Today alone I have probably spent close to an hour or an hour and half on the phone, and have been amazed at the variety of customer support that I have dealt with.
Usually American Express blows me away, but today their “Accept Pay” service failed me miserably. First of all I signed up online for the demo so I could see what features this service had versus the existing invoicing system that we use for business. This went fine. Then maybe 20 minutes or so later I get a call from their customer support. It was a guy who was “here to answer any questions I might have about the service”. Well I must have asked him the unheard of “how much of a percentage do you take to process a payment”.
He replied with something like “I am not able to answer any of questions regarding the pricing, let me get you a blah blah support rep”.
Well I am transfered to that guy and he is not allowed to tell me how much it actually costs until he finds out what industry I am in. I tell him consulting / search marketing, and he tells me they do not accept that. End of the call.
So these 2 asshats, already knew what industry I was in when I signed up for AMEX (4 years ago), know which industry I was in when I signed up for their demo an hour ago, yet call me and bug the shit out of me to get a sale to a service they do not support. LAME. Amex you failed me on this one. Tighten up your forms and your data between departments and do not waste my time. I will use paypal, since you do not seem to offer anything I cannot currently get right now.
So that was 10 minutes of my time today. Yesterday I bought a new car, which should take what an hour or two at the most to buy. It took me 4 fucking hours. I have no idea what took so long other than the 20 minute pitch to get me to buy some rust / dent / ding protection? Nuts to that.
Anyhow today I had to call a place I ordered floor mats from CarID.com – 800-505-3274 – I had to change the address on file since the shipping will take a few days longer than expected. Anyhow the hold message at this place is ridiculous. It is some dude talking about these various trivia and other bullshit. Things that are good luck like a spider falling on you. Just really weird stuff. He threatens about if you complain about the message it will take twice as long the next time you call in. It is interesting and something different than what you normally expect. Anyhow it is like a “down home” american male talking. I wait on hold for however long and it is totally a call center in India or somewhere. Bait and switch on the tech support, but they handled the issue once I got through and the dude was nice.
If you run an ecommerce store and do tech support give this number a listen to see how weird the message is: 800-505-3274
Lastly I have been using a new email filtering service because my email has been HAMMERED with spam. It seemed like it started out fine and then it went to shit. Well anyhow I call DNA Mail up today, and I get this rocking piano solo loop as the message. It is terrible. It sounds like an angry person just smashing the keyboard and it is looped. It is fucking terrible. So I threw my phone on speaker phone and typed this thing up while I waited. I could not handle it anymore and left a message. So DNAMails way of handling customer support is to delay the customer support action to a point where you either A) no longer need their help or B) the fire/urgency of the problem has died down by the time you call.
Hopefully these Jamokes will call me back while I am not busy doing anything else.
So here is todays customer support Scorecard:
1. American Express Accept Pay – F- you wasted my time, did not help, and do not even serve my kind. Your credit card department is usually great, this one; not so much!
2. CarID.com – B+ – You kept me entertained while I was on hold, and then you bait and switched me to an offshore company, BUT it was pretty quick and you handled my issue.
3. DNA Mail – Worse than an F. You play terrible music, keep me on hold forever and then force me to wait for a returned phone call. I am your customer and you treat me like shit. Might be time to change companies.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
dude u fail, go get a fking life
Heres a suggestion, before evaluating any product or service, call the support line first just to see if you get through. Before I buy software (those that don’t have enterprise support), I always call just to see how long it takes to get through or if they have those automated queues telling you how long it will be. Its just a suggestion. In your case you don’t have much choice since there are only so many payment acceptance companies out there that fit your business model.
ALoha,
Anthony
Oh yeah, thanks for the bunny/cigarrette wallpaper.
Life as a text message or IM conversation.
Its really very annoying when customer care support do not give proper response. Such behavior can force their customers to leave them so the companies should be aware of this fact and avoid such things.