Chasing The Wild Goose

I was wrong, and I promise it'll happen again!

It appears we may be receiving our bookcloseouts.com order after all. Earlier today I spoke with Patti Cooney, the customer service director at bookcloseouts.com, and she assured me that my order would be sent speedily on its way, with a free upgrade in shipping. She also faxed me a verification of the original refund to my account, which, it turns out, I had received. Here's a copy of the email I sent her after our conversation by phone:

Patti,

In further researching the refund issue, I discovered that the refund had indeed hit my bank on Jan 12th in the amount of $32.75. I had been looking for a transaction in the wrong amount. My apologies for the confusion.

I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to speak with me by phone earlier today. Your offer to ship the books to me at the original sale price of $3.00 each and to upgrade the shipping for free is much appreciated.

I'm sure I will use this as an example of how to treat customers properly for a long time.

Again, my apologies for thinking I had not received the refund, and thanks for getting these Christmas gifts to us (Maybe they'll be valentines gifts now :-).

Thanks again,

Jon Dale

I want to know what you think!!!!

I received the following comment today about my post For A Bad Buying Experience Click Here!

Are you for real? You got better customer service than 90% of the online companies out there. I also operate a business online but won't give you the address for fear of getting my name dragged through the dirt as you have done with this company - shame on you! How can you hold a company responsible for a poor . . .

Now That's Customer Service - Kinda!

Today I received a letter from the PikePass Customer Service Center in Oklahoma city. It informed me that my PikePass (A nifty device that makes it really convenient for the State of Oklahoma to tax its citezens for driving on roads that they paid to build) was being deactivated since I hadn't used it in over 3 years. They also notified me that they were charging me $30 for not returning the PikePass back to them. I must confess, I was a little perplexed by this (since I sent the pikepasses back to them almost 4 years ago) and called the customer service number to let them know this was a mistake.

The nice lady that answered the phone listened to my story and told me that it was no problem and she would remove the $30 charge. She then informed me that I had another PikePass on my account that was still active and would be deactivated in a year. I asked her why it was going to be another year before that one was deactivated and she told me that it had been used in 2002. Well, needless to say, I was shocked :-). The post office must be out using my PikePass to run up and down the turnpike.

The Tale of Two Dollars

Here's the story of two very different dollars. One is a good dollar, the other is a bad dollar.

First the bad dollar. Yesterday, I visited my local Wells Fargo Bank branch, to make a deposit. While I was there I requested that they refund a $1 fee that had been charged to my account for printing a statement at an ATM (I didn't print a statement at an ATM, you see). To my surprise, the friendly clerk insisted on a 5 minute search for a brochure outlining the ATM fee schedule. I told him that I didn't doubt the existence of a $1 fee for printing out a statement, I wanted the refund because I hadn't printed out the statement. After failing to find the aforementioned brochure, he told me there was nothing he could do about it. I asked him who could help me, and he told me that the only person authorized to refund my buck was the branch manager, who just happened to be busy on the phone. I said, no problem, please have him call me and we finished my original deposit transaction. As I was walking away from the counter, the manager walked out of his office and the helpful clerk went up to him to give him my number and explained the situation. Here's what the manager said (with eyes rolling), "Give him his dollar back." I haven't checked yet, but I assume they have refunded my buck. So that's the bad dollar . . . the lesson, give your employees the power to make small decisions to keep your customers happy and don't require manager approval for $1 transactions.

That's me driving the coach as I race away to another bank.

Now for the good dollar. After my visit to the bank, I headed to the mall to drop off some clothes at the tailor. While trying to exit the mall without being tempted to make a purchase I saw an offer I couldn't refuse. 50% OFF ALL LORD OF THE RINGS MERCHANDISE. Like I said, I just couldn't refuse, so I went into SunCoast store #3062 and picked out about $30 worth of stuff for my wife (a poster, a shirt and an action figure), who is an avid LOTR's fan. When Lewis, the friendly cashier rang up my purchase it came to $15.75. Unfortunately I only had $15 in cash. Realizing this, Lewis, the friendly cashier, pulled a buck out of his pocket and said, "I'll take care of that for you." I, of course, protested and told him I'd just put something back. To which he replied, "It's no problem, I've had lunch already, I don't need this buck." I said thanks and we completed the transaction and he even gave me the 25 cents change (which I gave back to him). Here's the moral of the story . . . find people like Lewis and hire them. They will make your customers happy, and happy customers spend lots of money!!!!

Some of you may be wondering why I stay with Wells Fargo. There's only one reason, I haven't taken the time to switch yet. I've had lots of similar experiences with them. As for SunCoast, I'll go out of my way to go back, and of course will write a letter to the corporate office commending Lewis' actions.

P.S. Some of you may be wondering if I ever heard back from Sprint PCS (click here for that rantclick here for that rant), I didn't, and now I'm an AT&T customer.

More Great Customer Service

From my business partner Levi:

Jon, you'd appreciate this. I just called Broadwing to get a competitive quote on our xO T1 integrated access contract, which expires in a few months, and despite having told the rep this when her first question was, "Why are you calling today?", her next question was, "What is your Broadwing account number." I responded, "Did you listen to anything I just said?" After asking that question and my response, she just said, "Okay, so you're not an existing customer I guess. What services are you looking for?"

Right, but can you listen?

Maybe we should call the book, The Lost Art of Customer Service: Try Listening for a Change.

For A Bad Buying Experience Click Here!

BookCloseOuts.com Bargain Books - No Customer Service

Here's a copy of a recent email I sent to a supervisor at BookCloseOuts.com

Dear Patricia,

I’d like to bring an unfortunate set of circumstances to your attention. As a repeat customer of BookCloseouts.com I am very disappointed in the treatment I received today, and with this particular purchase experience in general. The only person at your company who has been at all helpful is Rosemary Charlton, perhaps she didn’t get the memo about needing to lose customers.

First a quick timeline of what has happened (remember I started as a happy repeat customer):

The Lost Art of Customer Service

Look for this to be a regular feature at jondale.com. Levi and I are collecting research for a new book, The Lost Art of Customer Service, which will help companies understand the importance of looking after their customers. We'd love you stories and feedback about both good and bad customer service experiences.

So here goes:

Sure, whatever!

I'll be honest, the verdict is still out on Sprint at this point. Let's just say I've had a lot of problems. It amazes me that a company that I pay over $2500 a year to (over the next decade that's $25,000) can't figure out how to bill me correctly for internet service on my phone.

Yesterday, I spent over 2 hours talking to "customer service" trying to resolve billing problem. Thanks to number portability, we now all have a choice. You see they (the cell phone providers) used to have us by the balls because if we moved to another provider, we lost our phone number. Not so any more. You can move between providers and from a land line to a wireless phone and keep your old number.

To make a long story short, I finally told them I was writing about customer service and suddenly they put me through to a very friendly supervisor who apologized for all the problems and promised to have someone in the Customer Relations (maybe the should call it the PLEASE DON'T LEAVE, PRETTY PLEASE) Department call me to resolve the problem. If they haven't called me by Wednesday, I'm switching to AT&T. Ah, the power of choise :) I guess we'll see what happens.

Have you had a good or bad experience with Sprint or another wireless provider. Make a comment!

Thanks Angela

Today I was at a conference hosted by CMA Resources in Long Beach. Angela, the brains behind the operation, did an incredible job getting us all from the various airports into our accomodations and keeping us fed. Thanks Angela, you deserve a raise! (*****)