actually tried to be nice.
Really, I understand... everyone has bad days, not everyone likes their jobs, but would it hurt to be nice to people???? I sincerely do try to be even nicer to people around me when I'm having a bad day. It just makes life so much less bitter.

I could go on and on with this, but let's get an example, shall we?

My purse got stolen at the U of M Dearborn field house while I was shooting a video for the school's rugby team in February. I ran to a police station and filled a report, and called all of my credit card companies right away.
American Express was the fastest, and the best customer service of all the 3 or 4 I had to call that night. They helped me calm down and got my 2 cards cancelled right away, gave me information of where my cards were used that night, including the addresses of the gas stations my stolen card was used.
My Chase Visa was a bit of a hassle and it took a while talking to a machine to actually cancel my card, but it was done.
National City was a big pain in the butt, because you cannot get rid of that machine talking to you and asking you all of the information that just got stolen and you don't have in front of you, and hanging up a few times on me because I didn't have my account number. But, after a while, they canceled that account too.

In case you were wondering, I did regret having all of these cards in the first place.

There was a last card though... a Citi American Airlines Advantage Master Card that I had never used in my life, and just had it in my purse because of the mileage program. That was used by the people who stole my card too and when I called to cancel it, they said it all would be taken care of and I didn't need to worry about it.

The next days and weeks following the theft, I called all of the credit card companies to follow-up on the proceedings of investigation/refunding, and everyone of them told me that everything was being taken care of and I was going to get refunded.

Oh... after numerous calls for weeks to the detective that was supposed to call me the next day, the Dearborn police told me they wouldn't even send a unit to the gas stations to try and see if they had a camera or try to investigate anything. They told me that even if they did have, and I quote "some black guy" in the tape using my credit card, first, they wouldn't be able to identify them, and second, they couldn't prosecute them because it doesn't prove that this person stole my card (even though it is illegal to use someone else's credit card), so basically, they didn't care and I just wasted my time filling that report and hoping that police would actually do their job. That REALLY pissed me off.

Well... even though I had all of my personal belongings and documents stolen, I did get refunded by American Express, Chase and National City for the money they spent on my cards. But remember that mileage Master Card that I had never used?? Well... that was taking a while... until I decided to call them and ask. The representative told me they were taking care of it. I even asked if they thought it would be best if I paid the amount on the card and waited on the refund later, and he said that I didn't need to pay for it, since it wasn't my fault. Ok, I thought... About 4 months later, I get a call from a collection company, telling me I owe charges on that card. I then called Citi again and they told me I never filled out a form they supposedly sent me regarding the stolen card, so the charges were never formally dealt with on the theft department, and there were a few late charges on top of that too... I paid it and asked them to send that form to me again (even though I never got the first one). I got the form a week later, filled out on the same day and sent it.

It has now been more than a month since then, so I decided to check my account to see if I was refunded... Nope, I had a balance of $395.00 sitting there... hey? what happened? I called... At this point I just wanted to close the account and solve this for good. I talked to some very nice people understanding the problem and willing to help, but after being forwarded 5 times to different departments, a got a major pain in the butt. The very unfriendly representative told me that it was my fault that the charges were on my card because it shouldn't have taken me so long to send that form. I politely told her the reason I didn't send that form earlier was because they hadn't sent me the form. She then said it was my responsibility to check my account and see the balance there. I told her I did see the balance and did call a few times asking about it and everybody told me it was being taken care of. She continued accusing me of being responsible for the whole situation. I asked where she was trying to go and she told me that I would have to accept those charges, since they had a policy that after so many days of the theft they couldn't investigate it, and could do nothing about it. When I told her the only reason it took so long was because THEY failed in sending me that form, she said I was being unprofessional. I said she was being unreasonable and I would not accept the charges. After politely trying to offend me for a few minutes, she finally gave up and said "Fine, I will write here that you will not accept the charges and we can close your account". I asked "Do I have to do anything else, will I be refunded?", she just said "yeah. Is that all?". When I said yes, she hung up the phone.

Now... is trying to blame the customer and not assume responsibility something we should expect from customer service???? Is that really customer service???
Whatever happened with customer satisfaction???

I'm sorry if this post is so long, but I just had to get it off my chest. I HATE BAD CUSTOMER REPRESENTATIVES!!!!