Credit Is Due. In More Ways than One.

Since I seldom hesitate to complain about the various slings and arrows that life shoves at us (actually, that's not true: I hesitate quite a bit. But then I usually plunge on), I try also to give equal time to praise-singing. The former, I find, comes pretty easily; the latter requires more volition.

(Aside: When I was in the advertising game 20-some years ago, we used to share with clients an important bit of information: The ordinary citizen, if pleased with goods, services, or experiences, will share that news with two people, on average. If displeased, he or she will share the news with an average of eleven people. Here endeth the aside.)

Last month, before the kids jetted off to Europe, we spent upwards of an hour at a local Verizon store trying to arrange things so that the kids could call us via our son's Blackberry, which has international capabilities or whatever they called it. So the people at Verizon, after a certain amount of confabbing among themselves as to the best way to make our wishes come true, decided that we needed to sign up for some Global Something-or-Other (which required the extraction of the SIM card from our son's phone--no easy feat) and give Verizon money, and then get set up with a Skype account, and give them money. The kids then would be able to call back here via Skype, which would be cheaper per minute.

I am here reminded of the line from Disney's adaptation of The Wind in the Willows: "There was only one thing wrong with Rat's plan: It didn't work."

Every time the kids tried the Skype trick, they were informed that international calls could not be placed with Skype on the Verizon network.

So yesterday I sent e-mail to Skype's customer service informing them that, like Rat's plan, Verizon's didn't work, and inquiring about getting a refund on the Skype Credits I'd purchased.

To my surprise, I had a nice reply yesterday evening already--Sunday, mind you--apologizing for my troubles and requesting some additional information. I sent off the info this morning and--again to my surprise--received in short order another nice note from someone at Skype, again apologizing for the inconvenience and informing me that my credit card would be credited the full amount.

I imagine it says something about the state of customer "service" these days that I find it remarkable that a company

1. Does the right thing

2. Does it right away

3. Does it without having to be cajoled, threatened, or blackmailed

4. Does it in a polite, even friendly fashion

but that's precisely my experience with Skype. In a word: Wow.

Not that I wouldn't have liked it better had the Skype trick worked. I've had a peek at the next cellphone bill. Not pretty. But worth it to be able to stay in touch with the travelers.

Perhaps needless to say, I'd be more than willing to give the Skype thing another go next time I want to be in touch with someone traveling abroad, or if I find myself in that situation. Certainly I'd recommend Skype. 

Indeed, it seems I just have.

---

How Not to Use the Telephone

My late father started working for Northwestern Bell Telephone Company (later USWest, currently Qwest) when he was in high school, retiring from it nearly 40 years later. He was quite the stickler for proper phone etiquette, and I guess I must have inherited some of that from him, for I find that instances such as one that occurred a few minutes ago really tick me off.

The phone rings. Being involved in some important TV watching, I ignore it. Four rings, then on to the answering machine. But then it immediately rings again, so I go to see what's so blasted important. The Caller ID box for both calls (spaced one minute apart) says JPMorgan Chase, an outfit that I haven't done business with in some years and am in no hurry to deal with again. But there's a message from the second call, so I dutifully listen to it. A woman who speaks so quickly that I can't catch her name nor the company she claims to be with is calling for someone who doesn't live at this address (same last name, different first name) regarding "this matter that has been brought to my attention." She rattles off a phone number--not the one from which the call originated, which was 713-750-2005, but rather an 800 number--and then hangs up.

Of course my first inclination is to ignore it, but having had tangled dealings with Chase in the past I decide to follow up. I play back the message.

And again.

And again.

And several more times.

I come up with this:

Caller's name: Absolutely impossible to catch. Sort of sounds like "Ess." She has an accent but that's not the issue; the issue is that she talks too rapidly and ignores the first rule of phone etiquette, viz., speak clearly. Also the second rule, which is to repeat and spell out things that are important. Like your name.

Callback number: Well, the 800 part is clear enough. The prefix sounds like 3-8, but that can't be right; I guess it must be 3-8-8. Then maybe 4-2-2-7. Or (on subsequent listens) 4-2-2-4. She disconnects so quickly after rattling off the number once (see second rule, above) that it's next to impossible to say. In fact, it isn't next to impossible, it is impossible.

Company name: Chase something. Chase Auto Client? That doesn't make any sense.

By then my wife has come to see what the hoo-hah is about. She can't catch the woman's name either, and her guess for phone number is 4-2-2-4. I Google both 4-2-2-7 and 4-2-2-4; nothing on the former, and something called GAC International for the latter. I dial it, and get a menu: Press 1 for Imports; press 2 for Exports; press 3 for Accounting... Not too promising. I press * to speak to a person and get voicemail. Clearly not where I want to be.

I then try dialing the 713 number from which the calls originated, but of course that produces only a busy signal. Call centers almost never allow for incoming calls.

Back to Google. I type in Chase Au, and immediately Chase Auto Finance pops up. That seems promising. I go to their website, but there's nothing useful there.

I search Google for the 713 number, and read several irate entries at a couple of caller-complaint sites (my favorite: "These idiots keep calling me at my office phone, when I repeatedly tell them that the person they are looking for hasn't worked here in at least 12 months."), which in addition to being entertaining also unearths a slightly different 800 number, 388-4223. Close enough, I figure, and dial it.

Jackpot.

After pushing a few buttons, I'm speaking with a nice woman. I tell her there's this message on my machine, I can't make out the name of the woman who called but she's asking for someone and there's no one here by that name. She asks me how long we've had this number.

"Well, let's see--since 1985, so, what, 24 years?"

And she says they must have misdialed and they'll check their records to make sure they don't call here again, etc. I don't go into the niceties of telephone etiquette with her, since it's probably not her area (based on tonight's evidence, it seems to be nobody's area) and I had no issues with her.

But one does wonder. This is not the first time I've had a call from a creditor or other business entity looking for someone else with the same last name or, on a couple of occasions, another person with the same name as me. Which always amazes me. I don't know about you, but whenever I've taken out a loan, or bought something of substance, or applied for anything, I've been required to give name, rank, serial number, blood sample, letter of reference from my Scoutmaster, etc., etc. And yet when these entities go looking for someone (I assume somebody named Reynolds owes Chase Auto Finance some money), it seems they merely stick a pin in the phone book and call whoever they land on. I mean, presumably you have the guy's SSN, yes? And I'm under the impression that these big business outfits have all sorts of ways to track you down based on SSN. Certainly that's the case on all those television shows such as the one I didn't get to see the end of tonight, thanks to JPMorgan Chase.

So why do they always seem to employ these horse-and-buggy methods to track down their persons of interest?

Too bad I'm not teaching Business Communication this term. I'd use tonight's message as an example. A negative example, naturally.

Promises, Promises

Some little while back I wrote about e-mail sent to me by Sprint upon my completing a customer satisfaction survey for them. In the survey I reported, truthfully, that I was dissatisfied with the results of an e-mail inquiry I had made of them previously (indeed, the survey was a "how are we doing?" follow-up to my e-mail query). (I wrote about that experience, too.) Anyhow, what they had to say at the time was this:

Thank you for responding to our survey. We are sorry to learn that you have an unresolved issue as your satisfaction is very important to us.

A Sprint representative will contact you via your PCS phone at no charge, within 3 business days to assist you.

Please do not respond to this email. If you have any questions please contact Customer Service or visit one of our websites:

http://www.sprint.com or http://www.sprintpcs.com

As previously reported, that e-mail came to me on May 15. Today is July 23. No message from Sprint, via PCS phone, e-mail, snail mail, or homing pigeon, these past two months.

File that under Don't Make Promises...

Anyhow, last night I happened to be in the Verizon store as my daughter had her phone attended to. She's already made the switch, obviously, and seems to be happy as all get-out with their service. (I should have pulled out my phone to see what sort of coverage I had in the Verizon store.) Anyhow, I've already packed our bags mentally as far as abandoning Sprint...after something like ten years. It's not as amusing as you might think to be in a public place passing the time watching other folks chat away on their cell phones while mine is doggedly Looking for Service. And since both my son and I do a fair amount of texting--often with one another--it's also a treat to see what the next phone bill has in store overage-charges-wise. (That issue, you may recall, was the genesis of my original e-mail to Sprint, the one that got responded to but not answered, which triggered the customer-satisfaction survey, which generated the above-mentioned e-mail, which did not produce the promised phone call, which lived in the house that Jack built.

But I digress.

It turns out that two of our three Sprint contracts expire in February, with the third ending the following October. That's a bit longer than I'd like to dally, but I'm unenthusiastic about spending money to get out of this indentured servitude. So it occurs to my to try a radical approach:

Ask them.

No kidding. I'm mentally drafting a nice, polite, even friendly letter to, say, the CEO of Sprint/Nextel. Something along this line:

Look, I've been a customer of Sprint for something on the order of ten years. If you haven't made a profit on me by now, you never will. On the whole I haven't been hugely dissatisfied with Sprint--it clearly was the best game in town when I first signed up--but lately it's been losing ground, at least in my area. Coverage isn't good. Calls are frequently dropped. Indeed, I was sitting at my desk on the second-floor of my centrally located home, chatting with my aunt, when suddenly I was talking to myself when the phone lost its signal. And then I had to wait for it to regain its senses, go into Analog Roam, and then finally find a digital signal again. Not good. Anyhow, with this and that my family and I are, as the song has it, already gone. We're not renewing the contracts as they expire. Given that--and given that two of our lines runs out in February--how about we agree to an amicable split? Let us out of our contract and we'll go try somebody else. No hard feelings. There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy; there's only you and me and we just disagree.

Yeah, I know: I might as well go talk to the side of the Sprint/Nextel headquarters building. But you never know. Might be worth a stamp. Stay tuned for further developments.

Perhaps Not Exactly a "Sprint"

It's possible that the horse has already expired, but here's some more about Sprint (Previous whining here and here.)

Faithful readers may recall from "Almost Helpful" that I was not wowed by Sprint's close-but-no-cigar response to an e-mail query I sent after making several circuits through their less-than-helpful website.

A little while after the exchange (which I never followed up on), I received via e-mail an invitation to fill out a customer-satisfaction survey. Which I did, and honestly. A day or so later, I received the following response:

Thank you for responding to our survey. We are sorry to learn that you have an unresolved issue as your satisfaction is very important to us.

A Sprint representative will contact you via your PCS phone at no charge, within 3 business days to assist you.

Please do not respond to this email. If you have any questions please contact Customer Service or visit one of our websites:

http://www.sprint.com or http://www.sprintpcs.com

Which is all well and good. But that message was e-mailed to me on May 15; here we are on June 2 and I have yet to hear from Sprint. I don't have a calendar in front of me, but I'm almost certain that it's been three business days...although, as I think about it, how would I know what Sprint considers a "business day"? Maybe every other Thursday is a "business day" in Sprint land. Who can say?

I can say a couple of things: First, don't make promises you can't keep. In the Business Communications class I taught this past semester, I had to disagree with the author of our textbook, who was a fan of specificity and would have approved mightily of "A Sprint representative will contact you via your PCS phone at no charge, within 3 business days to assist you." In theory I agree, but as I pointed out to my class, if you are going to pin yourself down like that, you'd better make bloody sure you can deliver. Or someone might just post an unflattering blog entry about your broken promise.

Second, the mystery of why Sprint is experiencing customer defection becomes less and less mysterious with my each passing encounter with them...

Almost Helpful

This has happened twice in the last couple-three weeks. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not expressing myself clearly, or maybe I'm expecting too much of e-mail.

It goes like this:

I e-mail a given corporate entity with a fairly specific inquiry, and they promptly e-mail me back with a reply that almost does what I asked.

For instance: A couple of weeks ago, confronted with a massive cell-phone bill, I e-mailed Sprint to see what we could do to get it to quit competing with the house payment. I told them what we wanted in the way of calls, texting, etc., and for how many lines, and, in effect, asked for a quote.

(This was after some time banging around on their web site trying to figure out their Simply Everything plan, but the site is simply nothing on details.)

Well, I get back a very nice, very prompt reply from a customer service woman who is very much on board with the idea of trying to save me money...and if I just let her know what plan I want, she'll get me set up with it. Well, yes, thanks, but I had rather hoped that she would put the plan together and tell me about it. Helpful...but not quite.

And then yesterday I e-mailed a bank in Omaha in re a little mystery my brother and I have encountered regarding safe-deposit box keys that seem to belong to nothing. It dawned on me that my folks had done business with a particular bank when they lived in Omaha (through the mid-sixties) and wondered if they had somehow forgotten about a deposit box there. Unlikely, but possible. So I went online, found the successor to that long-ago bank, and e-mailed their customer service department with all the information I have: my parents' names, the number written on the case containing the keys, my parents' home address in Omaha, etc.

And this morning I log on to a very nice, very prompt reply from a customer service woman who provides me with the bank's phone number so I can call and talk to someone about it. Uh-huh, okay, but isn't it safe to assume that I could have found the phone number easily myself and that since I went to the trouble to find their email address and compose a message to them, perhaps I had a reason for not calling in the first place? ("Your call is important to us. That's why you're on hold. Please stay on hold, and enjoy the music we keep interrupting to tell you how important your call is to us...")

Again, almost helpful.

I recognize that there might be practical reasons for these and other entities to shy away from conducting certain aspects of business via e-mail. If the bank had said, "For security purposes, please call a personal banker," I probably would have thought it bogus, but at least I'd have had a reason of sorts. But in Sprint's case, wouldn't it have been better for them to have replied with, "Based on what you tell me your best bet would be Plan 9 from Outer Space, which would cost you 600 bazillion dollars a month for three lines"?

Especially since just last week I signed our daughter up for a really nice Verizon plan, and as long as we were in the store I asked the sales associate to give me some info on putting the whole household on the same plan.

Which he was more than happy to put together for me.

You May or May Not Be Able to Get There from Here

By way of follow-up to last weekend's nauseating whine about The Mall, other people's bratty kids, and the Midcontinent Lounge's wifi blocking me from doing anything that required logging in (you know, reading e-mail and junk) and, adding insult, prohibiting me from following a link from Google News to The Carpetbagger Report, here are these items:

First, upon being blocked, I clicked on the button that one is encouraged, or at least invited to click upon when one feels outraged by Big Brother's heavy hand. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was to send a message of protest to FortiGuard Web Filtering Service, which evidently is Midcontinent's um, web-filtering service. Which, to its credit, sent this back later that same day (not that it did me any good, but points for promptness:

Dear Fortinet customer,

The websites you submitted recently have been reviewed and updated:

Submission Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 10:59:41 -0800
URL:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13864.html
Suggested Category: News and Media
Suggested Classification:
Comment: How does a political/current affairs site
violate Midco s sensibilities??
URL Rated: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com
Analyst Comment:
Updated Category: News and Media
Updated Classification: Unclassified
Update Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 19:34:49 -0800


The rating update may not be effective immediately on your network
because of the Web filtering cache. If you would like to have
the update effective immediately or have any other questions,
please contact your network administrator.

Note that FortiGuard Web Filtering Service categorizes websites, but it

is your IT manager who decides what categories to block or allow.
Please
contact your IT manager to allow you to visit the site.

This is an automatically generated notification of rating update.
Please do not reply to this email.

Thank you for using FortiGuard Web Filtering Service.

Regards,

FortiGuard Web Filtering Service
Fortinet Technologies Inc.

Of course, to check whether the Carpetbagger Report is now accessible vis Micontinent's wifi "lounge" next to Caribou Coffee would require me to make another trip out to The Mall--the week before Christmas, no less!--and that I am reluctant to do. Especially inasmuch as I can easily access the Carpetbagger Report from the comfort of my own home...something, incidentally, I could not have said yesterday or the day before. Been struggling with my dear old Mac blue-and-white G3. I may or may not write something about The Struggle in the near future. One never knows.

Anyhow.

Friday's mail brought a message from "Iteam"...a message that I nearly labeled as spam and deleted, since "Iteam" means naught to me, and the subject line--Re: Contact Us Form Completed]--hardly makes one sit up and take notice. Indeed, way too much "legitimate" spam tries to look like it's in reply to something you initiated. But something made me think it might be a response to the previous weekend's harangue, and so I opened it and read:

Dear William,

At the present time, this is not available, but we may consider it for the future.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact us at 1-800-888-1300.

Thanks,

Ted F

Technical Support Specialist

Midcontinent Communications

24 Hour Phone Support (800) 888-1300

Now, this was the question I had sent via their online form:

Hello--just wondering why I am unable to access any of my e-mail accounts from your "Midcontinent Lounge" at the Empire Mall. I thought I'd handle my e-mail while my kids shopped, but no such luck. For future reference, is there a way to do this? Thanks!

So, if I take Ted F's rather nonspecific reply to actually be in reference to my question (and not some generic try-again-later message...which I wouldn't expect to take nearly a week to be generated), then his "this is not available" means that you can do anything you like at the Midcontinent Lounge except read your e-mail! Which renders the whole experience a little pointless, at least for me, since reading and sending e-mail is probably 50% of my time online.

In a word: Bizarre.

I shared my experience with my students last week, and several of them reported similar disgust with the service provided at the "lounge"--an eternity to get online, only to discover that you're severely limited once you get there.

My pal Jerry suggested that a book would not present the same sort of frustrations, and I know he's right. But still!