Breaking up is hard to do... 03.07.08
I’ve decided recently that
whoever wrote the song ‘breaking up is hard to do,’ may
well have been referring to their efforts to get away
from some companies who, even when you say ‘no’ don’t
seem to accept it.
For instance there’s this telephone company I once
switched briefly to a while back who, despite the fact
that I no longer have any contract with them for over
two years, continue to send me letters asking me to
re-join.
According to the letters they are now far better than
they were when I was with them, and of course they are
far cheaper and it’s a better service, blah, blah blah.
But it’s not like they were so desperate to keep my
business in the first place that they fell over
backwards. Instead they just kept trying to come up with
new and more infuriating ways to tell me that no, you
didn’t actually cancel your account. |
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This included things like,
‘we know you wrote to say cancel the account, but that
doesn’t mean cancel, you need to say cease.” Say what?
In the end it took months to finally get the account
cancelled and as soon as it was, letters started
arriving asking me to go back.
But they are not the only ones, because a bank I know
has almost been as infuriating as I tried for several
months to cancel a credit card.
I’m not sure why they tried so hard to drive me up the
wall, because I know my custom was important to them. I
know this because I must have heard it about a bazillion
times every time I tried to call their customer care
line.
On my first call I gave up after what seemed like about
a half an hour, deciding that whatever customer needed
so much care and attention on the other line was more in
need of the assistance than I was. Of course I also
thought to myself, it just seemed like a half an hour,
you were probably hanging on for five or six
minutes...until I put the stop-watch on next time I
phoned.
After twenty three minutes of hearing how my custom was
invaluable to them but all the customer care operators
were busy, I hung up again.
I think it was around about that time that I wondered if
this was a clever ploy by the company to never have to
deal with any requests or complaints. I mean how many
people are going to hang on for over twenty minutes?
Well, okay, I did. Next time I called I just sat it out
for twenty eight minutes until Mary from customer
service came on the line.
I told her I wanted to cancel the card (I think I also
told her I want to cease the account just to be sure)
and I could almost hear the panic in her voice.
I was picturing a scene at the other end of the line
where she was pressing all sorts of panic buttons and
big ‘code red, code red, account cancel requests’ were
flashing across those who red scoreboard-type sign
things.
It could even have been pretty dramatic if the room was
filled with customer care people, but considering the
average wait, I’m guessing it was just Mary.
And of course Mary didn’t want me to cancel my account,
and must have asked me around twenty times.
During all this time I can only guess that Mary was in
the process of printing out and putting in envelopes the
series of letters that began arriving within days of the
call.
It was like that scene from the Harry Potter movie, they
just kept on coming for months and months until I had to
open one up, get the customer care number and call up
again last week. |
Things are improving, I
have to say, it only took eleven minutes to get through
and Michael this time told me not to worry the account
was cancelled and the letters I had received had just
crossed with the request to cancel and I could dump
them.
Funny enough that’s what I had already done anyway, but
with winter coming in I’m not going to panic. I’m
guessing there’ll be plenty more coming in the months
ahead to help me light the fire more than once... |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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