At Your Service?

This has been one hell of a week for customer service issues.  Please sit back and let me tell you a few sordid tales from the past few days.

The first horror story was told to me by a co-worker.  She had a doctor's appointment Monday morning.  She got to the doctor's office, only to find that the doctor wasn't in.  And would not be in all day.  The nurses all looked at her like she had three heads. They told her that the doctor never scheduled any appointments for Mondays.  She proceded to pull out the appointment card out of her purse, and showed that that one of them had in deed made the appointment for Monday the 17th.  She said that the nurse looked at the card, which plainly said 1-17-5 for her appointment date, and still said "I'm sorry, the doctor does not see any patients on Mondays."  By this point, my friend was mad enough to bite nails, so she grabbed the card out of the nurse's hand and left.  When she got back to work, she tried to call the doctor's office all day long to reschedule the appointment, but since the doctor wasn't seeing patients that day, we guessed that the nurses and the receptionist weren't answering the phone, either.  We wish her much luck in rescheduling. 

The second horror story happened to me last night.  Last week, I called BellSouth and ordered DSL service, and yesterday the kit arrived via UPS.  I opened the box, saw the DSL modem, some cords, and the wireless internet card for my laptop.  Silly me - I was excited about being able to get this hooked up and didn't pay much attention to the fact that according to the booklet they sent, a couple of critical components were missing.  After supper, I tried to get it all hooked up, but after having a meltdown because I couldn't find one single flashlight in the house that had good batteries, I quickly became frustrated and called their BellSouth's customer service department.  After explaining the the problems I was having getting it all hooked up, the man on the phone, Hiawatha (I swear to Hannah that was his name) determined that yes in deed, I was shorted two critical components.  He went on to apologize profusely (one thing I hate when a company is clearly in the wrong - don't apologize, just tell me how you're going to fix the problem) and then said "As a courtesy will be sending out the signalsplitter and the filters to you at no charge. There will also be no charge for the expedited shipping."  Ohhhhhkay.  I calmly said "So, let me get this straight.  You're not going to charge me for parts that I already paid for, but did not receive because they weren't packed in the box that you all shipped?"  He paused for a second or two and then repeated his mantra "As a courtesy, we will be shipping.....")   By this time, I was already hacked off because I couldn't connect my DSL modem, and even if I could have there wasn't a working flashlight to be found, so I would have had to light a candle and use it as I crawled under the computer desk to reach the phone jack. I'll keep you posted on when the missing parts arrive.

The last story comes from a good friend up in Springfield, IL, who told of her encounter with PATs when she attempted to get a new cell phone.  The story was too good for me to paraphrase, so here it is, in the words of my friend Gini:
"I changed from Cellular One......the damn phone wouldn't work in my house.....it would only work on the interstate.....I called it my "interstate plan." (Author's note:  when Gini would make a call on her cell phone from her house, she would have to sit in the rocking chair in her living room - that was the only room in the entire house where she could get good signal reception to make/receive a cell phone call.) Everyone that worked at the store was 12 yrs. or under and no one would do anything about my complaints......FINALLY I hit a day when there was "adult supervision" in the store and I got a different phone....no charge....it worked a little better, but not much.  I'm liking this new little phone.....got another flip phone.....I really missed my Star-tac....that's still my favorite one.  We'll see how this plan goes......I'm stuck with it for 2 years......lol.......They are stuck with me too so they'd better hope I'm satisfied."