I have some serious frustration issues with packages that are sent via UPS or FedEx with a signature requirement for residential deliveries. Today I got just such a post-it for a UPS overnight delivery. They were willing to pay the big bucks to ensure that it got there the next day… at 10:30 AM… at my house. Wait – a better way to say it is that they paid to guarantee that the package would get there the next day with a virtual guarantee (10:30AM M-F … don’t other people work at that time) that I would not be there to get the package, with a guarantee that I actually got it (signature), if I happened to get it. I suppose my frustration should be with the sender – but why is there customer demand for this service.

I called UPS at 7:30 to change the delivery address to my workplace. Because it was after the 7:00 closing time the address change would not go through until Friday (since Thursday is a holiday). Well nobody is going to be at my office on Friday to pick up the package because it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving. Since UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturday or Sunday my overnight package will have reached me in six short days.

I remember when I ordered my iBook a couple years ago Apple put this same requirement on the package. Shocker I was not there between the hours of 10:30AM and 2:00PM with a smile on my face and pen in hand. I called UPS and there were further instructions on the package that the destination could not be changed and it could not be picked up at the UPS office. So it needed to go through several delivery attempts, then three days back to Cupertino. After calling Apple they would not ship it to my work because that address was not the billing address of my credit card, so I had to call my credit card to get that address added, then call Apple back to schedule delivery.

Perhaps I sit up on a pedestal in my white-collar world, but don’t most people work 9-6 type hours like I do? You’d think Apple and UPS would be spinning their wheels constantly because of this issue – but I am made to feel like I am unreasonable by working 9-6 and by not taking a day off of work to accept a delivery. I mean, wouldn’t it serve residential customers of UPS, FedEx, and retailers better by choosing different hours?

UPDATE – UPS broke their rules and called me back at around 8:15 with someone who promised to get my delivery redirected to my work for tomorrow.

…to be true, they say it probably is. Sometimes though, it actually is that good.

So I recently signed up with Blockbuster online as an alternative to Netflix because I had been throttled. I normally get my movies back in the mail the next day, and while I had pulled in around 16 movies a month from Netflix for a long time, they changed their practices around the beginning of the year and that number dramatically dropped.

Ok, pay attention. I found a bit of a loophole that’ll get me some serious bang for my buck from our friends at Blockbuster. How many movies can I get from Blockbuster for the same $$$? Well, this is the fun part. I started my one-month trial on January 26th. As of today I have received 15 movies, two are on their way, plus my two in-store rentals for this month. Blockbuster recently gave users the option to convert their two-per-month in-store rentals to a one-per-week in-store plan. Since they got the timing off a bit, that allowed me to get two more weekly coupons for in-store rentals. For those keeping score, that brings me to 21.

But wait, I’m getting to the good part. When I went to the store tonight I saw some big banner they had in the window about joining Blockbuster Rewards and getting free movies for a year. I picked up a flyer and asked the clerk about the plan. To boil it down, you give Blockbuster $10 for a 1-year membership to Rewards. For your Alexander Hamilton you get a free movie (movie must be over one-year old) for every in-store rental you buy. Buy however is a very loose term, and the movies I pick up with my online coupons will count for Blockbuster Rewards. The catch is that you can only do this on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

So here’s what I do. Each week I print out my coupon on Monday, go into the store and grab two movies – one of which is more than a year old. I take it up to the clerk and hand him my coupon and walk out. This brings me up to 8 in-store rentals each month for a year. Throw that onto the 15 movies I hope to get during a normal month and that puts me at 23. That would be 276 movies in one year, or around 82 cents per movie. Compare that to Netflix at about $1.50/movie based on $17.95 3-plan and 12 movies per month. If you’re buffering the movies like me, that starts to look like a pretty attractive alternative to cable.

Anyway, so Blockbuster seems to be kicking ass. I got the 40 Year-Old Virgin, March of the Penguins, and Cinderella Man right away – those all had a very long wait from Netflix. The web page isn’t quite as slick, but when you get right down to it the differences are subtle (no RSS feed from Blockbuster). I think the two in-store movie rentals a month and the couple-a-dollar savings is making me feel less like a Netflix traitor.

Cingular
Because Cingular chooses to promote their phones with the post-rebate prices I would like to call them out on this process and hopefully share some tips along the way.

The Story
On December 31st I was finally swayed away from T-Mobile over to Cingular because of a great price they had on the Motorolla Razr V3 – $99 after mail-in rebate. Of course I purchased the phone on the last day of the promotion and managed to walk out of the store without the rebate form. About a week later when I went to fill out the forms I realized that I didn’t have them. Of course the rebate form is not available from the Cingular web page – this was confirmed by a call to the support center. They informed me that I would need to go to the store where I purchased the phone and get a new form. A trip to the store left me formless because they get rid of the old forms once the promotion is over.

I called back through the maze of transfers that is Cingular customer service and finally reach the rebate center. Their direct number is 866-852-8617. It turns out that the “Cingular Rebate Center” is really a company out of Young America, MN that is actually run by Motorola (according to Cingular cancellation department). I talked to a nice stoner gentleman named duane3571. Duane informed me that it would take 10 business days to send me the form, but that he could get it for me. Since I called him on the 24th of January I asked him when I would need to have the form sent in. He told me that I’d need to have it sent by January 31st, and after realizing the problem with the situation he gave me a “special” address where I could send rebates to after the acceptable date. That address is:

Dept 5010-1398
Cingular Rebate Center
P.O. Box 8670
Young America, MN 55551-8670

I asked Duane if there were a way I could fax the rebate. He said that I could not get the fax number unless I had already sent in my rebate and waited for 12 weeks.

Exploited Exploiting the Exploiter
I hung up with Duane and started thinking – clearly this process is designed to cost you more than $50 in time and effort ($50 is the rebate amount). How could I get my $50, which was the advertized and promoted rebate without jumping through these hoops?

In my conversation with Duane I realized that this company in Young America was clearly separate from Cingular. They didn’t even have ties into the Cingular customer database to look up my customer information. This let me know that they would not be able to check up on little details like when I actually signed up. Today I called back in to the rebate center. I told the rep that I had sent in my form 12 weeks prior and that I had not received my check. She asked for some information and saw that a new rebate form was going to be sent out to me. I told her that Duane said that I’d have to fill out a new one – but asked her how long it would take after I fill out the new form. She told me it would take between 4 and 12 weeks. I asked her if since I had already waited for such a long time if there was a way I could fax in my rebate. To my delightment she shared the heavily guarded number. The fax number for the Cingular Rebate Center in Young America is 866.238.3144.

Not wanting to wait for 10 business days, I called back to the store where I bought the phone. I had been told that there was a guy, Duy Nguyen who was particularly talented in the ways of finding old forms. Duy did not disappoint. He was able to fax me over a copy of the form. I filled out all this information and faxed it over to the rebate center along with the receipt, contract, and the upc/imei code from the box.

Since I am within the 30-day cancellation period I called back to Cingular customer service where I found the cancellation department rather easily. I started out my conversation with the rep by stating “I’m a new Cingular customer within my first 30-days and I’d like to cancel my service”. It’s amazing how willing he was to work with me. I quickly shared a few details of my sob story and he agreed to credit my account $50 immediately. This is where he shared the information with me that the company in Young America is actually Motorola.

I think I am going to fax in my rebate again in a few days and also mail a copy over to the super-secret department as well. I’ll share details of my success or lack thereof in a future post.

Customer service sucks, but there are different components to keeping customers satisfied. I think that when the board of directors for a corporation sit down and address the problem of customer service they reduce queue times of the call center and they hire or train more qualified people to answer those phones. In the case of banks, in particular, Citibank, they have it all wrong. The problem that Citibank needs to address is the amazingly complex systems and weak interconnects between different business units. As a customer, I shouldn’t need to know that a contributory IRA account has a folder account number, a money market account number, and a brokerage account number. I shouldn’t need to know that I need to have each of my accounts in matching region codes in order to “link” them to make transfers. I shouldn’t need to know that the Citibank Thank You network has a different password from my Citibank Online account. I shouldn’t have to explain to every customer service rep that I had an account that was created online therefore their wack system set me up with a MD region code, then all subsequent accounts needed to be set up with the same region to facilitate linking. I shouldn’t have to know that my Equity line of credit is in a DC region code because the collateral property resides in Virginia. I shouldn’t need to know that even though they guaranteed me that the equity line could be linked when I got the account and subsequently found out that it could not be linked that I would be charged with a $350 fee to cancel the equity line even though they lied like theives.

Despite my utter outrage and disgust – I still sleep well at night feeling that Citibank is the best solution for me. How you like them apples.