Customer & Consumer Experiences

[JoeP]

In a country where consumers are treated more and more like dirt, and only are to be used for enhancing corporate profits and executive salaries, I think it is important to post our good, bad and ugly customer experiences.  Here's one.

THE BAD:  PNC Bank.  What happened?

I called PNC in Clarks Summit yesterday to pay my mother-in-law's PNC Master Card, it had fallen in the cracks and was due yesterday.  I quickly found out that you can't talk to anyone in the local PNC branch - even if you dial the local number.  You get automatically switched to their centralized call center.  So I explained what we wanted to do - they would gladly take the payment over the phone for a $15 fee!  Sock it to the 80 year old lady why don't you.  I said AMEX doesn't pull this crap on its customers - fell on deaf ears.  I then asked if I could pay it at the local PNC branch and the girl rudely said how should she didn't know - she doesn't handle those type of questions.

I then tried calling the main PNC branch in Scranton - surely they would answer.  Nope, you not allowed to talk to them either, got switched to centralized hell again.  More elevator music before a human answered.  Again explained we are trying to avoid a late charge - can someone help.  At least this person suggested I sign up and pay it online and noted the file not to post a late fee.

Bottom line: PNC Bank has obviously removed customer service and care from their business model.  Need to have my mother-in-law dump her PNC Master Card and get AMEX.

THE GOOD:  We bank with Pennstar and I can call my local branch, get a human on the 2nd ring who is friendly, knowledgeable and wants to help me with my questions or problem.  I can even write to the president directly and get a response within a few business days.  Pennstar is a pleasure to do business with.

Share your good, bad and ugly consumer experiences here.

[susie]

Hi Joe, I agree with you 100%. It seems that most businesses more and more these days are putting the work on the consumer for getting problems resolved, answering questions, etc.  And it is all to save the corporation money. The money they save is by having fewer employees and less well paid and trained employees. For years I worked at a company where customer service was the highest priority.  We had to answer the phone on the first ring, and we were expected not to leave our customer on hold more than 1 minute. (That company is no longer the same either.) Now it is nothing not to be able to get a real person on the phone. Have you tried Sears lately? Or wait 5,10, or 15 minutes in queue for a 'real' person' and then find out the person you need to talk to can barely speak English? (Verizon DSL)  No wonder people are more stressed out and time deprived when it take so long and is so complicated to resolve problems. Even when I retired from Verizon I had to make sure all my bases were covered.  If I had questions I had to figure out who to call, get referred from department to department, wait for a real person to answer or leave a message and wait for someone to call me back.  A friend of mine at work wanted to know if things were getting harder because we were getting older.  I told him no. That 10 years ago you would have called one number, got a person by at least the second or third ring, and had all your questions answered in a few minutes.

One good story of old fashioned customer service I do have is with our propane company, Ace-Robbins in Tunkhannock.  We started service with them a few years back.  Our first bill from them was a bit confusing and wrong. I figured out what needed to be corrected and literally braced myself to call the company and explain the problem. (Pretty bad anymore when you have to 'brace' yourself to call). I called, spoke to the women there, gave the account number and what to my 'wondrous' ears did I hear. Within a second of getting my file, she told me that she had already realized the problem and had adjusted the account and verified the correct amount due.  I could have kissed her!!!

Oh well, we can all rant and rave. I just hope it's like a pendulum and swings back the other way when companies realize that in the long run it is costing them more money not to get things fixed correctly with the first customer conversation and have more and well-trained employees to answer phones. Of course, they would have to realize also that more and well-trained employees is a cost factor and maybe in the long run spending more on the employees more than justifies the cost of problems not resolved quickly and efficiently.

[JoeP]

It's rare to get a human on the 1st or 2nd ring, more like "press 1" for this, "2" for that, or "listen carefully - our prompts have changed", etc.  Then they ask to enter your social security or account number, or if you speak Spanish press some other number (this is America - English is the official language).  So after drilling down through several sub menus - still no human.  Sometimes it's a dead end - start over.  Well, it's time for some guerilla warfare.

Below is a site that provides a lot of the bypass key presses to get to a human right away (elevator music notwithstanding).  I generally find pressing zero, or zero-zero-pound key takes me right into "a customer services representative will be right with you".

http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/

[davidk]

Ever try calling PPL with an outage?
You literally talk to a computer.
If your lucky you can try pressing 0 a couple of times and you may get a human.
Don't bother trying to get a human if it's a holiday though. They apparently up and leave.