Why do You Hate Your Customers?

We have two cell phones on the same account.  My wife lost her phone while traveling.  I told her to go to a “Big Giant Phone Company” booth in any town and get another phone.  Big Giant Phone Company calls me, with her standing there, and wants a copy of my driver’s license.  Great – they’re protecting me against fraud.  I fax them my license while on the phone with them.  All is OK.  They hand my wife her new phone and she can now make and receive calls on her old number.

But there’s a problem.  This new phone is booby-trapped.  They had all her account information, they set up her new phone and personally handed it to her after having verified my account identity.  But she can’t get any of the many voice-mail messages that are pouring in, and she’s at a Big Expensive Out-Of-Town Convention and all.

They HANDED HER a new phone IN PERSON that doesn’t work.  She the user, is forced to set up the voice mail.  But that can be done ONLY AT CERTAIN TIMES of the day and ONLY if she has my Social Security Number (already faxed them my GD driver’s license).

Dear, Big Giant Phone Company,  Why do you harass and attempt to thwart your customers with this idiocy?  What do you think WE the paying customers have to gain from being harassed and thwarted by you?  Why should I ever spend another nickel with you if I can avoid it?

And while I’m venting:  Why does Verizon need a 37 digit account number, when anyone is this country of over 300 million can reach me with my 10 digit phone number?  Can you say, DUUHH!?

 

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4 thoughts on “Why do You Hate Your Customers?

  1. They are probably encoding your credit rating and genome in that number… For future ease (their ease) of use.

    “I think.
    I think I am.
    I think I must be… I think.”

    “Of course you are my bright little star
    I’ve miles and miles of files,
    Pretty files of your forefather’s fruit.
    And now to suit our great computer,
    You’re magnetic ink.”

    ‘I’m more than that, at least I think I must be.”

    “There you go man.
    Keep as cool as you can.
    It riles them to think
    That you perceive the web they weave.
    And keep on thinking free.”

    Heh.. too much Moody Blues in my formative years.. I think..

  2. “…(their ease) of use.”

    Exactly. And surely that should be their problem and theirs alone. The customer should never have to be bothered with it.

    “…too much Moody Blues…” Apropos none the less.

  3. Well, as Clark Howard almost, but doesn’t quite say on his radio show, “All cell-phone companies suck. Your job as a customer is to find the one which sucks the least.”

  4. I use tracfone.

    If I need minutes I buy them.

    If I lose a phone, I just get out a $20 bill and buy another. No commitment, no nothing. I paid cash for the phones and the cards, so they don’t even know who I am.

    And I like it that way.

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