Archive for the ‘Service’ Category
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
Theory
Today I contunue to stand on my customer advocacy soapbox. My rant-of-the-week is about mail-in rebates. At this point the rebate marketing trend has been around long enough to have touched the lives of nearly every American consumer. The idea is simple, bank on the laziness of the masses to allow you to advertize dramatic price savings which will only be realized by the most vigalent of penny-pinchers. In and of itself, I have no problem with wealth transfer from the lazy (or as some people might put it – the “smart enough to not work their ass off for a dozen hours for a lousy $20″) to the diligent. What I do have a problem with is the dishonest dirty trickery of the whole process. Ambiguous verbiage and long waits are put in place by professionals to strategically minimize the payout from the third-party rebate clearing houses. Today’s discussion will focus on Cingular Wireless.
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.
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Posted in Phone, Service | 7 Comments »
Friday, January 20th, 2006
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.
Posted in Service | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 4th, 2006
Ohh yeah RAZR. After being worn down by horrible coverage from T-Mobile and the draw of sexy phones like the black Motorola Razr V3, I made the switch to Cingular.
One thing that was driving me nuts about this Razr was the Cingular logo on the external LCD whenever you make a call. It reminds me of the obnoxious dealer license plate frames or CARMAX stickers. After a couple hours figuring it out, I got that hacked now and it’s got a purty picture of Stacey.
Posted in Phone, Service | 2 Comments »
