Customer Non-Service

Woman of the Moment
I think I will start off with something good for the week. These photos are all undated. I am guessing here, but I believe they were taken before the Speed Option’s feature in 2001.



Did you know how much you can learn from the Internet? I learned that Aiko means love child in Japanese; picked that up from Aiko Tanaka's website, aikotanaka.com.

It looks like we will be having a new Woman of the Moment soon, probably towards the end of the week. Fortunately, I have the next Woman selected and her photos downloaded and ready for the blog.

Customer Service
I am willing to put with some minimal forms of what some companies pass off as customer service. I know the customer service workers are not paid very much and are poorly trained and they, by definition, have to deal with unhappy people.

Lately, I have had to deal with or accept incredibly poor customer service.

At the place where I used to work, I had a checking account and a line of credit. Since I am no longer working there, I decided to close both. I wrote a nice letter to the branch manager explaining what I wanted to do and how to process the transaction. I also included more than enough to pay off the line of credit.

I sent the letter in the middle of July. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to process a simple transaction. You can imagine my dismay and disappointment when I got my July statement and found that both accounts were still open.

I waited until the branch manager was in the office and I called him.

His explanation was really sad. My letter was received in a reasonable time to process but it was put aside and not processed on time. The manager assured me that he would see to the processing personally.

Almost two weeks later with no results, I had been expecting a check in my mailbox, I called the manager again. He said that one of his staffers did not do the job correctly and that the check would go out on Friday to me.

Assuming the usual mail delivery, I ought to have the check today.

I’ll let you know what happens tomorrow. If worse comes to worse, I could drive to the branch office and sit there until the manager can create the check and then I will take it home.

I had a similar experience with my NYSE brokerage company. It is one of those big name, old line, full service firms that has or had a reputation for excellent customer service.

I had a small rollover retirement account with them. I decided to close it down this month instead of paying their annual fees. I called my broker and spoke with his assistant. She was very helpful; she sent me the paperwork promptly and explained how the process would work.

I sent the paperwork in and waited.

I received a trade confirmation a week ago Friday. The trade, selling the mutual funds shares, was settled on August 16th. Nice I thought .

Last Thursday, I phoned the broker to ask where the check was. It had been a week since settlement and I had no check. Brokerage companies get very upset when you are late in paying them. Of course, the reverse does not seem to be applicable here. I was told that a check was mailed on the day before, Wednesday, from Santa Ana.

Santa Ana is about forty miles / sixty five kilometers from where I live. Normally, I would have expected the check to be delivered on Friday. But since it was my brokerage firm, I knew that it would never get here by Friday; Saturday was a much more realistic delivery time. This assumes, naturally, that the envelope was processed and mailed on time and picked up a reasonable manner.

Saturday’s mail came and there was no check. I won’t hold my breath for a Monday delivery.

Lastly, I now have Time Warner for a cable company. They took over from Adelphia this month. While I was never a fan of Adelphia, they did manage to keep things running smoothly for a long time for me. I can only recall one service visit by Adelphia and that was to upgrade my box to digital cable.

So far, I have had two cable service failures and an aborted new cable installation. That is not a great service record for the first month alone. Last night, as I was coming back from a take out food run for dinner, I saw one the cable company workers tinkering with the cable junction box that affects my side of the building.

Ten minutes later my cable service went out.

Coincidence? I think not.

I called the cable company and got a useless customer non-care center worker who couldn’t solve my problem. She could set me up for a service call for Tuesday morning. She couldn’t do anything about contacting the dispatcher to see if the worker did something to affect my service.

Luckily for me, the service came back; probably because the idiot who messed it up when he was tinkering fixed the mistake. Maybe half of the building called in to complain and then a dispatcher connected the dots and had a brain fart discovery.

So, what does this all mean in the grand scheme of things?

I think it reflects the decline of American technology and ability. It shows that America is declining from a world economic power to a second rate country. We can’t even do simple things correct anymore like close an account or see that a payment is delivered in a reasonable time.

If we can’t close an account in over a month, how can this nation achieve greatness?

I don’t think that it can. Frankly, that saddens me.

I suppose I should feel sorry for the American workers that may be displaced when their job gets outsourced to someone who will harder and more efficiently in some place like India or the Philippines or Vietnam.

I won’t; it’s their own fault they did not care enough to do a good job. If you take care of the customer, businesses grow. If you think that idea is silly or old fashioned, just look at how companies like Honda or Toyota or Wal-Mart or Dell have grown by focusing on their customers. I have been so happy with my Japanese cars and trucks that I will never buy another car made by General Motors or Ford or Chrysler. I might drive an American car if someone gave it to me but only long enough to sell it and buy something better.

The Princess
I finally caught up with the Princess on Sunday evening.

Las Vegas was Las Vegas and she and her friends had a very good time there. This was expected. It sounded a bit on the subdued side for a Las Vegas bachelorette party. She said the wedding will be in San Francisco in November. Obviously, it won’t be an out door wedding, not at that time of the year.


Be well and stay happy.