Recently in Crappy Customer Service Category

quan·tum - \ˈkwän-təm\ - 2 a: any of the very small increments or parcels into which many forms of energy are subdivided

With a name like QuantumView you might suspect that UPS' package tracking notification system would give you really fine-grained detail on the current status of your package (either as a shipper, or as a recipient). You'll get these wonderful e-mail message letting you know when the status of your package changes throughout the shipping process. For instance, I got one this morning:

Now this seems all well and good except it put me in a panic. Why? Because it made me think perhaps the shipper had double-shipped the item. Why might it make me think that?

The e-mail message, dated just eight minutes prior to my taking a screenshot for this blog entry, is letting me know that "tomorrow your package will arrive!" What's important here is that tomorrow was my scheduled delivery date, but UPS got it here faster. This means that QuantumView Notify isn't looking at the real status, but the scheduled status.

In other words, QuantumView Notify doesn't tell you jack-shit about where your package is. It tells you wonders about where it should be according to some stuff it determined when the shipper originally dropped off the package, not taking into account any changes at all that happened afterwards. So, if we all lived in a perfect fantasy world where Brown never lost or misdirected packages, or if they never got delayed by weather, missed flights, or slow customs agents, then this UPS service would be sweet. Instead though, since we live in the real world, it's tits-on-a-bull useless.

Classmates.com, I have always thought, was such a great, simple, idea. Make the barrier to entry low for people to register themselves as being part of a given high school or college class, let former classmates reconnect after "all these years", etc., etc. Sitting in the middle collecting money from the people who actually want to originate messages, or set up reunions is just "Easy Money", especially if it's done right.

However, like a lot of people, I know that "everyone I give my e-mail address to, or at least most, re-sell that information to other people, even when I tell them not to." It's just a fact of life. So, since I own my own domain, I create custom addresses for different companies. American Express might have one address. My credit union has a different one. Then, if I get spam, I can look at the recipient and see "who sold my address against my wishes and gets to lose my business."

Amusingly, this isn't about that particular problem with Classmates. Classmates has been fastidious about not sharing my address with anyone.

However, they do now seem to have a problem with the fact that my address they've got on file is classmates@XXXXXXXXXX. They tell me "that address is denied." When I tried to get them to explain why it's denied, what I got back is crazy-talk:

A recent audit of our database revealed that the vast majority of registrations that were using Classmates as the username were not legitimate registrations, but instead were bogus registrations listing the names of people who do not really exist. This resulted in large numbers of fake names being added to the various directories on our site.

Since our members rely on our ability to keep them connected with other members, it has always been a top priority to ensure that our database is as accurate and up-to-date as it can possibly be. As such, the decision was made to deny anyone from registering on our site using an email address that contains Classmates. This decision has helped our efforts to establish a database that contains only the names of “real” people that our members can actually connect with.

I'm sorry, how again does restricting the use of "classmates" in the e-mail address prevent people from signing up fictitiously? Short answer: It doesn't.

Long answer, though, is that in reality, it's Classmates.com's way of ensuring that addresses which are submitted to it don't explicitly tag themselves as "being given to classmates". In other words, they want my "real" address, and not the alias, so that there's no ability in the future to track down if they sell my contact info to someone else.

So, I told them to either allow me to use that address, or they'd lose my business. Frankly, these days, Google is a lot more useful for "high school reconnecting" than Classmates is, so it's not like they're bringing a lot to the table. They told me no. Oh, well, c'est la vie.

Today's object lesson in how to lose a potential customer comes from Terra Nova Four Seasons Pizzeria in Kingston. Apparently under new ownership (at least that's what it looked like when I was next-door on Friday), this place has been around a while. Since it was under new ownership, I grabbed a delivery menu while I was in the area the other day, with the intent of giving them a try.

I had intended to do it yesterday, but we went to see Borat instead, so I'd pretty much been jonesin' for good pizza since Friday night when I picked up the menu. So this afternoon, after skipping lunch, I call them up for an early dinner order. I place the original order around 4:30 p.m., give or take, maybe closer to 4:45. In fact, let's call it 4:45, just for simplicity's sake, but understand that it was probably a little earlier than that. They tell me "20-30 minutes." Excellent.

At 5:43 p.m., still waiting for my order, I call them up. The woman who answers the phone explains that "there was a problem with the pizza, and they had to remake it. It should be out there in about 15 minutes." Excellent, I say, and hang up. I understand mistakes, believe me. I've worked at several pizza places in my past. OK, they should have proactively called me to inform me of the delay, but hey, it happens.

Around 6ish, I get a call from some teen-aged sounding girl, explaining that "there was a problem of some sort with my pizza, and they had re-made it, and were finishing up the sides now, and it would be out soon." OK, she didn't "get the memo." No worries.

About 6:30, D is starting to grouse about how hungry she is. To put it perspective, when I first ordered the pizza, her plan was to "not hold me up since I was hungry, but she'd just re-heat the leftovers." Now D is starving. Say, where is that pizza anyway?

At 6:45 I call them up, and a cook answers. I ask him "where my pizza is that I ordered two hours ago?" He tells me that "The ticket isn't up on the oven, and the order isn't in the waiting area, so the driver must have it." I ask him if he's sure, because I've been waiting for two hours and have been told twice that it's "on its way" with no pizza in sight. He says he's only just come on, and that he doesn't know.

I ask him, "Since I've been waiting for two hours, how about you ask someone who's been on for a little longer for certain?" He puts me on hold, and then comes back to assure me, "Yes, it's on its way, it left a little while ago."

I then ask, "How much of a discount did I get for waiting two hours for a twenty minute pizza?" He tells me, "Well, we can do something on your next pizza." Now, at this stage of the game, I'm not certain there's going to be a next pizza. We were ordering from them as a test of a new place, so we don't know the quality of the pizza, and the quality of the service certainly leaves a little to be desired. I ask him if he's certain he can't do anything for me on this pizza -- and a person with astute customer-service skills would be picking up on the tone of voice being used here -- to which he replies, "No."

OK, I said, cancel the pizza, don't charge my card, and when the driver gets here, I'll send him back. If two hours of waiting doesn't warrant some sort of discount, then we'll see if they like getting "zero" for their pizza instead of "some discounted figure". The employee takes it in stride and the call ends.

About twenty minutes later, the driver knocks on the door. Poor kid. He's basically the only guy doing deliveries, they've overcommitted their delivery area -- if you've only got one driver, you certainly shouldn't be sending drivers to houses fifteen minutes away. The rule of thumb I always heard was seven minutes. The limit of your delivery area should be a seven minute drive from the restaurant. I explain to the driver that it's not his fault, but that the guys back at the shop had screwed the pooch big time on this one. He comments that "they do this shit all the time."

Of that I have no doubt.

UPDATED: Apparently, the bastards decided to charge my American Express card anyway. Unfortunately for them, I reported it to Amex as a fraudulent charge -- they never had my signature, and they completely failed to deliver the product they charged me for in the fashion in which they claimed they would -- 20 to 30 minutes. So, not only does their customer service suck, but they're willing to commit fraud to charge people when they're not supposed to.

According to this page, my season tickets should have shipped either 3/27 or 3/28. It's 3/30 now, and they still don't appear in the UPS system yet. So I decide to call the Yankees ticket office, to find out "what's what"...

CSR: Yankees Ticket Office.
Me: I want to check on the status of my season ticket package shipment.
CSR: What kind?
Me: Full season.
CSR: Those were shipped out two or three days ago, on the 27th and 28th.
Me: Right, that's what the web page said, except mine aren't in UPS' system yet.
CSR: Then they don't have a tracking number assigned to them yet.
Me: If they don't have a tracking number assigned to them yet, then they haven't been shipped, because the shipping label you put on a package has the tracking number on it, it's assigned then. It has a tracking number before the UPS guy even touches his hand to it.
CSR: Well, then you would have to wait for it to be in that system. They're being shipped out UPS 2-day delivery, so if you didn't get it yesterday, you should get it today.
Me: And yet, UPS has no record of the package whatsoever, so I find it unlikely I'll get it today.
CSR: It probably just hasn't been assigned a tracking number yet.
Me: **boggle** If it was shipped, then it does have a tracking number, by definition, believe me. What I'm looking at is that everything I read tells me it should have shipped already, and yet the carrier who's allegedly carrying it knows nothing about it, so maybe, just maybe you haven't actually shipped it yet, and that's what I'm sort of trying to check on. You know, to see if it slipped through the cracks or something.
CSR: They all went out on the 28th.
Me: Can you, you know, check my account to see when mine shipped, and perhaps see if there's a tracking number associated with it?
CSR: I couldn't do that.
Me: Is there anyone who can?
CSR: No.
Me: So let me get this straight -- the web page is useless because, if you're telling the truth, the UPS system is updating data so slowly that it'll have arrived before their system even publishes data about it. You don't actually keep track of the tracking number you printed on the package before it went out the door, so if I wanted to force UPS to scan their system for it, I couldn't do that, and you've got no means of actually verifying that the tickets were even sent, let alone tell me a specific date or anything. Does that about sum it up?
CSR: errrrrr, ummmmm
Me: Right, so this was twenty minutes of my life I'm not getting back.
*click*

... man I'm glad I never had to give them my account number. *grin*

Yesterday, our new dishwasher arrived. While we wait for a plumber who can hardwire it in (it's a portable), I decided to use it "as designed" and just hook it up to the faucet and clear out some dishes. I removed the aerator from the faucet, and went to thread the adapter up inside the faucet's spigot.

I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't catch the thread. While I had them sitting on the table next to each other (the old aerator and the new adapter) I realized that the diameter of the two was radically different (well, not that radical, but at least a 1/8", maybe). The adapter simply wouldn't fit in the faucet.

So, I called Kohler to ask them "what to do". After all, there's a standard diameter for faucet spigots. That's how this whole thing works, and their faucet's diameter is non-standard, so surely they must know how to proceed.

Their official response: "We don't support you hooking up other devices to the faucet, and so we do not offer any adapter to convert that to a standard size."

Are you fucking kidding me? I explain to them that I love their faucet and all, but if I have to choose between my $500 standards-compliant dishwasher and their $150 wacky-off-standard faucet, their faucet was destined to lose. She completely didn't care.

So now I'm off in search of an adapter at a local plumbing supply store. This should be fun. Not.

Update: As an FYI for any who come behind me, here are two adapters I purchased, one of which was the right one, the other wasn't. But they were like $3.00 each. The p/n's are the ACE Hardware part numbers on the packaging.

Every so often, while browsing on Amazon, I'm tempted to click on my special "Gold Box Offers" button, just to see what crap is in there.

Today, I saw something that makes me want to offer up a suggestion to Amazon: Wire your head and ass together.

So, first off, it offered me up a copy of Iron Maiden: The Early Days, Part 1, a DVD that I'd been thinking about getting for a while:

But then I decided to click the link, and take a look at "what exactly was included on that DVD. So I literally clicked the link that Amazon provided me for the product:

So... if I ignore the Amazon "Special Gold Box Price" and just buy it at their regular discounted price, I save myself $1.10. Now, we've all known, and it's well-documented, that Amazon changes their prices regularly, depending on who you are, where are you, what time of day it is, etc., etc., etc. BUT, you'd think that they'd have the entire system knowing about the various prices... For instance, you'd think that the "main item page" might know that I'm coming from a Gold Box ad, and display the "undiscounted" price (or, better, the Gold Box pricing since it's the currently active Gold Box item). You might conclude instead that the Gold Box pricing "for me" should be lower than the "regularly discounted price", i.e., if I can normally get it for $15.98 with no special deals, that my Gold Box price should be lower than that.

Instead, though, it's the worst of all worlds... If I ignore the "special sale", I save money. Which means that -- after I notice this sort of thing -- the Gold Box loses even the "occasional click-thru" value it had, because I know that going there is no bargain of any sort (and is, in fact, a means of getting you to pay more for stuff than you ordinarily would.

[UPDATE 6/24/2006 : It's really important to note here, before you read this, that this -- for Krause's -- is an extremely isolated event, heck, pretty much the only time in my entire 35 years of partaking of Krause's candies. The only reason I keep it here, is because it tells a "segment" of a story in which we couldn't, for the life of us, get good customer service and damned near anywhere over the course of a single weekend. I love Krause's, they're good people, with a good product, and 99.99% of the time, great customer service. I just bought a couple pounds of chocolate there the other day. Don't read this and think that this is a "pattern" for them, it's not.]

Hot off the heels of my crappy experience at Boston Market, D and I decided to stop at Krause's Chocolates on our way back from Saugerties on Sunday afternoon.

Now, I stop at Krause's all the time. I feel it's only fair to point out that in my 34 years of life, this is the first and only time I can remember being so pissed off at Krause's that I walked out without buying anything. It's also a good background reference point that the way Krause's "works" is that you wait in line over by the showcase, where they pick your candies for you, and then walk over to the register area and pay. The only time you don't stand in line over at the showcase is if you're just buying stuff from the "store" area, in which case you stand there, and they'll ring you up after they finish dealing with one of the boxed-candy customers. Because you're a quick transaction with no real effort, nobody in the candy line complains, and life is good. That's how it's worked for as long as I can ever remember there being a Krause's Candys shop.

So I'm keeping track of the whole "who was here before me" thing, in the candy line. There's one woman in front of us, and one guy with a stack of stuff at the cashier's counter to pay for.

The two girls who are behind the counter are moving really slow today, but ordinarily, I can accept that. I overhear them wondering aloud about what happened to their third co-worker, who was apparently on break.

Ah, the woman ahead of us is being cashed out. Excellent. So we'll be handled shortly, and this insufferable wait (about 10 minutes at this point) will be finally over.

The girl turns her attention to the guy with the pre-packaged stuff. She rings that up. He then says, "and I'd also like a pound box of chocolate."

Now, there are a number of proper responses to this:

• "I'm sorry, sir, if you want boxed chocolate, you'll have to go wait in that line over there."
• "Right behind you are an assortment of pre-chosen boxes of chocolate, pick up one of the one-pound boxes, and we'll be good to go."

... or variations on that theme.

The proper response is not to walk over to the empty boxes saying, "What would you like in that?"

D explodes (rightfully so, I'm about 3 seconds from exploding), saying "Uhhh, excuse me, we've been waiting in line over here??!!" in an incredulous voice, completely amazed that the girl has this low of a level of customer service.

Hot off the heels of the Boston Market episode -- as well as having an hour earlier dealt with fresh-off-the-boat-and-not-speaking-english waitpersons in two different restaurants in a rather frustrating situation where one of our friends needed a bathroom and the wait-staff didn't speak enough english to direct them to the bathroom -- my pain-threshold for "shitty service" is at an all time low. This will be the fourth place in thirty-six hours that D and I have walked out of.

I throw my hands up in the air, and I'm like "Screw it, forget it, I'm outta here." D is still railing on the cashier, but I seriously can't hear her because my blood is boiling. Fifteen minutes in Krause's smelling the chocolate and I wanted nothing more in life at that point than to down a couple chocolate creams, but my inner hatred of crappy customer service has trumped that and told me I can't have any. About thirty seconds later, D follows me out. Clearly she had more to say to the girl that I never heard. Too bad. D's a really funny person, I bet she got a lot better quips in than "Screw it, I'm outta here."

Saturday evening I decided, "Hey, I'd like some Boston Market". I should have learned my lesson a long time ago.

First, we go to the drive-through, because there's a long-ass line inside. Turns out the drive-thru is closed. Grrr. OK, I go in.

As I am walking in, one woman says to me, "Better hurry, they're selling out of things."

So I stand in line. And wait. And wait. And wait. I see someone walk out with Roast Sirloin. Cool. That's what I want. So I know they've not yet run out of sirloin.

Along the way a school bus shows up and gets in line behind us. The manager(?) sees the line triple in length, runs and does an inventory and says to the crowd, "I've got no meat loaf, and I've got no turkey."

"Cool," I think. There's only one person in line ahead of me. It becomes my turn to order, and manager-dude asks me what I'd like

"I'd like the a la carte sirloin, some mac and cheese and..."

... and I drift off because he's just walked away from the register and can't hear a word I say now. No "Let me check something." No "One second please, sir." Just walk away and ignore the customer you're taking an order for.

He wanders back about three minutes later and says, "I don't have enough for that. I only have a single five ounce serving left. Sirloin will be ready in 15-20 minutes."

"So that leaves you with just Ham and Chicken in your inventory?" I ask incredulously.

"Actually, she just got the last of the Ham."

At this point, I explode. I can't fathom the depths of incompetence that this must require.

"Did FEMA come in here in the last half hour and suddenly requisition your entire inventory for use in New Orleans? How the hell do you manage to be so completely incompetent at planning that you have like next-to-no food available to sell at 6:30 on a Saturday night?"

"I can have them for you 15 minutes."

"Forget it, it's just not worth it."

At which point I stormed out, got in the car, and went to Wendy's.

Seriously... how the fuck can you underestimate your sales by that much?

OK, yes, I procrastinated, but not that bad.

Dateline: Tuesday Afternoon

On Tuesday afternoon I go to U-Haul's web site, and reserve myself a 17' truck for my upcoming move. I put in on the form that I will pick it up on Friday, 9/23, and will reserve it for 24 hours. I get a note back a short time later saying basically "reservations are not confirmations, you should hear back from us within 24 hours to confirm. If you don't hear from us, call our regional office and we'll sort it out."

Dateline: Wednesday Afternoon

I still haven't heard from U-Haul, so I call the regional office. They're closed. They open at 7. I'll call them tomorrow.

Dateline: Thursday 9:00 a.m.

I call the 800 # to the regional office. Give them my confirmation number. They pull up my reservation. Yup, there it is, pick up on Friday, for 24 hours. All I have to do is call the local pickup site to arrange what time.

Dateline: Thursday 10:00 a.m.

Call the local office. They can't find my reservation. He's having some computer problems. "Let me find the reservation and call you right back."

2:30 p.m.

Still no word from the U-Haul site, so I call them back.

Me: You were going to call me back about my truck reservation. How late can I come by to pick up the truck tomorrow night?
U-Haul Dweeb: Well, you have the truck reserved for tomorrow morning, you can pick it up at 7:30 in the morning, and bring it back in the afternoon.
Me: Ummmm, no. I reserved it for 24 hours, with the intent of picking it up tomorrow night, starting the loading process, and then having a group of people help with more stuff on Saturday, and bring it back to you when I'm done.
U-Haul Dweeb: We don't rent in-town trucks for 24 hours on weekends, we only have them for six hour time slots.
Me: Well, that's not what I reserved, I reserved 24.
U-Haul Dweeb: Who did you talk to?
Me: I didn't talk to anyone. I went to "uhaul-dot-com" and made a reservation there.
U-Haul Dweeb: Well, you have the truck from 7:30 tomorrow morning until tomorrow afternoon.
Me: Except, of course, that that time frame is completely useless to me, and not at all what I asked for or needed. Meanwhile, with roughly twenty-four hours to go, you've completely screwed me by leaving me in the lurch now with no truck when I actually do need it.
U-Haul Dweeb: On-line reservations aren't confirmations. Nothing was guaranteed.
Me: Did you call me within 24 hours like you were supposed to?
U-Haul Dweeb: Excuse me?
Me: The reservation. It said you, the local site, were going to call me within 24 hours to confirm. Did you call me at all yesterday, to perhaps tell me that you couldn't provide what I reserved?
U-Haul Dweeb: Sir, reservations aren't confirmations.
Me: Right, but if you had called me yesterday then I could have told you that what you had was completely useless to me, and I'd have had an entire extra day to line up a replacement truck. Instead, you're screwing me over in the eleventh hour.
U-Haul Dweeb: If you want to look at it like that, sir.
Me: How else could I look at it? Should I take it as a personal favor that you happen to have a truck at a time that's completely un-useful to me?
U-Haul Dweeb: If that's how you want to see it.
Me: What would you suggest that I do? I asked for something from you guys, nobody called me to tell me there was a problem, and I only find out about it because I'm literally chasing you down to get the info. I have people coming over Saturday to help me move, and I need a 17' truck. Exactly what should I do at this stage of the game? What is U-Haul going to do for their customer?
U-Haul Dweeb: There's nothing I can do for you, sir, other than give you the truck tomorrow morning. The only other possibility is to contact the Regional Traffic Office, they're the ones who put trucks where they're needed, perhaps they could do something.
Me: What's their number?
U-Haul Dweeb: ####
Me: *scribble scribble* Thanks.

*dial dial dial*
Regional Dude: U-Haul Regional Traffic.
Me: Yeah, I need to sort out what's going on with my reservation? (insert info here)
RD: OK, yeah, I see that you're scheduled for tomorrow pickup for 24 hours.
Me: Right, except that the truck that the local site is willing to give me is only available tomorrow morning for 6, not tomorrow evening for 24 like I asked for. It's pretty much useless.
RD: Yeah, I see that.
Me: So what am I supposed to do?
RD: Well, reservations aren't confirmations.
Me: Right, but here's the deal. I made this reservation on Tuesday... the site was supposed to contact me before the end of Wednesday, but never did. I called somewhere - I think this office - this morning just like I was supposed to, which told me to call the local site. I did that. They said they'd call me back. They didn't. I called them back a couple hours later at which point they completely blew me off. I think I've pretty much done everything a customer can be expected to do except jump backflips. Near as I can tell, the uhaul-dot-com web site dropped the ball by letting me reserve - and achieve a modicum of expectation for - a 24 hour period. The local site dropped the ball by not calling to confirm anything with me -- heck they didn't even SEE my reservation this morning.
RD: Well, you could try speaking to the site manager.
Me: I did. The guy I spoke to was the manager and he was completely non-sympathetic. In fact, almost a complete dick. Who does he report to?
RD: He reports to $NAME and $PHONE.
Me: Sweet. Thank you.
RD: There is one possibility. Maybe there's a chance that there would be some one-way equipment we could redirect into the right place. Can I put you on hold?
Me: Absolutely.
Hold... Hold... Hold... Hold... Five Minutes .. Hold .. Hold. ... Disconnect.

Me: dammit.

(As I'm doing this next call, I'm already instant-messaging D who is looking for local "guys with trucks" companies in the Woodstock Times, as well as surfing through Budget's web site and making a new reservation with them. They can apparently supply one for me. D has also located a "guy with truck" who is our fallback option. D has also floated the idea of "going renegade" ... just rent the truck tomorrow morning, return it hella late, and deal with the penalties).

*dial dial dial*
*hold*
Me: Yeah, so I was on-hold with someone who was trying to find a one-way truck to use to fill my 24-hour reservation request?
U-Haul Chick: One sec.
*hold*
U-Haul Chick: I can get you a truck, you'd have to pick it up in Poughkeepsie instead of Kingston, though.
Me: Would there be any free miles included with that rental?
U-Haul Chick: Free miles?
Me: You know, to account for the fact that you charge $1.39 a mile and that's about 40 additional miles round-trip?
U-Haul Chick: No, sir, you would be responsible for all miles.
Me: I couldn't just get you to relocate it to the Kingston location on your own dime and then I'd be responsible for everything just like I expected?
U-Haul Chick: No.
*click "Submit" on the Budget rent-a-truck rental reservation
Me: Let me call you right back?
U-Haul Chick: OK.

*dial dial dial*
BudgetGuy: Budget Truck Rental.
Me: I just made an online reservation and I wanted to confirm it?
BudgetGuy: I won't see that for an hour in my system here. What'd you ask for?
Me: 16' truck, pick up tomorrow night, keep it til Saturday night.
BudgetGuy: Yeah, I can do that. It might be tight if someone returns late, but I could just upgrade you to a bigger truck at the same charge, if that happened.
Me: Sweet. Thanks!!
BudgetGuy: No problem. See you tomorrow.

*Ring*
Me: This is Derek
CSR: Hi, this is Bubbles [or some other meaningless name] from U-Haul, calling you to confirm your reservation
Me: Are you fucking kidding me?
CSR: Sir?
Me: The only reason you're calling me to confirm is because I've been rocking the boat and that's finally kicked loose whatever hole my reservation fell into.
CSR: Ah, I see. Well, I have you down for 7:30 tomorrow morning until mid-afternoon.
Me: (deciding to have some fun) What if I return it late?
CSR: You can't return it late, it's going back out tomorrow night on a one-way to New Jersey.
Me: But, you know, speculate, if I was to come back late, what are the penalties?
CSR: You can't come back late. The truck is going elsewhere.
Me: If say I was to have a heart attack and didn't bring the truck back on time or something, what would the penalty be?
CSR: You have to bring the truck back on time.
Me: Right. You can go ahead and just cancel the entire reservation, because frankly you guys are pretty much useless.
CSR: Are you sure, sir?
Me: Yep. I've already reserved a new truck with a better company.
CSR: All set, sir. Have a great day.
Me: Blah.
*click*

So the lessons we learned:

• U-Haul Sucks Ass, and I don't think I'll ever be giving them any of my business again.
• Near as I can tell, Budget Trucks rule.

So I got a new cel-phone today from work. (I'll be carrying two phones, my own that I love and adore, and the cheezy, crappy, Cellular One phone that work provides). After I get home, I start customizing the settings on it, making it be "how I want it to be, etc., etc."

At some point, in the equation, the phone becomes completely unresponsive and says only:

Enter PUK Code:

So I call Hell One to find out what it's all about. Now, this is a huge college account. There's probably a hundred or so phones on this account I imagine...

CSR: Can you give me the billing address on the account?
Me: Blah blah blah
CSR: And your name?
Me: Blah Blah Blah.
CSR: You're not one of the authorized contacts, do you have the password?
Me: Nope.
CSR: What can I do for you today?
Me: I was changing the settings on my phone, and it now says "Enter PUK code," whatever that means.
CSR: That's a PIN Unlock code, it means your SIM card has locked itself up.
Me: So I need to enter something to make it stop?
CSR: Yes, but I can only give that info to the authorized contact.
Me: Right, that would be $NAME, but she's on vacation.
CSR: Correct, I do see $NAME as the authorized contact.
Me: So what should I do? She's on vacation, and this is my 24x7 call thing.
CSR: I can only give the PUK to an authorized contact. Do you have any way of getting in touch with her?
Me: It's called "vacation" for a reason. Who else is an authorized contact?
CSR: I could only give that information --
Me: -- to an authorized contact. Blah blah blah. We're a big college, man, I can't just go through the employee and faculty directory in alphabetical order asking if they're an authorized contact on the cellular account. You need to tell me at least who I should be speaking with to get this resolved.
CSR: Sir, there is only $NAME on the account. She is the only person listed.
Me: Seriously? You gotta be kidding me? So how the fuck do I get this broken phone resolved?
CSR: It's not broken. It's locked.
Me: Can I make calls on it? No? Then it's broken.
CSR: Would you like the number to the insurance company for Cell One phones?
Me: Is this phone covered with an insurance plan?
CSR: I couldn't tell you that --
Me: Fuck you. This attitude you've got right here? This is why I don't pay you guys a dime, and I've got my phone through Verizon. Let me speak to a supervisor.
CSR: One second please.

(some time goes by)

CSR: Sir, I spoke to my supervisor and he says that without you being an authorized person, we couldn't --
Me: Good, then he can tell me that himself when you put him on the phone. I no longer wish to talk to you, I wish to talk to him. Put him on.
CSR: One second please.

(some time goes by)

CSR: I have $SUPERVISOR, he will further assist you.
Supervisor: How can I help you today?
Me: My phone went into this "Enter PUK Code" mode all by itself, and I have no way of getting it to work.
Supervisor: We could only give that info to an authorized person on the account.
Me: Right, but $NAME is out on vacation, so I'm pretty well screwed, and this is supposed to be used for 24x7 on-call service.
Supervisor: How about $OTHER_NAME or $THIRD_NAME, can you reach them?
Me: They're authorized contacts?!
Supervisor: Yes, sir.
Me: That little fucktard told me definitively that there were no other contacts other than $NAME.
Supervisor: No, sir. Both $OTHER_NAME and $THIRD_NAME could get that information for you.
Me: Man, I'm glad I asked to speak to a supervisor. I managed to reach someone who wasn't either going to lie to me or just be too stupid to read the screen right. Thank you very much, I'll chat with $OTHER_NAME and get it all fixed up.

Now I should have known better.

I had to ship out the first of the eBay packages today. So I checked the UPS web site (since I needed to have it boxed up, and there's no FedEx/Kinkos anywhere near here). It told me that the local store's hours were 8:30-7:00. So I came home from work, picked up the stuff to get boxed up, and headed over to the UPS Store. Got there around 6:30 or so.

Found it dark, locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Apparently, they actually close at 6.

I should have learned these lessons in the past. I mean, I keep getting sucked in by their convenient proximity to where I live, and it seems to temporarily make me forget how much their completely abysmal customer service ethic will annoy me after I'm sucked in.

Argh.

On the way over to D's for dinner last night, she asked that I pick some stuff up from Shop-Rite, including a pound of coffee from the Dunkin' Donuts inside there. So I go in, it's about 7pm, and pick up the bag of coffee. There's a sign there: "Coffee Bag purchases may be rung up at registers after 8 p.m." Since it's still only 7, I go over to the Dunkin' Donuts register instead. She rings it up, I hand over my American Express. She says, "oh we don't take that." OK, that's not uncommon, I exchange it for my Visa. "Cash only," she says.

I tell her I have no cash. She suggests I go hit an ATM (and, of course, pay a service charge). I said, "Well, clearly in an hour it'd be ok for me to buy this at the regular cashier, can I just take it over there and pay for it?"

Nope, only allowed to take it over there when the Dunkin Donuts staff is not around not just when they refuse to take your payment.

The lessons for retailers here are twofold:

1. - Make payment methods consistent. If I walk into a grocery store that has the Visa/MasterCard/AmEx/Discover logos in a big sticker on the door, I don't expect you to tell me when I get inside that "this little portion over here doesn't take any of those". If the store takes these various payments, everything in that store should take those payment methods.

2. - Arbitrary rules suck, and piss off your customers. Clearly, Shop-Rite's registers are capable of ringing me up for the coffee. If I'd come there an hour later, they'd have been happy to do so. Clearly, they've already sorted out "how to reimburse Dunkin' Donuts for pounds of coffee that get rung up at the normal registers." If all that is the case, don't force me to pay for that coffee at the Dunkin Donuts register. Even if they took my payment method, you're making me stand in two separate lines when all I really need to do is stand in one. But, especially when they're not capable of taking my payment, it's clearly in the retailer's best interest to let me use another established payment location (the checkout lanes) so as to bring in the money.

Instead, what they got was me telling the girl to void the coffee sale, and then went through the checkout lanes with the rest of my stuff. They could easily have had $7.99 more worth of purchase, but they clearly didn't want it bad enough.

Yesterday was a travel day from hell for me. I already blogged about the minor TSA nonsense, but that really was just sort of a small window into a day filled with really really bad customer service.

Step One: Hertz Car Rental, San Jose, CA

I left bright and early from Jeremy's house. It was a dreary, rainy, California day. (California having two types of days, "bright and sunny" and "dreary and rainy") As I pulled my rental car into the row of rental returns, I spotted the guy with the little handheld barcode scanner walking towards my car. You know the guy, he scans the car, asks you if everything was ok, and hands you a receipt.

Except this guy doesn't have a bar-code scanner, he tells me "go see the woman over there" (points at a small stand under the canopy near the main Hertz building). I cart my luggage over there, and ask her to check in my car. She asks for my rental agreement.

Now, in the procedure I listed two paragraphs ago, the original rental agreement never comes into play. They don't need it. They scanned your car, they know whose car it is, etc., etc. So I don't keep it handy at check-in. It's buried in my luggage somewhere with the paperwork and such from the trip, all kept together for tax write-off purposes later.

I tell her I don't have my paperwork handy. She tells me she can't check my car in without the paperwork. I tell her that in all the dozens of rentals I've returned before I've never needed my rental paperwork handy before. "Why don't you just go out there and scan the car like you would ordinarily do, and have done, every time I've ever returned a car to Hertz?"

"Because it's raining," she replies. Oh. My. God. Are you shitting me? It's not like downpour raining, it's a light mist, and isn't that this chick's freakin job?

Meanwhile, as we're having this conversation, the shuttle has pulled up to take people to the terminal. I tell her, "Well, the car is there, I'm leaving it there. I've got a plane to catch," and board the shuttle.

Step Two: American Airlines, San Jose, CA

After the plane departed the gate at SJC, it taxied off in some random direction, shut itself down and got awful quiet. The pilot came on to announce that we'd pulled away from the gate "because some other jet needed it", but that we would not actually be departing for another hour and a half.

Never mind that I only had an hour layover expected in O'Hare between the legs of my flight. Never mind that if they had said that this would happen before the plane left the gate, I might've tried to juggle my flights to go a different (non-delayed) route. Oh, and here's the kicker, because the plane left the gate at the right time, the hour-and-a-half delay still meets the FAA definition of an "on time departure".

They completely pissed all over their passengers, simply so that they could appear "on time".

Step Three: American Airlines, Chicago O'Hare and Newburgh, NY

When the plane finally arrived in O'Hare, I broke the land-speed record getting from one concourse to another. (And kids, watching the fat-man run across O'Hare isn't a pretty picture). Of course, while I managed to run down one concourse, across the terminal to another concourse, and then all the way down to the end of the second concourse, all without aid of any mechanized devices... my luggage, which had to move about 55' in a straight line, with three guys to help it, and a nice little truck to do it, couldn't seem to actually make the same distance.

I get to Newburgh, and lo and behold, there is no luggage there. This is only slightly more problematic than normal because -- wait for it -- my car and house keys are packed in one of my bags. I ask the baggage clerk "what now?". He tells me my bags will probably be on the 9:30 pm flight (about four hours later). I tell him that I am not sitting around the airport for four hours waiting for my bags.

AA: Well, you could go home, and then we could deliver them to you.
Me: How would I get home? I told you, my car keys are in the bags. Further, my house keys are right next to my car keys, so even if I got home, I couldn't get in the door.
AA: I could probably get you a cab voucher.
Me: Up to Saugerties, where my spare house-key is, and then back to Kingston?
AA: Yes.
Me: That might be do-able.
AA: How would you be coming back to pick up your luggage?
Me: You're asking me that? That's something you need to figure out. This whole thing is AA's mess, it needs to clean it up.
AA: Ah, ok, let me get a supervisor.
Me: OK.

The supervisor was like "I can probably get you the first taxi voucher, I might be able to get you the second, not sure how that would work." I explained to him that he should really just get me a rental car from one of the fine institutions over there against the wall, because it would certainly be cheaper than cab-fare up to Saugerties (45 miles), down to Kingston from there (15 miles), and then another Kingston-to-Newburgh run (30 miles). It simply made sense, economically, to get me a rental car, let me drive it myself to get my own spare key, and then I could come back later that night or this morning to return the car, get my luggage, get my keys, get my car, and go home.

Except, of course, that he's not authorized to save the company money. Seriously. The bureaucratic chains have bound him to only having available to him "taxi service". And the big-ass airlines wonder why they're going broke? I'll tell you -- it's because they don't give the front-line employees the abilities and authority to make decisions that will save them money. Not all your airports are in areas where cab-fare to local destinations is cheap, so don't lock your employees into what you think will always be the cheapest solution, let them decide that for themselves.

So I tell him, "Look, I'm not going to go home on the principle that you might be able to get me back here to get my stuff. If you can't guarantee me, right now, that AA is going to get me back down here to pick up my stuff, then you need to either authorize a rental car, so that I can get myself back here, or I'll rent it myself, and request a charge-back against my credit-card, and/or take it out of American's ass some other way, because I'm not going to get myself stuck thirty miles away from here with it suddenly my responsibility to pay a cab to get me back here. It wasn't your crew that made the mistake, but it was your company's, so somebody from AA needs to step up and take full responsibility.

He told me he couldn't do that, so I rented a car, and am now driving around in a Hyundai Accent that I plan to raise holy hell over with American.

Amusingly, I decided to be a prick, and "reward" them by making them deliver my luggage to me this morning. Even though I'm going to have to return the car today to the rental counter which is thirty-five feet from the baggage claim. They can deliver my luggage, like they're supposed to, and then I'll go pick up my car.

Ugh. What a nightmarish day.

Factoid: The three most popular credit cards for small businesses are, in order: (1) Visa (2) American Express (3) MasterCard

George and I went to Sam's Club today to buy supplies for tomorrow night's Barroom Blitz II play-testing session. Like any typical Sam's Club run a person makes, I ended up putting bunches of other stuff that caught my eye into the cart -- stuff I didn't necessarily need, but that was at a good price, or stuff I wouldn't ordinarily buy in volume except that it seemed like a bargain, etc., etc.

After we load up the cart, I leave George with it, so I can go to Member Services and renew my membership (haven't used it in like 18 months... oops). As I'm waiting in line, I notice that the sticker on the counter reads like:

We Accept (Some type of Discover Card) ... (Some other type of Discover Card) ... (Some other type of Discover Card) ... and then icons for "ATM", a generic "Discover" logo, and the various Sam's Club charge accounts.

"Do you not take Visa?" I asked the woman behind the counter.
"No, not for a year."
"How about American Express?"
"Nope."
"MasterCard?"
"Nope."
"The three most popular credit cards which in total control like 85% of the credit card market and you don't accept any of them?"
"Nope."
"Riiiight, guess I don't need to renew my membership, then."

... at which point about $150 worth of groceries was left to sit in the cart, abandoned in the middle of Sam's Club. If they won't take my money, they won't take my money, what can I do?

But, in all seriousness, how can a retailer have a motto like "We Are In Business For Small Business" and not accept the credit cards that small businesses are actually using to run their daily operations with? I mean, that just seems either downright fraudulent or stupid, I'm not entirely sure which.

A lot of talk has been made in recent months about national-standards for drivers' licenses, and of making sure that all states join a national database instead of just the 30% or whatever that are part of it now.

After watching how George has been fighting with them now, for nigh on eight months, I can't help but think we were far better off when the state DMVs were all balkanized and didn't speak to each other.

The first problem is that the various states don't just "look at" other states' data, they actually - for reasons passing understanding - repeat it. For example: George is trying to get a NY license. He is told that "his NYS driving record is clean, except that there's a hold on your license from Nevada for an unpaid ticket." So he calls Nevada. What's the "hold"? a ticket from New York. In other words, New York is trusting Nevada to tell New York about New York tickets. What the fuck?

We won't even go into how he got a ticket in a state he's never even been in. Or how they had to track down a ticket in the system "the hard way" because the ticket that New York "doesn't show" that Nevada does is actually real, but has bad birth-date info on it, so NY doesn't show it (or, apparently care to chase it down), but Nevada does. Of course, Nevada also had the wrong ticket number (because it wasn't, apparently, an electronic transfer, it was data-entry, because they transposed a Q into an O.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention -- each of these states that "copied" the data (often, as above, that copied it wrong) demands a monetary tithe to take the "hold" off, even though the hold wasn't even for a ticket in their state in the first place! In the worst case scenario, you could get a ticket in New York and have to pay forty-nine other fucking states to get the various holds removed.

Seriously. We want to add more of this bureaucratic nonsense?

There was an article in the local rag about a theft from the local branch of the Charter One bank. Apparently there was a bag of paperwork and check-deposits waiting for a courier to pick them up. That bag was stolen and absconded with.

According to the article:

A letter from the bank to customers who made deposits that day at the Wall Street office said the bag contained "branch work for the day" and that the depositors must "obtain replacement items for any check you deposited on January 14, 2005."

Excuse me? So if the bank loses the paperwork it was given, it's up to the banking customer to go track down the people who gave them the checks and get new ones if they want to actually see the money?

Charter One's letter, dated Jan. 20 and signed "Corporate Security," states the affected depositors received "provisional credit for all deposits made that day" but that replacement checks must be submitted.

"The makers of the checks should be contacted and advised that a 'stop payment' should be placed on the original check as a result of the theft," the letter states. "They should then issue a new check, less any 'stop payment' fees the maker incurs."

So these check-writers -- customers of other banks now also have to pay a stop-payment fee to their bank to account for Charter One's screw-up in security? (Yes, they can deduct it from the amount of the replacement check, but still!) What if you're a retail outlet and have to chase down the several hundred customers who wrote you checks that day? Who compensates those people for their time?

This problem is entirely one of Charter One's making (if you can get to a bag containing all the day's checks simply by throwing a brick through a piece of glass then that's seriously screwed up security). Instead, though, Charter One isn't going to be actually held accountable for any of it. If you can't get a replacement check, you're not going to get to keep the money you rightfully deposited. Charter One essentially pushes the entire cost of the problem on their customer and (even worse) on their customers' customers.

If anyone who has Charter One, who is affected by this, remains a customer afterward, they need to have their head examined.

As requested by readers of my previous post about my former bank, here is the huge check I got from Citibank, wherein they spent $.37 on postage, another couple cents on an envelope, another couple cents on a check, and a whole of lot of peoples' time in sorting it out, just to send me the whopping total of "0 dols 01 cts".

Morons.

Back in August, I switched all my accounts away from SuperMegaBankingCorp to my local credit union.

I chuckled to myself when I noticed that they'd made the attempt to close my accounts without actually waiting (or accounting for) pending interest payments, and after they "closed" my account and sent me my check, they credited the savings account for, no lie, $0.01 in interest.

So, the account had been carrying a penny in it for the last four months. Today I got a statement in the mail indicating that they had decided to charge me the standard MegaCorp monthly fee of $9.50, leaving an account balance of $-9.49.

*dial*
CSR: Thank you for calling SuperMegaBankingCorp
.... identification phase ....
CSR: Thank you, Mr. Balling, how can I help you?
Me: I asked that this savings account be closed approximately four to five months ago. After I closed it, you credited a penny's interest to it. I figured you'd see the account was idle with a penny, see the mistake, and either close it out or send me a check for a penny. Instead you decided to start charging me monthly fees. How about I waive the penny you owe me, and you waive the additional $9.49 in charges it's in arrears for?
CSR: Yes, sir, you see, since your account is overdrawn right now --
Me: I know it's overdrawn. It's overdrawn only because you guys messed it up and didn't close it when I asked you to.
CSR: Can I put you on hold please?
Me: Certainly.
... giftmas hold music ...
CSR: Thank you for waiting. Did you receive any statements during that time frame indicating that you were carrying a balance?
Me: Yeah, sure. They showed a penny. I figured you had smart people working for you and would figure it out.
CSR: Please hold for a moment, sir.
Me: Sure.
... giftmas hold music ...
CSR: Mr. Balling, thank you for holding, I have Mr. Supervisor on the line and he will assist you further.
Me: OK.
Supe: Mr. Balling, how are you today?
Me: I'm fine.
Supe: Right now we show you have a balance of $-18.99 ---
Me: No, I have a negative balance as of my last statement, dated five days ago, of $-9.49, where did the additional $9.50 come from? Don't tell me - overdraft charge!
Supe: No, actually, the first $9.50 was charged 11/5, at the beginning of the statement cycle, and an additional $9.50 was charged the day after that statement printed, the beginning of the next statement cycle.
Me: Ah. Dumb, but ok.
Supe: So I understand you were expecting a check for a penny?
Me: No, I had zeroed the account balance, and told them to close the account. Then, after I told them to do that, a penny of interest was credited to the account.
Supe: Did you receive statements showing the penny?
Me: Yes.
Supe: Why didn't you call in to resolve the matter?
Me: Because it's a penny?
Supe: And?
Me: And I figured you guys would see an idle account, already scheduled as "to be closed", containing a single penny in it, and would either (a) send me a check for a penny, or (b) simply charge me $0.01 in some miscellaneous debit, and close the account out that way. You know, like how it would have been done if real people actually paid attention to stuff instead of computers running the show without any human interaction involved.
Supe: I see.
Me: As I told the girl, I don't want the penny, it's not worth my time. I just want the thing to go away.
Supe: Can I place you on hold for a moment?
Me: Sure can.
... giftmas hold music ...
Supe: Thank you for holding. I have reversed those charges and you should receive a check for zero dollars and one cent in the mail in 7-10 business days.
Me: Seriously, you don't need to do that.
Supe: Actually, sir, I really do.
Me: You can't just say "he was willing to accept $0.01 worth of the $19.00 in fees we'd assessed" and leave it at that?
Supe: No, sir.
Me: Well, if you want to spend $0.37 to mail me $0.01, who am I to argue. It's not like you guys can't afford to throw money away.
Supe: Is there anything else?
Me: Nope, have a good night.
Supe: Thank you for calling, blah blah blah...

Man... talk about inability to think outside the box a little bit.

Look, Google, if I search for something like bluetooth trackball, and you can't show me a fucking trackball within the first, say, 16 pages of output, then maybe it's a good idea to either:

• Refine the algorithm so that it puts trackballs earlier. I gave up after 16 pages
• If there are no bluetooth trackballs, and I'm beginning to suspect there aren't, tell me there's no fucking bluetooth trackballs!! Don't just assume that if I can't have a trackball, I'll want to sift through all the pretty mice hoping to find one. Or if you are going to do that, put a big fat disclaimer in 50pt type at the top saying "we couldn't find what you wanted, but maybe you'd like to look at these instead?" or something... anything?

Urgh.

I know I use this blog to piss and moan about crappy customer service from companies, but I do feel it's important to note when companies "do the right thing" as well.

I had planned my entire week around the fact that I had pre-ordered Halo 2 (normal version) from Amazon, it was scheduled to ship today, would arrive tomorrow -- but I wouldn't get to play it tomorrow because I'm going out tomorrow night -- and I would be spending my day off on Thursday playing it (I took Thursday off since I won't be getting home til 3-in-the-morning-ish on Wednesday night).

But Amazon did something I've only rarely seen them do... they shipped my Halo 2 package in such a way that it will arrive at my home on the street date. (The last time I've seen them do this was for the Harry Potter book.)

So it looks like this evening, I will be hunkered down in front of the TV, helping Master Chief save Earth.

I am Best Buy's best customer. And I say that with no sense of exaggeration. I probably buy about 1 DVD a week from them, bare minimum, and they're my usual source for all things electronic when the time comes to need them. I have a Best Buy Rewards card. I get about $15 a month back in gift certificates, at least. I am their wet dream.

Last December I bought one of those "discount cards" from a local high school. You know the cards, the ones with like fifteen coupons printed on them in like 5-point type offering discounts to neighborhood businesses. The one I make the most use of is "$2 off any DVD or Music CD At Best Buy".

I've been using this card since the beginning of the year. It's great. Normal price $19.99, new release is marked down to $15.99, take another $2.00 off that. Life is good.

In the last week, twice I might add, it's suddenly "Oh, no, sir, you can't use that card with a new-release because it's already discounted."

Me: What do you mean I can't use it?
BBChick: It's only good on regularly priced items, and that DVD is already on sale.
Me: It doesn't say that on the coupon.
BBChick: They were supposed to print that on the card, but they didn't.
Me: Isn't that your problem, not mine? I mean, if you print the wrong price in an ad, you're liable to honor it, just as if you print the wrong terms on a coupon, you're liable to honor it.
BBChick: I don't know what to tell you sir.
Me: How come you guys waited until now to make this known? I mean, I've been using this card since friggin' January. You're eleven months into a twelve-month program, why are you pissing me off now? I mean if this is a problem, you've already lost enough money, why not let it go one more month and not piss off the customer, eh?
BBChick: Probably, but that's what they've told me to do.
Me: OK, well, you can void that DVD off the order I guess. I'll just buy it elsewhere.
BBChick: (questioningly) You sure? That's still probably the cheapest you're going to find it? (this is a true statement)
Me: You're right, but I'd rather pay more money to someone who treats their customers well, than to Best Buy who obviously doesn't want my business. I know what they pay for those discs, and the extra $2.00 doesn't put them in the red or anything, so I'll pay a couple extra bucks to Amazon or something, and they'll actually pretend like they care about having me as a customer.
BBChick: (frowning) OK.

So, it looks like my Best Buy Rewards Card won't be seeing much use any more.

Dickheads. Remember when companies cared? I'm not sure I can remember that far back any more...

I was shipping a copy of The Book to my aunt. You see, we got the Spanish translation the other day, and my Aunt is a Spanish teacher, so I got a copy, inscribed it in Spanish (with a little cheating by asking a former co-worker of mine to translate for me, since he speaks it natively and I haven't touched it since high school), and sent it on its way up to her school.

I sent it using DHL, because (as any frequent reader knows) Brown and I don't get along any more.

So, the day after I shipped it, I decided to check on it's status, and see if it had arrived. It showed "Delivery attempted. No one home. Will attempt redelivery tomorrow."

Except of course it showed that at 10:30 in the morning. At a high school. On a school day. Can you say, "Lazy driver who cheated and didn't feel like driving out to the school, or who forgot to bring the package in with him and didn't feel like going back"? I knew that you could.

So I called the customer service perople. They were very helpful. They were very understanding that this was quite clearly a case of "driver error" (which was as far as they were willing to go towards saying "lying sonofabitch driver", but that's understandable). They called the driver, explained to him that he damned well better have the package there

Today, I got the invoice for the shipping, so I called up customer service to ask for some sort of credit. You know, the "Yes, you got it there on time, but only because I hounded your ass to make it happen, so what sort of credit do I get for having to form an oversight committee to my delivery on-time" credit.

Basically, the girl was like, "Nope, since it was delivered on time, there's no credit due", and to add insult to injury the entire tracking information has been erased. It now goes straight from "Shipped" to "Delivered" in the details. No out for delivery, no record of the "Attempted Delivery", nothing.

She agreed that she would send it "for investigation" but that I shouldn't get my hopes up, because it was delivered on time. My arguments that "the only reason it got done on time is because I hounded your asses to do it, you'd already forsaken my shipment to a late delivery" fell on deaf ears. I explained to her that if there were no credit, of some sort, forthcoming, then I would switch to one of the myriad other shipping companies around (which really means "FedEx", since there's only three now that DHL borg'ed Airborne).

I say this, again, for the umpteenth time, in total and complete honesty. I would glady ... GLADLY ... pay double or triple the cost for the privilege of dealing with a company who actually, wait for it, gave a damn about its customers!

Sadly, the Wal-Marts of the world are a testament to the fact that the average folks just want "Cheap shit" and are used to being treated like crap, so I may just need to resign myself to a world of crappy service.

Of course that doesn't mean I won't complain about it.

I went to check on the long-overdue status of my new computer. I ordered it from Apple in June, basically as soon as they announced the availability of the dual-2.5 GHz G5s. Three months later, and it still hasn't shipped. Even though I could walk into a retail store and buy the same thing (although I wouldn't get my very choice Apple Developer Connection discount that way, so that's not an option).

But, taking three months (plus) to ship an order isn't today's complaint.

Today's complaint is a "Check Order Status" web page, that will only show you the last 90 days worth of orders, and offers you absolutely no insight into how to see any orders past that date.

So, this morning, as I did my morning ritual of "see what the status on my G5 is", guess what I discovered? I have no idea what the status is because the web interface will no longer tell me.

For a company that invests like a gajillion dollars into user-interface design, you'd think they could have figured out that this might be a problem some time ago....

I ordered myself up for delivery (insert gasp of shock and awe here) their chicken combo thingy that has a whole chicken and some sides (can you say left overs?) All is well, and I think to myself that maybe just maybe Boston Market will redeem itself in my eyes.

I get a call a couple minutes later. Apparently, "they have a whole chicken, just no white meat" ... I don't bother going into how what the phone guy has just said is biologically impossible, but it's clear he wants me to OK him just sending me a bunch of dark meat. Being a white meat kinda guy, I tell him "ya know what, just make it ham instead of chicken and that'll be fine."

So he starts to recalculate the price. I'm thinking to myself this is to see if the ham is a better deal or something. He is having trouble of some sort and says he'll call me right back with the amount.

Ten minutes later he calls me and, sounding all gracious, tells me "well, we can't seem to void out the old order, so we're just going to bring you the ham instead of the chicken and make it cost the same, ordinarily, it'd be a couple dollars more."

And here I am thinking to myself, "That's good, because if it'd cost one penny more than the order you originally sold me over the phone, I'd've told you not to bother and that asked to speak to a manager to go over the hows and whys of why Boston Market sucked fetid dingos' kidneys."

Ugh.

Boston Market has great food. Of that there is no doubt. But their customer service is somewhere between "non-existant" and "abysmal".

The Kingston location delivers to my apartment. This is good, especially when I'm hungry for "real" food, but too lazy to cook. Because, let's face it, as "fast" food goes, Boston Market is pretty decent stuff.

Except that when I say "they deliver to me", I mean that only in the vaguest of terms. As in, "whenever they feel like delivering". Of the last four times I've called to place a delivery order, take a guess how many times I've had nice Boston Market food delivered to my door.

Zero.

"I'm sorry, our delivery guy went home."
"I'm sorry, our delivery guy has today off."

... and variations on that theme. Apparently, they have one guy who does delivery. And obviously he needs days off and such, so there's going to be days you're guaranteed you can't get service.

What a bunch of cocksmokers. If they're going to advertise "delivery" as a service, the least they could do is actually do it!

I was reading this story about a guy who got arrested for failing to leave a gratuity, and it made me think about something I've long held.

Now, as previously noted, I am an awesome tipper. Waitresses take note, you want to handle my table, you really do.

However, Merriam-Webster defines a gratuity as:

Main Entry: gra·tu·ity Pronunciation: gr&-'tü-&-tE, -'tyü- Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -ities : something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service; especially : TIP

Now, by definition, you cannot have a "mandatory gratuity". It's like having a white sheet of black paper. It's just not possible.

The proprietor of the establishment is quoted as saying "They shorted the check and didn't leave any money at all for the waitress. This is not a vendetta. This is just about standing up for my waitresses."

Sorry, no, they didn't. They paid the bill, they just didn't volunteer to pay your waitress extra money. If you feel that your waitress is underpaid, perhaps you could take her off the tips-scale of minimum-wage and put her on the "normal" wage scale.

I don't begrudge a waitress her tip, but I do begrudge people who try and make it "mandatory". If you believe that your wait-staff is so overworked that you need to impose a "mandatory gratuity", then maybe, just maybe, you need to improve the wages for your staff, instead of trying to pass the burden directly onto the customer.

I'd love to come up with a little notepad:

  Dear Waitress/Waiter:

  You would have made $_________ as a tip, but since

  your employer has dictated a mandatory gratuity, you are 

  instead only making the "mandatory" $_________ tip. You 

  may want to take that up with your boss and try to get him

  to pay you the difference since his stupid-ass policy screwed

  you out of the difference.

  Cheers!

so I could leave that behind. Instead, since I don't have any of those, I just don't deal with "mandatory" gratuities except where I have no choice (e.g., I will pay the mandatory tip to room service people because there's a monopoly and I can't "shop elsewhere" easily).

I take a break from our regularly scheduled ranting about piss-poor customer service to call your attention to a company whose customer service was completely awesome, a perfect example of what it's like to deal with a company who actually cares about its customers.

At GenCon, I was sorta the "gopher boy", picking up a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff for my friends. At the Chessex booth, I picked up two reversible battlemats with 1" markings on both sides.

Sunday night, as I packed, I realized, "ah shit, they gave me a 1" and a 1.5" instead of two 1" mats".

Now, this is basically my own fault. I should have checked what I got at the booth, etc., etc. I get back from GenCon, and after a couple days, I call Chessex customer service, asking if I can ship the 1.5" mat back, and swap it for a 1". At this point, I'm fully expecting, since it's my fault, that I'm going to be paying for shipping in both directions, etc., etc.

Nope. In fact, basically what they told me was "ship it back to us, with a note inside about what happened, and to cover your shipping costs, just give me a part # in that letter for a dice set and I'll throw in a dice-set to compensate you for the shipping costs in sending it to us."

In other words, although the fault was fairly even spread between both of us (them for giving me the wrong mat, me for not noticing) they took it on the chin and made good on the situation completely.

This is the way a company earns loyalty. Let them stand out as an example.

Yesterday, I set up a shipment to ship a bunch of work stuff from my apartment. There's two big things (a server and a tape library system) and a small thing (a rail-kit for the server).

It's important to note that the tape library system is, literally, exactly as it was received. It came into my apartment, sat in my dining room for the last two months, and had a new shipping label attached to it to go right back out the door.

Well, the folks from shit brown showed up today to pick up my boxes. Apparently, they don't like "the amount of movement inside the big box" (never mind that they delivered it like that), nor do they like the condition of the box itself (never mind that they delivered it like that).

It's not like the box is falling apart. I've seen boxes that are falling apart and this isn't the case here. They simply are being pricks because I'm insuring the box for full value of $10,000.

Now this prick, who is not my usual driver, was like "you need to find a different box for it, there's no packing material in here or anything". At which point I ripped into him that there most certainly was packing material in there, the factory-spec packing material it came off the manufacturing line with, and that it was in the original factory-spec box, which is how UPS themselves specifies electronics should be shipped.

After much arguing with him, it took three times of me saying "If that's your attitude, cancel the whole fucking shipment, I'll let FedEx get the business," before he took his punk ass off my doorstep.

I hate using FedEx for work stuff though. I always have to expense it and shit. Way not cool.

But, it's official. I mean, I've mentioned it before how much I hate UPS, but now they've officially reached the "dead to me" stage. If I ship something, it's going FedEx or Airborne/DHL. Period.

Extremely paraphrased:

Caller: Hi, this is your credit card company, we'd like to offer you this wicked credit protection service.
DB: Not interested. Thanks anyway.
Caller: It's free for the first 30 days! Try it! You can always cancel! And you get a cool prepaid gas card for trying!
DB: No. Not interested. Go away.
Caller: But sir, accidents do happen, and if you have this --
DB: Look, I've told you twice I'm not interested. If I have to tell you a third time, it will be promptly followed by "And cancel my fucking credit card account effective immediately" are we absolutely clear?
Caller: Yes, sir.
DB: Do you have anything further you wish to say?
Caller: No, sir.
DB: Bye.
*click*

My apartment complex has what they consider to be a nifty feature. If you call the leasing office, and they're not there, or the phones are busy, then you automatically get redirected instantly to the nationwide office.

Now, for a lot things, service emergencies, etc., this can be really useful. However, when you get a message on your voicemail like:

Derek, this is $NAME at the leasing office. Can you please give us a call back at $NUMBER? Thanks.

... then it's completely ass-useless. You call the number, you get some operator in Illinois who has no idea what Sue wanted, but promises to have her call you back. When you tell her that she can't because you're in a conference session, she tells you to try back later. Except, of course, that later, I still have no guarantee it won't ring through to Illinois.

I'd rather get a busy signal, which doesn't cost me air-time minutes, than get routed through to a person who is useless to me. Guaranteed, every time, no "if"s, "and"s, or "but"s. But, of course, there's no option for "calling a number which will never forward through to the call-center on busy".

Sigh.

Seems to be what I keep getting e-mails, IMs, and blog-comments...

Sorry, dear readers, I forgot to keep you in the loop before I headed off to class last night.

Yes, Cathy called. Twice even. She was... astounded at the phone call I overheard, and went to go check things out.

Turns out it's a problem in Wurtsboro, NY, that they aren't receiving the FOX-HD signal. They're "aware of the problem but have no ETR".

Now, Wurtsboro is 44 miles away from me. So what does this tell me?

- It's not just "my local neighborhood where myself and the cable office reside", but "a largish region of Time-Warner" that isn't getting this channel
- Their quality control, if they didn't notice this problem over this large of an area, is absolutely horrendous
- T-W customers must just be conditioned to accept crappy service by default, because apparently, it sounds like I'm the only one complaining

As of 7:02AM this morning, channel 705 was, still, dark. When I asked Cathy yesterday, "What are you going to do to make this right by me? It was implied by your customer service people that I was a moron, my time was wasted waiting for a repair guy to show up, all to solve a problem that - literally - your operations staff 'doesn't care about'".

She mentioned humorously that if she was to "follow the book", she would take my digital cable package price ($35.00), divide by the number of included channels, and issue a "per-channel credit" for each day it was out. She also quickly followed that comment with, luckily for her, a comment that "there's absolutely no way you'd accept that, you'd laugh me out of town."

Well, she was right about that at least.

In the end, she gave me a week's credit against my digital-cable package, or roughly $9.00. I pushed for more, indicating "You know, I should get paid like Time-Warner senior management, after all, it was me, not them, who were driving Repair, Customer Service, and Operations to get this resolved. What do they make? I'd take four or five days of their salary..." but she couldn't give me anything like that.

I think, in the end, that I'm going to end up contacting the PSC anyway. I don't expect that I'll get anything more from them, but hopefully the PSC complaint will smack the appropriate people around and make them fix the multiple broken processes that created this situation in the first place.

As I was wandering around my apartment today, I realized, "Hey, you haven't heard back from Time-Warner Cable yet!" ... so I checked my HD box, and lo and behold, 705 was still dark.

CSR: Thank you for calling Time Warner, this is Valerie, how can I help you?
DB: You see the notes on my account from my call yesterday?
CSR: I see something about you being unhappy.
DB: So on Saturday, I called in a complaint about not having channel 705. I used to work at a cable company, so I told the rep who took the call that it looked like a head-end problem since it was only channel 705, but I'm just a dumb customer, what do I know, because she insisted it must be the box. So she scheduled a service call for yesterday to replace my obviously defective box.
CSR: Mmm-hmmmm
DB: Well, the tech came out, and swapped out my box, but gosh, channel 705 was still dark. So the tech calls up to someone in your office and says "look at channel 705 and what do you see?" ... shucky-darn if it wasn't dark at your obviously-defective box in the office, too.
CSR: Mmm-hmmmm
DB: So the tech asks the guy he's on the Nextel with -- and I want to thank you for using Nextel because it let me hear both sides of the conversation -- so he asks him, "Did you tell $NAME there was a problem at the head-end?" and he comes back, no lie, with "Yeah, but he didn't seem to care."
CSR: Mmm-hmmmm
DB: So I called yesterday, to explain my anger at not only being treated like a moron who had no clue, but to vent about how the guy in charge of the head-end didn't care, and was told I would get a call this morning from a supervisor.
CSR: Mmm-hmmmmm
DB: Yeah, well it's 2 p.m., and no call.
CSR: OK
DB: So not only was I treated like a moron, not only did the head-end supervisor not care that there was a customer-effecting problem, but the supervisor for customer-service who is supposed to be in charge of making things "right" couldn't be bothered to call me back either.
CSR: Can I put you on hold for a moment?
DB: You sure can.
(*hold*)
CSR: OK, I have tried to get you a supervisor, but I'm afraid they're all busy at the moment.
DB: Great, so nobody cares at the head-end, literally, and the customer service supervisors can't be bothered to make them give me the service I'm paying for.
CSR: Well, the most I can do is to take a message and have a supervisor call you back.
DB: That's what they told me yesterday, and it was clearly a lie. Why should I believe that will happen today?
CSR: The reason you haven't gotten a call back yet today is that the supervisors have been on the phone with other customers, and haven't had a chance to call you back.
DB: We're in the seventh hour of the business day. If they can't scrape together a couple minutes to call me back in that period of time, then you're horribly understaffed.
CSR: The most I can do is take a message.
DB: Tell you what, put me on hold, explain to your supervisor that if she doesn't come take this call right now, I'm simply going to contact the Public Service Commission and let them call her, because you can bet your sweet bippy she'll take their call. I think they'll be pretty interested...after all... the "Not caring" quote is just so choice that it couldn't help but end up in the fine paperwork, don't you think?
CSR: Well, when you say "Don't care," --
DB: I mean don't care, as in those are the exact words that came out of the Nextel phone's speaker. And it's obvious he didn't care, because the channel is still to this day dark. There's been a problem in the head-end now for four days, where I've been paying for a Hi-Def channel that you guys simply willfully refuse to provide me.
CSR: OK, let me put you on hold for one second.
(*hold*)
CSR: I did get my supervisor, Cathy, to put her other call on hold, and I explained the situation to her. She indicated that she was here until 4pm, and would definitely call you back with information prior to her leaving.
DB: What is Cathy's last name?
CSR: $LAST_NAME
DB: You can explain to Cathy, if you would, that she has until 4pm. At 4:05 I go to the PSC and I let them tear you guys apart starting at the stern if you know what I'm saying.
CSR: I understand, sir.
DB: OK, have a good day. And let me tell you, as someone who used to be a CSR, you handled this really well, given the complete handcuffing you've gotten from your management. I'm not mad or upset with you at all, just so you know.
CSR: Thank you. Have a good day.
DB: You too... Bye.
(*click*)

Now, this isn't actually me in this one, this was submitted by a friend, but he doesn't have a blog and this is too precious not to share with the world.

Our T-1 to $REMOTE_CITY was down, had been down for about 20 hours, and we were having a whale of a time trying to get SBC on-site to fix it. (A lightning strike in $REMOTE_CITY had apparently fried the smartjack.) It was standard Ameritech/SBC crap--constant escalation with no apparent motion toward resolution.

Anyway, on what turned out to be the final phone call, I called to check status. A guy answers, "This is $NAME, how can I help you?" I give him the two-sentence description and the ticket number, and he says, well, there are a couple people in line ahead of you. Hang on, and I'll be back in a couple minutes.

About 3 minutes later he comes back as if answering anew, and--I'm not making this up--he answers, "Thank you for calling SBC. This is $NAME. How can I screw you--I mean help you--today?"

It got better from there. As he's trying to figure out what's going on with this ticket, he's skimming the notes, and kind of half-reading them out loud to himself. "OK, here it's escalated to level 4. Call (mumble), escalate to level 5. Well, now it's at $BIG_GUY's desk. Hmm. The next step above $BIG_GUY is Jesus, so I guess I'm going to have to call him, but I'm not sure what I'm going to say."

And, "Well, you know, this is SBC. When we drop the ball, we do it with style."

We got to a little chit-chat while he was waiting for a page to be answered, and he said, "Lots of people call me whining about their phones not working. <whine>'My phone doesn't work.'</whine> You know what? It doesn't really matter. Go home and tell your kids you love them, and play a game of Parchesi with them. Your telephone doesn't really matter...especially not to SBC."

He was the coolest CSR I've ever talked to about anything, bar none. I got his supervisor's name and number and called him later to tell him $NAME needed a raise, and he needed to hire more guys like $NAME.

This story was especially funny to me for a couple reasons...