Customer Service: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Posted by Lynnae on April 17, 2008
If you're new here, you may want to find out more about me. Also, please consider subscribing via RSS or email. Thanks for visiting!
Me dealing with an unreasonable Target customer in my younger days. Even back then I wasn’t one to be pushed around.
On Tuesday I lived a customer service nightmare. I sat down with a cup of coffee in front of the computer to update the budget and pay my bills, just like I do every Tuesday. All was well, until I started paying the bills.
I went online to retrieve my phone bill, and I was met with a very unpleasant surprise. Grab a cup of coffee, because this is quite the story.
On February 11th, my husband was working the evening shift as a janitor. (He kept two shifts to help pay for our portion of health insurance on his new job). The building he was cleaning is in a bad part of town, and the company takes their security very seriously.
There are two entrances. An inner entrance, which is kept locked, and an outer entrance. My husband was cleaning the outer entrance, when he realized he had inadvertently locked the office keys and his cell phone in the inner part of the building.
No cell phone. Bad part of town. No businesses open. No cash. His only option to get help was to use a pay phone at a nearby gas station. He had a 5 minute call billed to our home phone number. Since I didn’t want my husband walking all over town at 9:45 at night, I accepted the charges, knowing that they’d probably be outrageous. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and pay.
Sure enough, the charge showed up on our March phone bill. A 5 minute call for $23.74. Yes. $23.74. Still, I paid it, because I’m well aware that the companies that run long distance for phone booths can charge whatever they want, and I accepted the charge. End of story, right? Wrong.
Back to Tuesday. I opened my phone bill. It was over $100, which never happens. It’s usually around $58 for phone & internet. I scrolled through the charges, and there were two charges in the amount of $23.74. Both calls were supposedly made at 10:42 p.m. Two calls. At the same time. Even funnier was that one call was supposedly made from in town and one call was made from out of town. I was livid.
I called ZPDI, the billing service for Legacy LD, the company that charged for the call. (of course Legacy LD doesn’t have a website….that would require them to man-up and admit their billing practices, right?). At first I was a little confused, because I recently got asked to accept a collect call that I rejected, so I thought I was being billed for that call.
I was put through to a customer service agent named Luther. I told him nicely, but firmly, that I wasn’t responsible for the calls I was billed for. He told me they had my name, so I must have accepted the charges. I kept trying to explain, and he kept repeating that I was responsible for the charges. And then he HUNG UP ON ME.
Now I’m generally a very nice and reasonable person, but I expect good customer service, and this really ticked me off. And anyone who knows me well knows when I take up an issue, I don’t let it go until it’s resolved. I’m not one that can be bullied into complying.
I remembered the night my husband had made the collect call from work and consulted my previous phone bill. It was then that I made the connection. There was a charge for a 5 minute phone call at 9:42 p.m. on February 11 for $23.74. And I had paid it.
I got right back on the phone with ZPDI, told them I had accepted ONE call that night, and that I had already paid for it. Fortunately I spoke to a different person, who told me she’d reverse the charge right away. Satisfied, but not completely, I hung up the phone.
Then I called Qwest, my phone service provider, and asked them to make a note that the ZPDI charges were supposed to be reversed. The Qwest people have always been wonderful to work with. They made note of it and told me not to worry about paying the charges. (That’s the good in this story…..let’s everyone give Qwest a big hand for great customer service).
After taking care of the situation, I pondered how I could get charged for the same phone call twice, listed at two different times of night, and another phone call at the same time from a totally different city. The way the first customer service representative threw out the fact that they had my name, so I must have accepted the charges, as soon as he took my call made me wonder. Is it possible that this company charges people for a collect call, keeps a record of the person who accepts the charges, and then tries to add a couple more charges into a later phone bill, hoping to intimidate a customer into paying more?
I, of course, have no proof that this is the case. It’s all speculation on my part. But it’s unusual for a customer service representative of a legitimate company to be so belligerent before the customer has a chance to get angry first. And given the company’s questionable business practices in the first place, it does make me wonder.
I’ve always been a big proponent of personal responsibility and limited government. But surely there can be some kind of regulations put on long distance providers such as these. Who uses pay phones anymore, except for people without cell phones in emergency situations? And who are the people least likely to have a cell phone? People who don’t have the money to pay for one.
If we can require emergency rooms to treat patients who can’t afford to pay, we can certainly require reasonable fees for pay phones for people who have an emergency.
Have you ever been taken advantage of by a company like this? What did you do?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
You Might Also Like
Comments
27 Responses to “Customer Service: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”
Trackbacks
Leave a Reply
Subscribe! It's Free!
Categories
Blogrolls
Resources
Being Frugal's Policies
I am not a financial expert. I'm just a wife and mom doing the best I can to live a frugal life and get out of debt. Like any human, I make mistakes. I write this blog out of my own experiences, and nothing I write should be taken as expert advice. If you need financial advice, please consult a professional.
Disclosure, Comment, Link Exchange, and Privacy PoliciesLinks
The Best of Being Frugal
What I'm Reading
More Links
I can’t believe that guy hung up on you! I, too, would have been irate!
I have had Sprint charge me long distance fees on my cell phone when I was making calls IN MY OWN TOWN. They’ve never given me any hassle about removing the charges, though, when I call them.
Wow, how ridiculous, like you could have accepted 3 calls in one night at the same time?! Weird. I’m glad you got it worked out. That could have been a lot of money wasted!
And, I really like Qwest too, they have always great to work with for me and they will reverse any charges made in mistake.
Persistence is key.
Keeping calm is also key.
Congrats on handling it well. Can’t believe he hung up on you either.
Way to stick to your guns! Also, I love the pic. So, you were dealing with a customer and someone thought to take your picture? Nice, hehe.
man, I hate when people hang up on me! For some reason, that is like the biggest insult to me… At least they finally reversed it for you - but I still can’t believe it cost $23 for a 5 minute call… Crazy
This is EXACTLY why I review each and every bill. Way to go Lynnae! Just shows you how both honesty and tenacity can turn things around.
Ohh, I don’t own a cell phone…although I certainly can afford one.
I may have to get one soon since I’ve noticed how few phone booths there are around these days.
Like you, I believe in personal responsibility - but I suspect that big companies are starting to exploit this characteristic of a majority of their customers . Also, like your story illustrates, they exploit the fact that most people probably give up in frustration in challenging an obscene charge. More people need to take the time to fight back. It’s annoying but it’s the only way things will change.
Regards,
Kevin
Lynnae, you should submit this story to Consumerist. They seem to know a lot about this kind of thing, and can usually offer some insight. Occasionally, they even go directly to the source, and at the very least, the company would receive a lot of bad press.
@Kevin - I wrote to both of my senators and my representative about this, too. I know I’m just one person, but I figured they needed to hear about it.
Lynnae, Keep a close eye on your upcoming bills to make sure the company actually removes the charges. I had a situation with a cable provider in which I paid a final bill. I got notice saying I was overdue. I was told not to worry, they would take care of it. They didn’t. Long story short, after being turned over to collections, it took four months of phone calls, my bank faxing proof of my payment several times, and threat of legal action before I finally got the company to realize I had paid the bill on time.
Also, if you are unsatisifed with a company, consider filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. You can do it online.
What a hassle! It’s a good thing you’re diligent with checking your bills. I don’t know if I could have kept my Christian cool;)
It does take some time keeping track of all the calls and going through charges, but I’m sure it will pay off.
Thanks for sharing your story. What a bunch of jerks. You’re lucky you got a hold of a decent rep. the second time.
p.s. I love your blog, it’s one of my favorites.
That’s awful!! I have had many horrible experiences that I won’t bother to try and explain here (before Ive had coffee! ack) but I am so sorry you were HUNG UP on. That is just disgraceful.
I do have a collect story though. When I was 11 my parents managed to pay for me to take a trip with a after-school choir program I was involved in to Spain, Italy, and France. I had a LOAD of fun, but a lot of the order girls sort of formed a clique and I wasn’t involved much and I was missing my friends like crazy. So I made a collect call to my best friend, who accepted the charges. I assumed it was the same price for collect calls within the US (I was 11!), which wasn’t that high in 1997. Well, a few weeks later, after I was home and all, my friend’s mom got a bill for something like $200 and asked my mom to pay, because of course I had assured my friend that my mom would pay. Ugh.
My mom paid the bill and all was OK, but we didn’t have a lot of money back then and my guess was that she charged other things like groceries to the credit card that month so that she could write my friend’s mom a check. I felt guilty for so long!
Thanks for sharing your story. I needed my dose of angry this morning
Damn CS rep.
My state, Maine, has a regulatory body called the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates telephone usage and charges (plus electric and other utilities, but not cell phone). They also have a Consumer Assistance Division that handles problems like this. You might want to check to see if your own state has this and, if they do, lodge a formal complaint. When we had phone companies “slam” people (change someone’s long distance carrier without permission) the PUC opened a huge case and looked into it.
This would be very important, since may people rely on pay phones in an emergency and shouldn’t have to worry about false charges.
Pretty dirty scam they’re running. Still think that corporations have only a small amount of responsibility for squeezing the middle class (and lower class…) ?
I have been charged by two companies for the same phone call during the same time period. My teenage daughter ran up a huge pychic-friend bill when I was out of town on business. My local phone company was very helpful in weeding out the fake overbilling, and even helped me get some of it removed.
I have come up agianst this sort of so called customer help in the past. They make you feel like your a complete liar, they offer you no help or advice at all. I even had an occassion where the customer service person just kept repeating the same thing over and over again, it was like talking to a parrot.
Like you i never roll over so i have always managed to get things rectified in the end but only after i have spent many an hour on the phone.
It makes you wonder how often a company like this makes a “mistake.” For every 5 times a “mistake” is made, how many people will actually question it?
I’ve actually seen this before. I work in the telecom department for a transportation company and I’ve seen charges like these on the company’s phone bills. Anytime I find one, I call and tell them this is a business and someone was not authorized to receive that call, and they’ll usually credit it. But, most of the time you can also get them to block their services on your line. Although, this may not be great if you’d ever need to call home again on a payphone.
There are many of the ZPDI people that “seemed new” when I call, like their reading from a script, so imo they probably have never had to do customer service before (if they can even call it that, with how they treat people!) But yes, I’ve had some nasty run-ins with them and get to tell them I’ll escalate this bill to our legal department (Gotta love that!)
Keep strong and just keep at em till you get everything corrected!
I think filing a complaint with the FCC is in order here. It sounds like something phishy is going on to me.
Look at you in that picture there, Ms Hottie.
Is this company legit? How rude and unprofessional of that customer service guy to hang up on you!! And good for you not letting that company bully you!!! They sound pretty low.
I’ve had people hang up on me in customer service complaints too; it drives me crazy! I know that the customer service folks don’t make a lot, and can always “claim” that the call dropped… yes, very frustrating!
The best way around it is to not get too upset with them UNTIL you get what you want… Then it is up to your discretion.
What an awful situation to be in. I’m happy you handled it the way you did. Sadly this kind of stuff continues to happen all around us. My inclination would be to file an complaint for investigation with the PUC and the Attorney General’s Office. I’d bang my drum loudly about this and even take it to an action news reporter (TV and/or paper) so they can expose it to the public. Nothing-and I mean NOTHING-is more effective than a load of bad press.
Gotta love your site! Thanks for sharing!
I grew up from scratch in Talent in the 60s through the 80s. What a great place that town was back in the day. I can’t believe how much it’s grown since! I’m in northern CA now.
It sounds like you were slammed by a third party. I’ve had that happen to my home phone number, and to my job phone number. You don’t need me to tell you how frustrating it is to get those charges taken off. I’m a Bookkeeper so I once got a phone bill at work with a mysterious charge. It was for $20 for a 1 minute call to a 1-900 number at a time of day when no one is in the office. I called the phone company who told me to call the actual third party company that charged us. When I did that I got representative who listened to my story and then said they would patch me through to the appropriate office. What they did was send me
…to a general answering machine. I was told to leave a message and I would get a call back which I thought was outrageous from a phone company, so I called again and asked the representative (the same rep I got the first time) to forward me to his supervisor. That did the trick and I was able to get the charges taken off that way.
When I read your post my memories of this incident came back to me so I knew exactly what you went through, especially the anger at the way some customer service departments treat their customers, namely customers who they know they’ve screwed. You handled your situation great! Kudos!
This is nothing compared to CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS. Never. Ever. EVER deal with them. EVER. EVER.
They are the Devil. They will clearly overcharge you and refuse to credit you, lie to you about deals, deny conversations you had with reps, deny offering you certain promotions, deny responsibility for anything and everything, pass you from rep to rep and eventually just hang up on you, make you talk to reps who can’t understand English (they understand the words, but nothing complicated, and EVERYTHING with Charter quickly becomes complicated), mute you while you’re talking, tell you they’ll call back and never do it, keep charging you for disconnected services, etc. They. Are. Awful. And they just keep stealing from people and getting away with it.
From what I hear BBB is useless against them. I haven’t tried the FCC, but I only lost $20 and I’m just too mad to fight for that. It’s not worth my time to put together and defend a case. I know people who have lost $250 and have never seen it again.
Living frugally does NOT include Charter.