Caught on tape: An AOL representative refusing to let a customer cancel his account. AOL claims to have fired the guy and glosses over any mention of this being their typical policy toward cancellations. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to tape conversations like this from the customer end, but maybe if more tapes like this surfaced, companies with bad customer service and tech support would shape up. Also, we'd have voice prints for half the population of India, but that's just me being Cynical again.
First off, thank you to everyone who sent me and my family well wishes. Due to the immediate response here, which I forwarded on to my mother (she's not an LJ'er of any kind), she took our advice and went into the ER here at San Francisco Kaiser yesterday afternoon. She was so short of breath that the walk from the entrance to the triage desk (less than 25 feet) nearly caused her to pass out.
She was tested up one side and down the other, luckily getting all very nice people who actually listened to her. She was admitted and at this moment is sitting up having her breakfast, swearing she's fine. It looks like what is actually wrong may be simply a bad reaction to a medication she's been on, compounded by a slow growing infection at the site of the pacemaker.
She gives you all her thanks for convincing her that no, she wasn't being a bad customer to insist on an answer ASAP, and one doctor actually said to me last night as I was at the hospital, depending on how long she had waited, this could have killed her.
Yup, that's right. In a sense, this community saved her life. She wouldn't listen to just me. So one more time, thank you to every single one of you.
US CABLE OUTFIT Comcast's poor customer service came under the spotlight this week after an angry punter filmed one of its technicians snoozing on the job.
According to Via YouTube the punter had a broken router and after several missed appointments, hours on the blower to customer support, Comcast sent around a technician to fix the problem.
However, the bloke couldn't fix it and resorted to ringing up the technical support people at Comcast, who put him on hold for an hour.
While the minutes dragged by, the Comcast techie nodded off on the couch. The customer filmed him and posted it on the World Wide Wibblyweb here.
The punter complains that he has been in his apartment for three weeks and his Internet connection is still non-functional. It is not clear if he has got the techie off the sofa yet.
"This [film] is my tribute to Comcast, their low quality technology and their poor customer service," he said here. µ
Last night, I got the chance to see Eddie Izzard in a long-form improv show in LA. We had been warned beforehand that parking was hell, and to just go ahead and use the valet service.
When we showed up, I removed the CD player faceplate and stored it in the compartment between the seats as usual, before getting out of the car and letting my girlfriend (the driver) handle the payment and hand over the keys. After the show we got our car and went home.
I just got an e-mail from her asking where I stored the faceplate; I told her. Apparently, it's not there. To say I'm pissed is an understatement. We're going to completely go through everything in the car tonight to check that it didn't slip down behind one of the seats or something, but if it's not found then we WILL be going back to the valet and calling the police.
It's a cheap faceplate (well, $70 isn't exactly cheap, but the cheapest we could find) but it's the principle of the matter. Which leads me to the reason for my post. I'm originally from England, and the idea of handing over my car to a total stranger to park makes me extremely uncomfortable. Even when they're wearing immaculate suits and are well-spoken and polite, it just makes me feel instantly suspicious and want to double-check everything the second I get back into the car. We won't be leaving valuables in the car again if we have to use a valet service (unfortunately a common occurance in Los Angeles), but has anyone else had a similar experience, or am I just being paranoid?
And I should add that Eddie and the rest of the improv team rocked. :D
i went shopping at save on (in canada) the other day. i got a grand total of four items, and since the cashiers were all insanely busy, i went to the customer service counter (as i often do) to pay. the guy rang my purchases through, i paid, he gave me my change and receipt, and i was out of the store in like 3 minutes. nothing wrong with that.
when i got home, i looked over the receipt, as i'm always curious to know how many "points" i have. i was looking at the portion of the receipt where the items are scanned in, and i noticed several mistakes. first of all, i was overcharged for one item. next, the computer somehow didn't add up the subtotal correctly- yes, i know this is highly unlikely. i'm an electrical engineer and i know that computers don't make mistakes. but i added up the subtotal like 10 times with a calculator, and came to the conclusion that the subtotal on the receipt was definitely not correct. and mistake number three, the cashier charged me the subtotal amount, which does not have tax added on to it yet. despite the fact that i didn't have to pay tax, i still overpayed due to the incorrect subtotal and the one item that i was overcharged for.
now, i'm not exactly enraged over this and i don't necessary know if this constitutes bad service. but come on! three separate mistake on one order of only 4 items? that's pretty pathetic. makes me wonder how many mistakes are made when i buy a whole grocery cart full of stuff.
The downtown area of the city I live in has a pedicab service. These pedicabs will take you just about anywhere downtown. A major plus about the pedicabs is that they are free, but my friends and I always tip well.
Last week we wanted to go from the main street downtown to a large park not too far away, about a 15-minute walk, usually 5 minutes on a pedicab. We would have just wandered up the street until we found a pedicab but we were tired so we called the service and asked them to send us one. They said okay. The pedicab took about 30 minutes to arrive. That was pretty much ridiculous, but we were too tired to say anything and figured it probably wasn't the driver's fault.
So we get in and tell her where we want to go. As I said before, this ride is usually about 5 minutes. The driver somehow went some bass-ackwards way (going around her ass to get to her elbow, so to speak) to get us to the park, which made it take around 20 minutes. It would have been faster to WALK.
We get to the stop and get off. I give the driver $5 for the two of us, which is actually more than I usually tip, but I didn't have any ones on me. She stares at me, stares at my friend, and then goes, "Any more?" sticking her hand out.
My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief and then both claimed to not have any more money. The driver looks all exasperated and proceeds to yell at us, saying that it should be "at least $5 a person" but she will "let us off this time".
My friend still has the number of the service, so we called back to make sure that there was no specified rate that these drivers expected to be paid. Nope. We just happened to get a greedy bitch.
relieved
annoyed