Long awaited return

[docbosh]

Once again sorry for all the dead air follks.

As before I have been extremely busy with work, et al.

Thanks for staying tuned... And I am happy to see that the forum has taken on a life of it's own withour the need for animation.

As promised here is my story. Please sit down, kick off your shoes, enjoy!

This is one of my more impressive tales in customer service hell. This one is one of my very earliest forays into seeking proper retribution for a lousy product and or service. My first was seeking recompense from Cinemaplex Odeon on behalf of a friend who got left out in the cold, but will save that shorter story for some other time. As some of you may know my hero was a woman named Ellen Phillips the author of the book Shocked, Appalled, and Dismayed! How to Write Letters of Complaint That Get Results. After reading this book I realized I didn’t need to take it laying down any more. Amongst the very sage advice she imparts, one was never loose you cool, i.e. don’t lose control of the situation by swearing and getting too angry, it is not impossible to recover from this, but it may be a disadvantage. Well I have to say that I agree with this advice, but failed miserably to follow it when the time came. Fortunately I had a good turn around on the situation… It was October 2001 I had just purchased two web cams from Kensington Technologies, it was still back to school time so there were some deals to be had, and I got them for about $20 each which was a steal against other comparable web cams of the time. One other major computer event occurred in October 2001, Microsoft launched Windows XP, the new much more powerful stable platform, and it had many favourable reviews. One thing that Bill Gates said at the time was XP was going to jump start the computer industry, he was right, but you’ll see how in a moment. Having had my previous computer for about 2 years, I saw a good deal on a new system that had XP preinstalled, I purchased said machine and brought it home. All proud of my new system I proceeded to cannibalize what I could from the old machine before giving what was left of the old system as a hand me down to some one else in the family. Well I had these two web cams, I had just bought them and I wanted to install one on my new machine, hmmm, that’s funny I can’t find a driver for the product… On the Kensington web site there was a note that they would not be providing a new driver for the camera under XP. I flipped here, I began to understand Gates’ statement, any operating system that causes you to have to go out and purchase a whole new set of peripherals because your old ones won’t work is going to probably result in a jump start in sales. The fact was this wasn’t the first device that I got this news about, it was about the third, but for me they were brand new, and I was seething. The cost is not the issue I have lunches that can cost more than $20. It was the breech of trust. In my anger I lit upon Kensington to bear the brunt of my wrath. I wrote, and it is all paraphrasing now since I don’t have a copy, that I found their business practices completely unacceptable. Just because they have my money they feel that they can walk away. I called them capitalist pig dogs, I swore a blue streak throughout, I even concluded with something like that fact I would take pleasure dancing on the grave of the capitalist scum. I spit in there general direction. Whew! It was written, I sent it to their customer service department, I got to blow off steam, and I knew it wouldn’t result in anything, but I felt better. But then the strangest thing happened… The next day I got a response, what made it strange was that it wasn’t written by a regular run of the mill CSR automated response, it was a very humble, apologetic e-mail from the company president, Bill Murray. In it he states he felt the language was a bit excessive, but that he felt my anger and wanted to do something to put matters straight, he left me a number where I could reach him directly. I called and I spoke with him, again he said to me that he was sorry, but the company had taken a decision to get out of making web cams, they weren’t profitable enough, etc, and it was to costly to support what was supposed to be a low end entry level device. But here is what he offered me… He offered to send me back my money for the web cam. I let him know it was actually two web cams. He said fine he’d refund me for the two webs cam, or to find a web cam made by a competitor, to give him the make and model, and he’d send me two web cams. Not wanting to tip my hand that I was getting so pissed at the fact it was over two $20 web cams, I opted for the later offer. I did my research, and since he was being fair to me, I wanted to be fair back, I gave him the make and model of a Logitech web cam that was of comparable quality and cost. He took all that information and he said he’d take care of it. A few days later I get a box delivered by DHL from CDW, in it two replacement web cams, but not the model I had given to him, but two high end web cams QuickCam Pro 300. The best Logitech had at the time, having an integrated microphone. It was really nice of him to do that, I wasn’t expecting that at all. I called to say thanks, he said no problem he was happy to do it. End off story I go whistling off into the sunset with two web cams valued at $130USD each… but then…


Then an invoice arrived from DHL, you knew there was going to be a reason why I told you who delivered the goods, it was an invoice for the brokerage fees, with and added admin fee, total $65USD or theres abouts. Not to be ungrateful but this seemed a bit strange that I get the bill for my free replacement web cams. I mean if you factor in the two defunct cams, the total was approaching $110 dollars, it was still a pretty good deal, but I felt a little disappointed. So what does my bold ass do? I called Bill Murray back and told him about the invoice, he took down all the relevant information and sure enough he paid the invoice too. Ingrate! OK well Ellen Phillips said not to swear, and Bill Murray felt it was a bit over the top too, but as I told Bill Murray, yes it is true that it is probably not the best thing to do, however he could not discount the merits of having done so. I reckoned that a softly word e-mail would have probably gone unflagged, the CSR who first read my e-mail probably would not have forwarded it on to the company president, he agreed.

The moral boys and girls, is take the moral high ground if and when you can, it yields the best results, but never underestimate the value of getting in some ones face, because they’ll do just about anything they can to get you out of it.

And as a fine how do you do, I recently got Microsoft’s new Vista OS, and sure enough the QuickCam Pro 3000 web cam does not work, and Logitech doesn’t plan on writing a new driver for it. Another jump start…

“Dear Logitech pig dogs… I find it unacceptable that you do not plan on supporting one of you products under Vista….”

Even I couldn’t get that bold! Or could I?

[Prue]

Welcome back!

That's quite a story & Im glad to hear it turned out ok. Haha will be waiting to hear what happens with your Quickcam and Vista!

I suppose as you say that when writting a letter like this, the language and tone would be effective in that it would flag your letter. However when I was reading it I couldn't help but think how counter-productive the same type of response is when dealing with a company representitve in person though. When someone comes to me with a problem and is kind, considerate and calmly explains what is wrong, I do whatever I can to help them, even going above and beyond my job description. However, if someone comes in with the same problem yelling, screaming and swearing at me, they get a much less helpful response, in fact 9 out of 10 times we simply call mall security and have the person escorted from our store. In this case Ellen Phillip's advice certainly is the better choice.

[docbosh]

Ya I concur...

She pegged it right.

However with that being said, last week I had to take a day off of work to settle a few things of my dads, he passed away on February 21st, yesterday he would have turned 72.

Anyways my dad had gotten into a 3 year agreement with Fido and I found the phone at my mom's house (they were separated but still spent mucho time together) the day after he had died. I tried to return it to the same location he got it no less, about 4 days after he died, to no avail, they told me to call the 1-800 number for this. Well I did back in March but haven't had the time to take care of it further. Strangely amongst other things, the charger for it was never found either at my mom's or my dad's... So I procrastinated, but also needed a full day to go about taking care of stuff.

Suffice to say this isn't something I do everyday, so I was unprepared for the response from the banks, I have yet to receive the results of the will search, so the accounts are simply frozen, this I didn't know but didn't need a hard time about not knowing.

So by the time I got to Fido I had had it, and when she told me the time for returning the phone had come and gone, I got furious, and told her to stop giving me a hard time, the contract wasn't between me and them, it was between them and my father, and I guess he didn't expect to die 4 days after signing a 3 year contract with them, and I had tried to return the phone at another location much earlier. She said she couldn't take it back, I said fine, but they'd send a bill, and the bill would go unpaid, and I wasn't going to pay it, there isn't an estate to pay for this stuff, so tough luck to them.

Fortunately she seemd to find some compassion otherwise I would have gone ballistic. I mean after the little speech about how much time had passed since February 17th... I countered with I have a full time job... We're open til 9 every week night... I counter, I also do part time, I leave one job at 5 and start the next at 7 and go til 10... She says we're open weekends... I have 2 kids you try finding all the time you need to do everything that needs to be done in a day, and week, a month or a year... It ain't easy with two young kids.

Lastly I am liquidator of the estate by proxy, without a will it fell to someone in the family to do it, and let's see he lived in Montreal, I live in Montreal, my brother lives in Hawkesbury, Ontario. One sister lives in Vancouver, and the other lives outside of Montreal, but travels a lot with her common law husband who is a long distance trucker. Tag you're it. And thankless, because my fathers wishes were clear to me, I wasn't too receive anything upon his death, it was supposed to get split between my brother and younger sister. This isn't something I hate doing, I have sufficient means not to worry about what little may come out of the bank accounts he had. It is just strange how I have got to get attitude as if it is my fault he died.

Anyways Fido agreed to take back the phone, but I'd have to buy a charger, which I was willing to do, and then the lady turns very nice on me, and found a spare charger and tossed it in the box and that was that.

So I was doing my best not to explode, but sometimes your limits are going to be pushed too. How hard should it be on compassionate grounds to take back an unused phone (which in essence it was)??? I was apologetic too, I tried to explain how the day just wasn't working out, a day that for no other reward than the sense of duty fulfilled, was unpaid... I still have to take another when the will search is finished. A lot of work for some one not even in the will. The only nice thing is my siblings have agreed to let me have all and any rewards points my day has in the various fidelity programs he was enrolled in, some from Scotia Bank, and some from HBC...

[Prue]

Similar story (not getting mad at us) but we had a customer who came into the store just fazzled becasue she did not know what the heck to do. Her story is downright ridiculous and quite frankly I was appalled by our CSR's as she told it to me. Her mother had signed a contract awhile back for a cell phone, but had just recently passed away. Well the lady called customer service to cancel the account, and the csr told her they could not help her...they could only speak to the account holder!!!!

This woman was incredibly nice and spoke with such calmness I was amazed. However, I personally called in for her (which we can't normally do) and I will admit it took all my will power not to explode at that CSR. I had never heard anything so ridiculous in my life, and to make matters worse she even argued with me on the phone that they could not cancel the account until they spoke to the account holder. Finally, when I said to her 'ok, can you hold while I go to the graveyard, dig up the coffin and try to resuscitate the account holder?" she seemed to get it!!!

[Prue]

Ops sorry duplicate post!

[bcteagirl]

OMG that is ridiculous!

[docbosh]

Strangely it has been really easy to cancel a lot of my fathers stuff with a phone call, with virtually no proof what I was saying was true. I cancelled Bell, his Videotron cable, his MBNA Master Card and a few other things over the phone only identifying myself as his son.

On the flip side the number of places that rely totally on the death certificate seems a bit tiresome too, but I have to cut them some slack since I guess it is probably a better policy.

I could cancel phone service on some one I know by calling up to say who I am, lie and say the person has died and to please cancel the service. Imagine the hassle of undoing that little nastiness...