Monday, August 28, 2006

Seeing Red....


This is I-80 Illinois on a normal road trip back home.
This is how everything looked this Sunday.

Cell phone companies irritate me.

We currently "Get things done" with our cell phone company. We have - for the last 3 years.

Well the "Gitter done" company was bought by the "I suppose you can" company - and our customer service went down the toilet.

We had a great plan when we first signed up. Free voicemail, caller ID...the works. Several months after signing up - they politely informed us that we would no longer receive that benefit. (I find this out on Sunday....the husband didn't seem to mind paying the extra bit o cash I suppose)

We never really "outgrew" our plan - but we did try a new service - "Teledirect". It was free try for 30 days. Mr. Chep signed up to use it while out of town on business and promptly cancelled within the 30 day window.

They charged us. Mr. Chep decided it wasn't a big deal - and paid the partial fee.

The following month we received another charge. I called and had our bill adjusted.

The month after that - we were charged again. I called and had that charge removed. I politely informed the CSR if I saw the charge again - I was going to cancel my service. Please make sure it doesn't happen again.

Guess what? It happened again. I called to make sure I was out of my contract (I have been a customer since 2003)...I found out that my contract had been extended without my knowledge when I purchased new phones on a business discount (not a promotional price). This on top of the billing issue that hadn't been resolved - made me call and ask about the cost to cancel my service (after an hour dispute about my contract end date - where the CSR had hung up on my twice and blind transferred me to another department)

Then I got Kristie. She was very apologetic. She wanted to fix my problem. She got to the root cause of my discontent (price of service, poor customer service, etc)

It was at this time (after I threatened to cancel 3 times) that Kristie offered me the same plan I currently have at $40 less then I currently pay.

WHY did it take 6 customer service representatives, 3 threats to cancel, and 2 hours on the phone to get a resolution?

This is what irritates me about phone companies in general. Your rates never change until you call. Then they charge you to change those rates.

Why can't companies just give you the best rate all the time? Why do good customers have to fight and threaten to cancel to get a better deal?

Thanks for letting me rant.

I feel much better.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

You know, this same danged thing happened to BLP with her satellite TV company. She called to complain and cancel her service, they offered a lower a rate; she says "I'll think about it." She calls again to cancel, they offer an even lower rate. She says, "I'll think about it." Calls the third time to cancel, they offer her a ridiculously low rate, and she finally says, "You know, I feel taken advantage of. I feel that if you really cared about your customers you'd offer us all the same reasonable rate, but that's not what I'm seeing, so I'm cancelling, immediately."

I admire her for that.

Ugh. Capitalism!

Angeline Rose Larimer said...

Wow. I once read that you can call your credit card companies and haggle a lower interest rate. Tom tried this once and was laughed at. In fact, they may have boosted our interest rate after that...and what can ya do when you've got a balance?
Might have to ask Segue about that.

I HATE CELL PHONES. Not too good with phones in general, but I hate cell phones. As much as I hate car dealers. It's not fixed. That's just not right. My water bill, I'm assuming, is the same price per gallon for us as the lady next door, and we sure need water a helluva lot more than we need cell service. So how do they get away with it? If the water company called to say we're going to get charged for over usage, and extra fees for time of day use, we're screwed. But they don't do that. Water is there. Price is fixed...pretty low, considering, and they never tack on extra fees.

I HATE CELL PHONE SERVICES!

*You've got me seeing red, too.
Grrr.