fivecentnickel.com » Customer Service http://www.fivecentnickel.com personal finance tips, tricks, and commentary Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:08:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Finally… Customer Service That Rocks http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/30/finally-customer-service-that-rocks/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/30/finally-customer-service-that-rocks/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:57:18 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/30/finally-customer-service-that-rocks/ Follow me on Twitter!

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How’s this for awesome customer service? We were settling in late last Saturday morning to watch some college football when my wife and I decided that we wanted to get some takeout from our local burger joint. While they offer counter service and a drive-through, their motto is “We don’t serve fast food. We serve good food.” Thus, it takes a bit longer than a plain old fast food restaurant. Thus, I wanted to call ahead and place our order so it would be ready to pick up when we got there.

Unfortunately, they were in the midst of the lunch rush and were unable to answer the phone. Instead, I got an answering machine. This is actually understandable, as it’s a pretty small family operation and they often get swamped. Since I don’t like talking to answering machines, I hung up without leaving a message and returned to the pre-game show.

About 30 minutes later, the phone rang. I jokingly told my wife that it was the restaurant calling back. Guess what? It was! Even though I hadn’t left a message, they checked their caller ID and rang us up to see what we needed. Needless to say, we were favorably impressed. We’re already loyal customers, but this just cemented the relationship. Mega-corporations like Dish Network needs to take a page from their book.

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/30/finally-customer-service-that-rocks/feed/ 14 Dish Network Pay-Per-View Followup http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/23/dish-network-pay-per-view-followup/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/23/dish-network-pay-per-view-followup/#comments Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:08:39 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/23/dish-network-pay-per-view-followup/ Follow me on Twitter!

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Miracle of miracles, I got an e-mail response from Dish Network saying that they’ve credited our account for $3.99 to make up for the pay-per-view movie that we never ordered. Interestingly, shortly after I sent my response, I checked the settings on our Dish receiver. Guess what? PPV was already locked out. So… Despite what they said in their initial response, it is possible for their system to make mistakes. But… At least they did the right thing in the end.

Moral of the story: If you know you’re right, don’t let a company stonewall you.

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/23/dish-network-pay-per-view-followup/feed/ 5 Dish Network, You STILL Suck http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/20/dish-network-you-still-suck/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/20/dish-network-you-still-suck/#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:50:41 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/20/dish-network-you-still-suck/ Follow me on Twitter!

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I’ve had my share of troubles with Dish Network customer service in the past, but this just about takes the cake… This past month, our bill was a bit higher than normal. When I investigated, I discovered that we were charged $3.99 for a pay-per-view movie that we never ordered. No, $3.99 isn’t a huge deal. But after all the trouble that they’ve given us, I’m not willing to pay them a penny more than absolutely necessary.

Because their phone service is atrocious and has extensive hold times, I decided to contact them via their website late last week. Within the prescribed 24-48 hours, I received a canned response that basically said “tough luck.” Here’s the text of their response:

Thank you for your e-mail. Please understand all pay-per-view (PPV) movies are non-refundable once ordered. Our technical specialists have done exhaustive troubleshooting on tuners that were reported to have ordered pay-per-view events independently and have found it is not possible for a tuner to do so. The system requires that you confirm your purchase two times before the order will process.

The process to order a PPV includes:

1) Tuning to an event from the guide or channel itself.

2) Pressing the “Select” button go to the order screen.

3) Pressing the “Select” button again to order the PPV.

4) Pressing the right arrow button to highlight “Yes.”

5) Pressing the “Select” button to confirm the order.

6) Pressing the “Select” button to run the phone test.

7) Finally, pressing the “Select” button again to acknowledge the test results.

We regret that it is not possible to make the credit, as you have requested. If you are unaware of how these movies were ordered on your system, you may choose to either lock out your system’s pay-per-view feature (menu, 5, 3) or call us at 1-800-333-3474 to have a supervisor permanently disable your pay-per-view. Both options will prevent pay-per-views from being ordered on your system in the future without your prior explicit approval.

We thank you for allowing us to be of assistance to you. If you have any further questions or concerns, please refer to www.dishnetwork.com or reply to this email.

In short, they claim that it’s impossible for their system to make an error of this nature, and they further argued that ordering a PPV movie is so complex that it would be impossible to do so accidentally. The only useful information contained within their boilerplate response is an outline of how to lock out PPV movies. The funny thing is, the movie in question was apparently ordered at 5AM on a Monday morning, at which time nobody in our house is awake.

I’ve responded letting them know that we’ve just about satisfied our original 18 month agreement (we’re seventeen months in) and that I can’t believe they’d risk running off a reliable customer in the interest of defending a $3.99 billing error. Whether or not the PPV movie is technically refundable, they have it within their power to make billing adjustments. They’ve just chosen not to. I’m sure that the CSR that reads my response won’t care, but I’m sick of dealing with dumbass CSRs on the phone. Next stop, a phone call to EchoStar corporate headquarters — this is seemingly the only way to get any satisfaction from them.

Dish Network, your customer service STILL sucks and we won’t miss you in the least.

As an amusing aside, I encourage you to run a quick Google search for: Dish network customer service

(Here, I did it for you.)

Notice what comes up as the #2 hit, immediately after their official customer service page? ;)

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/11/20/dish-network-you-still-suck/feed/ 50 Using Shopper Data to Get the Word Out About Recalls http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/08/23/using-shopper-data-to-get-the-word-out-about-recalls/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/08/23/using-shopper-data-to-get-the-word-out-about-recalls/#comments Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:08:48 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/08/23/using-shopper-data-to-get-the-word-out-about-recalls/ Follow me on Twitter!

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Now this is brilliant. Instead of simply using their customer’s shopping history data for marketing purposes, grocery chain Meijer has decided to put their Orwellian insights to good use… They’ve started printing product recall information on the bottoms of receipts when a customer that has previously purchased a recalled product comes through the checkstand. Now that’s what I call customer service! If only someone would’ve notified us of the fact that we bought a bunch of potentially metal-laced bread… Instead, we ate it, oblivious to the potential risk. Oh well, it tasted good. And besides, our intestines weren’t sliced to ribbons, so we really don’t have anything to complain about.

[Source: The Consumerist]

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2007/08/23/using-shopper-data-to-get-the-word-out-about-recalls/feed/ 2 Dish Network Technical Troubles Solved http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/19/dish-network-technical-troubles-solved/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/19/dish-network-technical-troubles-solved/#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2006 10:20:36 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/19/dish-network-technical-troubles-solved/ Follow me on Twitter!

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Well, yesterday went far better than I expected… The Dish Network tech showed up at 10AM, smack dab in the middle of the promised 8AM to noon window. He came into the house, ran a few diagnostics, and then decided that he needed to replace the ’switch’, which is the part of the dish assembly that is out on the end of the arm pointing back toward the dish itself. Once he swapped it out, everything worked perfectly. Before he left, the tech gave me his card and said we should call the local office directly if we have any further trouble in the next couple of weeks. And then about an hour after he left, I received a call from Dish just checking to make sure that the tech had come by and that everything was working. Given all the problems we’ve had with their shoddy customer service, this totally blew me away. In fact, if I wasn’t so sick and tired of their crap, they would’ve scored a few points in my book for following up like that. If only they had approached our entire series of interactions like that… Regardless, things are now back up and running, and will hopefuly remain that way for the forseeable future.

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/19/dish-network-technical-troubles-solved/feed/ 2 Dish Network Technical Problems: This is Getting Ridiculous! http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/18/dish-network-technical-problems-this-is-getting-ridiculous/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/18/dish-network-technical-problems-this-is-getting-ridiculous/#comments Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:20:45 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/18/dish-network-technical-problems-this-is-getting-ridiculous/ Follow me on Twitter!

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For all the trouble that we’ve had with Dish Network, this is hardly surprising… Our service has been out since Sunday night. Actually, it started acting funky Sunday night and then pretty much went down on Monday. On Monday night, I called for technical service and explained to the guy that we were having problems with TVs hooked to both boxes, which indicated to me that it was the dish itself, and not the boxes that were acting up. I also ran down a list of Dish-endorsed troubleshooting steps that I had taken. His response?

He proceeded to basically read a script aloud while he walked me through all the steps that I had already taken (and told him about). I ended up indulging him and re-doing everything just to satisfy him and get him to schedule a tech to come out.

Guess what? When we got done with the troubleshooting, he told me that — get this — the problems are most likely coming from our dish, and not from the boxes. Which is exactly what I told him when we first started talking.

So here we sit. It’s Wednesday morning, and they’ve promised that a tech will be out to our house sometime between 8AM and noon. Hopefully this will be resolved soon.

At least we got the problems with our Dish Home Protection Plan all sorted out, so this visit is covered. Unfortunately, their policy is to bill us $29 for the visit (marked down from $49 for having the Home Protection Plan) and then refund the money once they verify that there is a problem. Hmmmm… Where have I heard about this sort of thing before?

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/18/dish-network-technical-problems-this-is-getting-ridiculous/feed/ 32 Dish Network Customer Service Salvation (For Real This Time?) http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/10/dish-network-customer-service-salvation-for-real-this-time/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/10/dish-network-customer-service-salvation-for-real-this-time/#comments Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:53:25 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/10/dish-network-customer-service-salvation-for-real-this-time/ Follow me on Twitter!

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Before I jump in on the topic at hand, I thought I’d highlight an interesting little tidbit from a commenter who claims to be a former Dish Network employee:

As a former employee of Dish, please allow me to offer my condolences. I used to handle all escalated customers who showed up in the lobby of our corporate offices and I can tell you that really, your best bet would have been to drive to Englewood. The “Executive Escalations” person you spoke with was a glorified CSR in yes, gasp, a call center. I am glad that your problem is fixed.

Wow. For all you disgruntled Dish Network customers out there, it sounds like if your best course of action might by to hustle yourself out to Englewood, CO to lodge your complaint in person. Really nice. Although I can’t say that I’m surprised at this revelation. After all, we’ve been in Dish Network customer service hell for, hmmm…. Let’s see… June, July, August, September, part of October… Four and half months!

Anyway, back to our own Dish Network problems… After having thought everything was settled on more than one occasion, only to have the rug yanked out from under us, I just logged into our account and saw that we’ve now received a credit for last month’s Dish Home Protection plan. Now I can only hope that this ends up being a recurring credit, like it’s supposed to be. The really frustrating thing is that I now have to keep track of this for the next year or so to make sure they don’t renege.

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/10/dish-network-customer-service-salvation-for-real-this-time/feed/ 72 Dish Network Customer Service: Drat, Foiled Again! http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/03/dish-network-customer-service-drat-foiled-again/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/03/dish-network-customer-service-drat-foiled-again/#comments Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:45:19 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/03/dish-network-customer-service-drat-foiled-again/ Follow me on Twitter!

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This is getting really, really old… When I last wrote about our Dish Network customer service problems, I was confident that they had been solved. But I was wrong… While we did receive the $49.99 credit for ‘free’ installation, we’re still being charged for the Home Protection plan (essentially an extended warranty on the equipment that’s supposed to be free for 18 months). Fortunately, I got the name and extension of the person that was helping me so I could call her back. Unfortunately, I keep getting her voice mail and she never calls back.

The exact same thing happened with the last rep that we dealt with. And yes, I’m polite as can be when dealing with them, so it’s not a case of them deciding not to call back a rude customer. So…

I called EchoStar corporate headquarters (again) and got a new (upper tier) CSR on the line. As usual, sge promised to fix the problem. Rather than fix it herself, however, this time she’s going to tackle the problem by e-mailing a different department — nothing like passing the buck! She did offer both her e-mail address and her direct phone number in case I need to get in touch with her about this going forward. However, given that this is the third time that I’ve gotten that sort of information, and have yet to get back in touch with the two previous “helpers,” I’m not holding my breath. Given what we’ve been through, I can almost guarantee that I’ll be writing again next week about the lack of a resolution.

I have also followed up with the BBB about this new development to try and get them to put some pressure on the retailer.

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]]> http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/10/03/dish-network-customer-service-drat-foiled-again/feed/ 19 SimplyBunkBeds.com Misled Us (And I’m Not Happy) http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/09/21/simplybunkbedscom-misled-us/ http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/09/21/simplybunkbedscom-misled-us/#comments Thu, 21 Sep 2006 12:37:50 +0000 Nickel http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2006/09/21/simplybunkbedscom-misled-us/ Follow me on Twitter!

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Wow, it feels like this site is rapidly devolving into a consumer bitch fest. But here we go again… We recently ordered two sets of ash bunkbeds from SimplyBunkBeds.com (a subsidiary of NetShops, Inc.) and when they showed up, they were made out of pine. And when we checked with the manufacturer, we learned that this model really is supposed to be made of pine, as opposed to ash. In other words, we were misled by the information provided by SimplyBunkBeds.com. Not only this, but they totally screwed up the order…

Instead of receiving two sets of bunk beds (i.e., two sets of headboards, footboards, and side rails), we received the two sets of the head and footboards that we ordered (except they were made of pine), as well as two more sets of head and footboards from an entirely different set of bunks. We also got four bunky boards — these came via UPS, whereas the balance of our order came on a freight truck.

Needless to say, we weren’t happy with having been misled, and the fact that they butchered the order just added insult to injury. The first thing that we did was to hop online and print out the misleading product description page. We then called SimplyBunkBeds.com customer service and explained the situation. Given the problems, they agreed to take the items back. However, it’s been two weeks since the wayward bunks arrived, and they’re still sitting in our garage. This has caused some minor inonveniences, such as us not being able to get our car into the garage, and some slightly bigger issues such as having a sizable (but now disputed) charge on our card and no beds for our kids to sleep in (they’ve been on mattresses on the floor ever since we moved).

While SimplyBunkBeds.com has promised to take our order back, little has happened. UPS has (finally) picked up the bunky boards, although this took multiple calls to SimplyBunkBeds.com, as well as two different trips by UPS (SimplyBunkBeds.com didn’t issue enough call tags to get all four bunky boards picked up). We’re still waiting on them to get the freight company back out here to pick up the balance of the order, still waiting to be credited back, and still waiting go out and buy bunk beds for our kids.

Yesterday my wife moved up the chain of command and spoke to the shipping manager. He promised to follow up on this personally, and to make sure that it gets taken care of. Her response was “Well, I sure hope so. Because these things are going to find their way onto my front porch sometime soon. And then they’re going to find their way off my porch.”

The other maddening thing is that two weeks after notifying them of the problem, their web site still contains an inaccurate description of these bunk beds (i.e., it still says they’re made of ash instead of pine). When my wife called them on this, their response was simply that “We’re working on it. These things take time.”

So… If you’re in the market for bunk beds, I just thought you might want to know about our bad experience with SimplyBunkBeds.com.

Oh, and from what I can tell, KidsFurnitureMart.com and BedroomFurnitureMart.com are also operated by NetShops, Inc. and their websites are displaying the exact same misleading information.

You might also be interested in reading about fixing customer service problems in general.

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