All I want is …

… to find a company that believes in offering good customer service.  I’m growing so tired of the lackluster customer service.  I am a user of many services, and it’s getting to the point where I think it’s time to cut all or most of them off.  It’s become absurd.  I don’t expect them to be perfect, but when they make a mistake, I want to see them actively working to correct the problem, not relying on me to follow behind them with a whip to get it done.

Comcast — My issues with Comcast are well documented.  I finally got to the point where I cut two thirds of my service with them off completely.  If I could I would have cancelled it all totally, but I’m not quite willing to go without TV all together, and unfortunately, they have a monopoly on my address.  It took basically throwing a temper tantrum here on my blog to get anything at all done with them.

Apple & AT&T — Apple should be very, very ashamed to be listed side by side with AT&T.  However they’re the ones that went into an agreement with them for providing the iPhone, so they’re equally accountable.  Every one of us where I work has an iPhone.  All of us have service issues.  At home (a rather well-populated area of a large city) it’s easy for me to slip into no service, unless I properly stand on my head, pat my stomache and juggle, it’s difficult for me to get a signal.  I commonly have lesser signal if one at all then my friends do from other providers.  “More bars in more places” ?  There’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one.

Apple — Yep, once again, it’s time to list them.  MobileMe … what a crock.  It’s been nothing but trouble since they launched it.  I signed up for a trial account and was never able to login to the web interface for it.  It kept telling me invalid username or password … despite the fact that I could connect to my iDisk and IMAP into my email account (meaning I had the correct username and password).  Their email support has yet to respond to my 3 emails, and I’ve only been able to catch them on chat once.  They’ve now billed my credit card for roughly $115 … for those of you unaware, that’s not even the correct price for the MobileMe service.  They no longer have the email form up on their support website.  There’s only a link for Chat support, and it’s only available during certain hours.  Apple is supposed to be better then this.  They’re supposed to be one of those companies that represents “all I want.”

Verizon — /sigh.  They provide my DSL service.  No HUGE complaints here, although I am rather upset with the fact they’ve lied to me.  Upon the time of my first bill, I received an email saying they’d tried to charge my credit card on file and were unable to and they wanted me to login to make a payment.  The credit card is a debit card to one of my checking accounts.  It had plenty of money.  I figured maybe they had messed up when recording my credit card information during sign up, so I logged into my account and made a one time payment.  The next morning I received an email from my bank saying they had charged my card (the original one) for the exact same amount.  They double-billed me.  I called in … and of course I got India.  They asked me to fax in proof of payment for the one time payment, which I did immediately.  They told me I would receive a refund to my credit card.  I’ve never received the credit they promised.  I also confirmed with them that I wanted a refund to my credit card, not a credit to my account.  They confirmed this for me.  Guess what’s happened?  They put a credit on my account.  So instead of me getting to earn interest on the money, they’re getting to.  I can’t seem to convince anyone in India why I find this to be a problem.  My bank won’t do anything for me because they said technically I gave them permission to charge my account.  There’s a Verizon office down the street from me, but at this exact moment, I don’t have it in me to walk in and have a come-to-<insert deity here> talk with them in person.

I just don’t understand why companies have such a hard time with customer service.  They’re constantly getting away with things that if I did at my job, would result in immediate termination.

How did we get here?

Corporations are acting like they can just steamroll their bread-and-butter, the consumers.

They want access to do EFT’s directly from our bank accounts.  Ok, if they let me EFT their account, I’ll consider allowing them to do it to my account.

They are able to threaten our “permanent record” (AKA credit report) for not paying them … even if they aren’t providing their service as promised.  Tell you what, I’ll consider that fair if I can report them for not providing services as promised and have it make a financial impact on their business for up to 7 years.

If there’s a problem with our account, they can and will call us at all hours of the day or night.  Yet if we need something from them we need to call Mon-Fri between 9a-5p, or talk to someone who’s English is barely a second language.

Why are they supposed to be trustworthy with our financial information, but the idea of a consumer having their service providers financial information would be considered crazy-talk in our current paradigm.  In my opinion, it is obvious we need a paradigm shift.  The corporations have proven, crystal clear, that they cannot be trusted.

Again, how did we get here?  It’s absurd what we’re putting up with.