For God’s sake, don’t let your children subscribe to Sirius/XM.
Since May 4, when Sirius rearranged all its channel numbers, my radio has been badly confused. If I punch in station 23, it goes to the station that’s currently 23 for a while, then jumps to the station that used to be 23, etc. And certain stations, which according to the Sirius website are part of my standard package, are completely inaccessible.
Given my past experience with XM customer service, I knew this was not going to be an easy fix, so I’ve been putting off making the call. Today I had some spare time. Sure enough, I’ve spent over TWO HOURS on the phone with these people being alternately put on hold, lied to, put on hold, lied to some more, and put on hold again.
They claim the missing channels are missing because they’re “premium” channels not included in my package. Except that their website clearly identifies these channels as standard channels that *are* part of my package. They tell me that they’re instituting a fix at their end which requires me to leave my radio on for fifteen minutes before it takes effect; this gives them a convenient excuse to hang up and not be there fifteen minutes down the line when nothing has changed. When I complain about how long I’ve been on hold (the automated system always says the wait time is “about eight minutes” before stranding you for half an hour), they give me a direct number to call to bypass the queue. I call that number and am told that no, this number is only for radios installed on airlines or boats. I complain that I’ve just waited twenty minutes to get this message. They give me a *different* number to call, promising me that there is currently no wait at that number. Thirty five minutes later, I’m still waiting.
Ah, but what about just using the form on their web site? Well, you see, that form will not allow me to submit a query unless I give it the serial number of my radio — a serial number that it insists is wrong, even though I have *copied and pasted* it from the “My Account” section of their own damned website. Therefore my query cannot be submitted.
No useful contact by phone, no possible contact whatsoever by web. No email address provided. No way to get help, no way to demand a refund. Let me stress that: Unless I am willing to wait another 40 minutes or so on hold, there is no way even to *request* a refund, not that I believe these evil bastards would grant one in any event.
So. What’s *your* worst customer service story?
My old web host said my website was using too much of the resources to stay on a shared hosting plan. They recommended I move it to a VPS. Unfortunately, they had no idea how to configure a VPS. For two weeks, my website was being served from the old shared host. Then, some of the domains stopped resolving. Every time I raised a support ticket, some new disaster would ensue – files copied to mistyped folders, domain resolution switching off randomly, and so on. Eventually I switched web host to HostGator. They copied my website across, and I started to stitch together all the torn and broken pieces. However, I kept getting emails from the old web host – and still had shell access to the VPS – for 6 months after I “cancelled” my account and stopped paying them!
Probably the guy trying to explain that .02 cents wasn’t the same as .02 dollars. He had been quoted .02 cents per megabyte of data roaming, but tries to convince them for 27 minutes that .02 cents is different from .02 dollars. The audio makes you want to rip your hair out.
http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html
My worst experience was Comcast.
My neighbor has their broadband internet access, and it’s decidedly faster than my DSL, so I decided to switch. I went online to their little sign-up form and was told their was a problem with my application and to call. I call an 800 number which fed me to a regional office based on my address, where I wait for 45 miniutes. They tell me that, while my address is in one county, that area is served by the next county over and that they’d have to transfer me. (Their own system didn’t know who services me!)
After another 45 minutes, they tell me that my house is unreachable. Funny since I had Comcast service 3 or 4 years ago, and my neighbor whose house is about 15 yards away has the service. The “best [she] can do” is send a technician out to survey my house. It will be within 5 days and she’ll “call me back personally to tell me the results.”
2 weeks later, I call them again, and wait the requisite 45 mimutes. I was told that nobody ever entered the request for the technician, but that the rep would be happy to, and she’d call me back personally with the results. I found her name was Tonya and waited.
2 weeks later, I call a third time. This time no request, nobody by the name of Tonya works there, and I ask for another survey. I don’t call back.
About a month after that, a door-to-door Comcast sales rep stops by. I explain my situation and he apologizes dearly. He promises to get the service installed immeadiately. I sign a contract (valid only for 45 days…) and he gives me his business card. A year later, I still haven’t heard back from him.
I have Verizon FIOS. At 5 AM, after a storm, it had stopped
working, so I called for service. They had me do a bunch of tests
on the equipment here, and all showed fine. They scheduled someone
to come out.
“When will they arrive?”
“We don’t specify a time. It will definitely be some time today
between 8 AM and 5 PM. You must be at home for this.”
Meanwhile, I go outside and look. No wonder it’s not working. The
phone line is down and laying on the ground. I call in and update
them with this information.
Fast forward: nobody shows that day.
I call in and get told, “We rescheduled you for tomorrow.” Yeah,
thanks for the notice!
Next day: I call in to check; they assure me somebody will be out.
It gets late and 5 PM is near. I call in and they tell me that
the people scheduled to do my service are on a later shift and will
still show after 5 PM. In fact they do show up around 6:30 PM.
These people are worse than completely useless. They see the line
on the ground and say “Oh, we don’t have a splice kit with us. Our
ticket says you’re having a problem with your battery backup unit.
How about if we come out tomorrow?”
Of course, they don’t come out tomorrow. When I call Verizon
the next morning to check, it turns out they marked this problem
“resolved”. I get to start the whole thing over again. And no,
even though they completely bungled the whole process, it’s not
possible to get someone out today. Someone will be out tomorrow.
Next day, somebody shows up, and he’s really good. He fixes the
problem.
This isn’t quite the end, though. I have direct bill pay. It was
easy to sign up for – you just fill in a form and include it with
your bill payment. After this debacle, I feel that Verizon isn’t
sufficiently competent to be trusted with free access to my bank
account. I call in to cancel auto-pay.
They consult my records. “You must cancel this via our web page.”
“You mean the web pages that have never worked for me because they
require browser settings that compromise security? Can’t I do it
over the phone or, at least, mail in a signed request? I certainly
signed up for this without the web.”
“No, that won’t work. The only way this can be done is on our
web pages.”
“So, I signed up on paper, but I can’t stop the same way?”
“That’s correct.”
I escalate the problem up a few levels. Each level insists that
only the web page has the magic that would do what’s required to
stop them from grabbing my money from the bank. Finally, I reach
someone who goes to the web page and fills in the blanks themselves
to get this taken care of.
It’s been years since I needed Verizon service, but they’ve always
been fast and competent. It seems that things have changed. It
would appear that Verizon has become jealous of Comcast and is
striving to emulate the cable company’s quality of service.
I have good luck when I politely contact executives. Never tried it with Sirius/XM, but the staff is here:
http://www.siriusxm.com/bios
The email formula seems to be first name [dot] last name [at] siriusxm.com
The Consumerist is a helpful website:
http://consumerist.com/2010/08/letter-to-siriusxm-executives-ends-zombie-billing-nightmare.html
Not a terrible customer service story, but another strike on Sirius/XM. When I went to call them to cancel my service (my lease was up on the satellite-equipped car we were driving), the cancellation part went fairly quickly, though they did try to convince me to stay. Finally we were done, and they put me on hold for a confirmation number. I was on for over 20 minutes and finally my cell phone ran out of batteries. By the time I got home, customer service was closed for the day so I decided to hope for the best. Of course, I got billed for the next month. When I called back, it took about an hour to get my credit back, but eventually they did give it to me.
Very funny open letter to Time Warner (not my story but I can relate)
http://www.greenpointnews.com/news/3354/an-open-letter-from-eugene-mirman-to-time-warner
I’m not proud of this but my new tactic is to repeat my simple request over and over whenever the evasive customer service rep tries to tell me why I can’t what I want. [awkward silence…] “Sir, I-GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.-” [awkward silence…] “Sir, I-GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.” They can’t hang up on you and if I’m going to wait on hold forever, I’m going to keep them there and drive them nuts and I eventually get my way.
Rather than a similar story a suggestion. Recorded books. Available on CD or for download. Some months I get more read in the car than in my chair.
American Airlines Representatives,
I first want to start out by saying that I have no axe to grind with you. I am a frequent flyer, without much brand loyalty. I fly your airline along with Delta, Continental, Southwest, Virgin America, United, and JetBlue all with some degree of regularity. I am also not the type who gets stressed out or anxious about flying, gets air sick, is afraid of germs, gets bored or uncomfortable on planes, or anything else that would cause me to have an issue with an air carrier. I do not wish ill will on most of your employees, but as a consumer of your product, I feel the need to give you a performance review.
Your airline, simply put, is the worst. Actually, that’s not wholly true…USAirways is just as bad, but I swore off them years ago. But I digress. Your lack of willingness to put capital into your aircrafts is astounding. Its befuddlement is only matched by your inability to hire competent staff and treat your customers properly. Let me count the ways:
1. You appear to be the last ones holding onto those cloth seats. I am all about the vintage movement, but I think it’s about time to follow the herd and upgrade to the leather.
2. I am sure you are aware by now that several of your competitors have personal TV sets, and some even offer the ability to watch live television! I probably don’t even need to address this one, since that is so far beyond your scope at the present time. It would be like someone inventing the Apple IIGS today and marketing it to compete with the iPad.
3. How long does it take for a tray table to yellow like the pages of a 30 year old book? You most certainly are the only ones qualified to answer this.
4. Just when I warm up to the idea of the communal TV showing 3 year old episodes of The Office, of course my headphone jack doesn’t work.
5. I did not realize the bathroom fixtures from the Titanic were salvaged. What did they cost you? You overpaid. I would rather fly with a bedpan and an IV full of Imodium than use your bathrooms. This coming from someone who has pooped satisfactorily on several airlines, including a famous 2-poop Jet Blue flight where neither poop was out of necessity but rather just a reaction to supreme comfort.
6. I really encourage you or someone high up in your organization to take a flight on Southwest, JetBlue, or Virgin America so you can see how customers deserve to be treated. Never have I witnessed such apathy, unwillingness to accommodate, and overall disrespect as I have on your flights.
7. Please quit blaming air traffic control when you leave and arrive late. I don’t profess to know the reason you’re always late. Apparently neither do you…either that or you just enjoy making false excuses to your customers. But somehow I manage to leave and arrive on time on every other airline, whereas an hour-delayed departure is about as good as I get on American. I didn’t even know lines to take off could be longer than 4 or 5 planes until one of your pilots announced we were 26th in line for takeoff.
8. Why are you the only airline that tries to enforce the carry-on luggage size limit? Please don’t tell me it’s a time saving thing (see point #7). I have a bag that I have carried onto no fewer than 200 flights. It fits easily into every overhead bin known to man, wheels first as directed. Yet your crappy staff decides to question me every time and talk down to me about packing a big carry-on. Don’t blame some TSA bull crap. Please, enough excuses. Every other airline makes it work, you should be able to as well.
9. Quit thanking us for our patience. We’re not patient, we hate you, your crappy planes, your awful staff, and the delays that they all cause. If you replace the phrase “your patience” with “not stabbing us with the pens you brought on board like Joe Pesci in Casino”, then go right ahead and thank us. TSA security is now making a whole lot more sense.
To be quite honest, that list just scratches the surface. Your airline is responsible for more of my stress, grief, and fatigue than anything else on the planet. I have never been more dissatisfied with any product that I have ever purchased, not just airline related. I know, I know, you take my life in your hands, launch me into the air, and land me safely, and for that I should be grateful, right? Wrong. I pay good money for that service, and I deserve treatment on par with the fare I pay. Your pricing is equivalent to your competitors, and your service is a joke in comparison. I don’t know how your staff can, with a straight face, thank your customers for flying with you. Instead of thanking everyone at the end of the flight, I think more appropriately you should say “we are deeply sorry that American was your only travel option. On the bright side, your lack of choice benefited all of our employees, and we are selfishly glad we were able to rip you off.” Somewhere, somehow, there is a business school case study here. Not sure if it is to illustrate the harm of unions, the tragic effects of government regulation, an epic failure of consumer transparency to make the right product decisions, or most likely a comparable torture practice to water boarding.
I would like to make a short list of the place I would rather be than on one of your planes. Please note that this list is not comprehensive and just a quick list that could be expanded upon request:
1. The DMV
2. A leper colony
3. West Virginia
4. My mother in law’s book club
5. A taping of The View
6. Afghanistan
7. A double feature of The Nutcracker and Swan Lake
8. The Post Office
9. In between Rush Limbaugh’s butt cheeks
10. An Applebee’s
11. A WNBA game
12. Trapped in an elevator with Rosie O’Donnell after a Mexican meal
13. Trapped in an elevator with Michael Moore before a Mexican meal
14. In Detroit driving a beat up Kia through a GM union protest on the way to a Lions game
15. In the ocean using my crappy cloth seat cushion for floatation
In closing, I want you to know that this e-mail is not meant as a joke. It is honestly meant to encourage your company to change its business practices and greatly improve the quality of your product. I will be sending this e-mail to everyone I know, and will be encouraging them to pass it along as well. You deserve a reaction from your consumers. I think you should thank me for being honest and giving you a costless, accurate review of how you size up compared to your competition. There are probably hundreds of people you pay many millions of dollars to fail at this job on a daily basis. Please, I am begging you, shape up, prove that capitalism works, show me it is possible to revive a formerly reputable brand…there is nothing I would love more.
I received an offer from Verizon to upgrade my existing DSL service, twice the speed, five dollars more per month. Sounded like a good deal, called, and arranged the upgrade. I was told that a technician would need to come out to the house to make sure the speed would work on my equipment, and it would take a week. I was fine with that, as the DSL I had was adequate. The next morning, my DSL was off. I called to ask them to turn it back on, and whoever I spoke to indicated it would be fixed. It wasn’t. It was fairly obvious to me what happened. The building housing the DSL switch is about three blocks from my house, and someone turned off my old service. I called again and asked them to send someone to the switch and turn on the service, and they said they couldn’t do it. I was on the phone for over two hours with a foreign call center and got so angry that I verbally abused the guy. I kept asking to move up the chain, and after about four hours of transfers to people who couldn’t help me, I was transferred to a manager who told me my old service could not be turned on, and I would have to wait for the technician later in the week. I demanded free phone service for a year to make up for their screw up. I settled for a $360 credit, which amounted to free internet service for a year. He also set me up with a free dial-up line, which was useless.
When the technician showed up and I explained what happened, he told me, “All they had to do was send someone out to the switch,” which is what I thought in the first place.
The good thing that came out of this (and I had a similar run in with DirecTV), is that I’m on a list of people who get immediate attention when they call for service, and Verizon and DTV have been very good to me since.
A friend of mine told me that when a company screws up, always ask for some kind of monetary restitution. You usually get some, and they won’t want to mess with you in the future.
Actually Steve some serious cut&paste advice. Be careful about copying leading or trailing spaces. It should not matter, but often it does.
Prof. Landsburg, former student of yours who has a very similar experience with the Sirius side of the business. I started an online account and for a while it was blocked at work so the saved password on my home computer was how I accessed it. Once it became unblocked at work I was unable to remember my password. They wouldn’t give me my password over the phone and to change my password I needed to know my old password. I also go the same run around treatment of different numbers and transfers.
Love your blog (just wish you wrote more) and Econ 208w still ranks as my favorite class at UR.
I was an XM subscriber for years then one morning a while after Sirius bought XM they dropped literally every channel that I listened to regularly. I tried the Sirius “equivalent” stations and they all had “FM Style” annoying idiot DJs blabbering every 10 min and short playlists that are more attuned to someone who listens for 20 min on their way to work rather than someone who listens for 8 hrs/day.
I canceled service almost immediately (well after about an hour with customer service) and have since gone to slacker radio. I do sometimes miss old-school XM (~2006) ETHEL and a few other stations, but I don’t miss Sirius.
Ken: I am acutely aware of the trailing space issue, and it is definitely not the source of the current problem.
“Easy Points”
This story from Omni Mag Oct1980 explains why so many customer service departments follow this pattern.
I have not been able to find the text online, but the story was publised in a couple of places. Well worth a visit to the library:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?64068
Steve: Oh well worth a try. It sounds like your unit could be messed up in their database. That would explain the submission failure and the channel availability problem. None of which is the least bit relevant to getting any help from their service reps!
That American Airlines letter is excellent. It’s a shame more people can’t phrase their displeasure with the airlines so elequently.
Well I just spent a couple of hours at the DMV.
I’m on month 5 and counting of what was supposed to be a 3 month free trial with Sirius/XM so I can’t complain, but it certainly does speak to the incompetence of the company.
More importantly, that comment by LMF on American Airlines is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Not only that but it’s a great critique of an incredibly flawed company. I just copied it into an email and forwarded it to all of my contacts, and I can’t stop laughing about it. I really encourage anyone that hasn’t read it yet to take a minute to do so, it’ll be well worth it.
Thanks for the endorsement, Dave E!
I have one stock certificate for Sirius/XM framed and hanging in my bathroom to symbolize how quickly a company can go down the drain.
Every time I go to Verizon Wireless for anything, I have to first prepare myself for an experience that is not dissimilar to going 10 rounds with a rabid bear.
One time, after looking at a few phones, I selected the one I liked and the sales rep informed me that it would be $200 to purchase the phone. I pointed out that the price on the tag with a 2-year renewal was $100. He said I didn’t qualify, even though my previous contract explicitly stated that I would receive $100 off my next phone purchase with a new contract. He said they took that out about a year after I signed the contract, since they can change any part of it unilaterally without notice.
After a brief foray into contract law and what is or is not a valid contract, I asked what the price would be with my employer’s discount. The response: $230. It would be MORE expensive with the discount than without. Finally, I showed him that the price tag also had 2 other prices on it, neither of which were either of the prices he quoted me. He then told me the elusive secret to Verizon’s mind-numbing business plan: “Prices are arbitrary.”
That’s right: prices, the most potent source of information for that company, the mechanism by which it’s activities should be regulated, are viewed as some arbitrary number that should be hidden from customers at all cost (cost = def. that other arbitrary number). Verizon: “Supply and demand? Bullshit! No one puts baby in a corner, markets or otherwise!” They might as well put dartboards and roulette wheels on the sales floor to make the discovery process more fun for the customers, or maybe one of those carnival boards with the mouse that runs out from under the cup.
I bought a phone anyway, because evidently I’m as stupid as they expected me to be. I watched the salesperson take the phone out of the box, drop it on the floor, and then proceed to the register to activate the phone. However, she saw me looking and took the phone into the back room, emerging a moment later with a “new” one. I told that I had seen her drop that phone, and she responded with “You think I’d drop a phone in front of you and then try to give it to you anyway?”
Of course, when I took it out of the box at home it was already scratched from when she dropped it. However, I had to be at work (3 hours away) the next morning, so it was a week before I could return it. Buttons on the outside of the phone weren’t working- it was nearly useless after being dropped by the sales rep.
After waiting for an eternity in the land of arbitrary numbers where the carnies prey on unsuspecting families, I was called up to the “Customer Service” desk. I kindly told the woman that I had seen the sales rep drop my phone before I received it, and that it was broken- I needed to exchange it for one that had not been dropped. Seeing that I was young and polite, she assumed she could intimidate me. She raised her voice and nearly yelled that she did not believe me and if I wanted to get a new phone “d have to pay for it.
Unfortunately for her, I’m infamous for how loud I can be (e.g. I once announced a swim meet without a microphone). For the next hour, every single customer that came into that store knew exactly what my problem was.
Oddly enough, I still have a phone with them. On the other hand, after a less colorful encounter, I refuse to do any business with HSBC wherever I can avoid it.
They switched my free checking account to a fee-based account without notification, then assessed maintenance fees until the account was in the red, then hit me with overdraft fees on the maintenance fees, then assessed more maintenance fees and another round of overdraft fees, all in one month. I told them that I would boycott them to the greatest extent possible, but since i was just a 19 year old kid without much income, they didn’t care. The thing they forgot is that not all 19 year old kids stay 19 forever, and some of them even eventually do other things like make money, have careers, or raise families.)
Is the fact that these comments are mostly about Telcos just framing, or is there some reality to it? (My next two candidates for this thread are also about Telcos)
Can the economists here shed some light on *why* (if it’s true) Telcos have worse customer service?
A decade or so back, Business Week ran a cover story with a title something like “Why your service is so bad.” Their answer was that it’s bad because in the age of the computer data base, companies know exactly what your business is worth to them.
It’s cheaper for Sirius/XM to ignore and annoy you than answer your complaints. Having a widely read blog make your complaints more expensive to them, though.
Think of it as yet another case where the market lacks efficiency.
Cellphone stolen, international calls made abroad. Customer (me) must pay for the calls made from the time of theft until the time when the phone was turned off. That delay included only time spent attempting to recover the phone and time spent waiting on hold to ask to have the phone switched off. Finally, they asked me at what time the theft had occurred. Like a chump I told them an accurate number. But they weren’t going to not bill me. Instead, they refused to disclose information about where the calls went after that time — something about “protecting the privacy rights”… of the thief. I stopped complaining after I found that this is spelled out in the contract and in their notion of 3rd party privacy. They can put anything in the contract and in their privacy policy (also available online), but it’s still wrong. You’d have to go though this to know that “3rd party” means, typically, “cellphone thief.”
About 12 years ago, our cable-tv service stopped worked and my wife called Cablevision. In those days, they frequently had service interruptions after severe rain storms.
The CSR ignored my wife’s description of the problem, and asked her to perform the usual trouble-shooting (including “make sure that your television is turned on”) to no avail. Disbelieving that Cablevision was the source of the problem, the CSR made a cardinal mistake. The rep said, “Can we please speak to your husband?”
Needless to say, we switched to satellite TV (which was great). And now we’re a FIOS customer. But my wife has made clear that we’ll never use Cablevision again. Ever!
At one time Comcast had great (at least by cable company standards) customer service here. You called and got somebody local who knew what was going on. Some beancounter decided this was inefficient and Comcast centralized things. You can’t speak with anyone local, you get a call center located who knows where, and talk to someone who hasn’t got a clue. Result? Routine issues take days to resolve instead of hours.
Today, with competition in television options, my strategy is to switch whenever customer service pissed me off too much. I used to have Charter cable, but once I got too frustrated with their customer service, cancelled and switched to DirecTV. Charter sends me invitations to come back about once a month. Now DirecTV (which used to have great customer service) is now behaving poorly, but AT&T Uverse is now available in my neighborhood, so I expect that that is in my near future. Someday in the future, AT&T will piss me off, and then it will be back to Charter.
I wonder why companies don’t understand that it costs them a lot more to get a new customer than it does to keep existing ones, and that we’re perfectly happy to switch to a new provider?
Also, a semi-good customer service story: Last Friday my wife and I were traveling from San Diego to Greenville, SC, via Cincinnati. After arriving in Cincinnati, our connection was cancelled, and we were informed that we were rebooked one the same flight the next day. Not willing to spend 24 hours in the airport, we rented a car and drove home. Obviously, that’s not the good part of the story, although at least everyone at Delta was curteous.
The next morning, I called Delta. They happily refunded the portion of my airfare for the cancelled flight. I was then transferred to the baggage claim line. The automated message stated that the hold time was 90 minutes, and gave me the option to hang up and have them call me back. Which they did. Why don’t more companies do that, instead of leaving you on hold for extended periods of time?