Customer “service”?
How?
Tuesday afternoon, we were hit by a major thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt hit right in our back yard, knocking out power for nearly five hours.
The telephone line was still working, even if the electricity wasn’t, so when we got an incoming call, we had to answer it, rather than letting the answering machine screen the call the way we usually do. We’ve already put our number on all of the “do not call” lists that we possibly can, including the federal, state, and direct marketing association lists, but we still get calls from businesses for which the “do not call” lists don’t apply, such as companies that we already do business with, including the phone company.
So while the power was out, I got an automated call from our phone company: “This is about your telephone service. Please stay on hold until a representative becomes available.”
Yeah, right. Please commit an undefined duration of your valuable time to waiting until somebody has the time to give you a sales pitch for telephone services that you probably don’t want.
If I were to phone the company about a problem that I needed solved, yeah, I might be willing to wait until a customer-service person could help with the problem. But for me to wait on hold, on a telephone call that I didn’t initiate, until such time as a salesperson could come available to try to sell me on additional services that I don’t want? I don’t think so.
Tuesday afternoon, we were hit by a major thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt hit right in our back yard, knocking out power for nearly five hours.
The telephone line was still working, even if the electricity wasn’t, so when we got an incoming call, we had to answer it, rather than letting the answering machine screen the call the way we usually do. We’ve already put our number on all of the “do not call” lists that we possibly can, including the federal, state, and direct marketing association lists, but we still get calls from businesses for which the “do not call” lists don’t apply, such as companies that we already do business with, including the phone company.
So while the power was out, I got an automated call from our phone company: “This is about your telephone service. Please stay on hold until a representative becomes available.”
Yeah, right. Please commit an undefined duration of your valuable time to waiting until somebody has the time to give you a sales pitch for telephone services that you probably don’t want.
If I were to phone the company about a problem that I needed solved, yeah, I might be willing to wait until a customer-service person could help with the problem. But for me to wait on hold, on a telephone call that I didn’t initiate, until such time as a salesperson could come available to try to sell me on additional services that I don’t want? I don’t think so.
Labels: rants
posted by Carol Anne | 12:15 AM
1 Comments:
An additional comment: Why does the phone company even MAKE the phone call in the first place if it doesn't have someone immediately available to talk? Doesn't it make sense to wait until there's someone available and THEN call? Whose time is it saving to make the call before there's a salesperson available? Not the salesperson's -- she's already busy.
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