Ryanair, the European low-cost carrier whose customer service approach used to involve sticking its fingers in its ears and yelling “NANANANA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”, is trying to show it’s really and truly turned over a new customer service leaf: the airline is launching a new “Rate My Flight” app that allows passengers to air their grievances immediately upon landing. [More]
customer service
Starbucks Apologizes For “Diabetes Here I Come” Message On Customer’s Cup
By 4.11.16
It’s one thing when Starbucks staffers mess up your name — hello, I’m “Marky Beth” — but getting a rude message is an entirely other matter. The Seattle coffee chain has apologized for one such incident, in which a customer received his grande white mocha with the words “Diabetes here I come” written on the cup. [More]
Woman Says She Was Treated Unfairly At Subway Because She’s Pregnant
By 4.11.16
An Iowa woman says she was belittled and treated unfairly at a Subway restaurant because she’s pregnant, when a worker told her he was too busy to accommodate her request to heat the deli meat on her sandwich. [More]
Uber Ditching Email Support In Favor Of In-App Help Options
By 3.30.16
Uber customers and drivers will no longer be able to reach the company by way of a support email address — a system many customers were frustrated with in the first place — as the company is switching to an in-app tool for troubleshooting and reporting issues. [More]
Why Doesn’t AT&T Require Email Verification Before Sending Sensitive Account Information?
By 3.24.16
There’s a reason why companies that handle sensitive billing information may ask customers to verify their email addresses before sending any communications. It’s to prevent customers from seeing things they shouldn’t. So why doesn’t AT&T have such a safeguard in place for its customers? [More]
Uber Now Has An 800-Number For Non-Emergency Situations
By 3.11.16
Since Uber began shuttling people from one place to another with the tap of an app, we’ve heard stories about rides gone wrong — assaults, harassment, and hostage situations — that often end with the customer having a difficult time reaching an actual human working for the ride-hailing company. That’s apparently changed, as the company quietly issued an phone number for passengers to contact them back in October. [More]
The Southwest Rapid Rewards Points Disaster: A Cautionary Tale
By 1.28.16
Unless you’re a frequent business traveler, or a big spender who makes a lot of expensive purchases using their credit cards, racking up thousands of rewards points in a short period of time isn’t always easy. So when you see an opportunity to amass enough points to earn you free airfare in the matter of a few weeks, it’s tempting to give it a shot. But if your timing is off, it could backfire on you in a big way, leaving you with a bunch of points but without the rewards you wanted. [More]
Sprint To Lay Off 2,000 Customer Service Employees
By 1.26.16
Sprint’s recent promotions, including “iPhone for Life” and the promise to cut customers’ bills from other carriers in half have helped the fourth-place carrier, gaining it 500,000 new postpaid subscribers even accounting for customers who have left. The company is responding to the good news by laying off 2,000 customer service representatives in centers across the country, and directing customers to use the self-service app instead. [More]
How Social Engineering Fooled Amazon Customer Service Reps Into Sharing A Customer’s Data
By 1.25.16
You generally expect that a company that has your personal information — like your address, recent orders, and billing information — is going to treat that data with some level of care. While you know their privacy policy might still allow some sharing for marketing reasons, you don’t expect their customer service agents to divulge it to anyone who happens to call up and pretend to be you. [More]
Zappos Customer Service Rep Turns Wrong Order Into Welcome Surprise For S.C. Flood Victims
By 1.20.16
There’s nothing like a story with a happy ending to warm you up on a cold day… although, a fleece blanket might do the trick, too: a Zappos customer in South Carolina found a welcome, cozy surprise when a wrong order had to be returned, after she shared the troubles many in her community were facing amidst the recent flooding. [More]
Amazon Won’t Say If Employee Added Unrequested Dildo To Customer’s Cart
By 1.6.16
In the world of customer service, there are usually a few, easily predictable responses from companies that we encounter: either an issue gets resolved to the satisfaction of the customer, whether quickly or with a bit of effort, or it doesn’t. But one Amazon customer found himself in wholly unfamiliar territory after providing negative feedback, when, he claims, an employee of the e-commerce giant put an unrequested 10-inch dildo in his shopping basket. [More]
Bar Replies To Customer’s New Year’s Eve Complaint Of Being Ignored While Fellow Patron Has Heart Attack
By 1.4.16
Often when we hear about a business’ response to a customer complaint spreading furiously on social media, it’s because people are shocked by the company’s response or because someone who works there was perhaps inappropriate in their reply. But when the manager of an Indianapolis bar replied on Facebook to a patron who slammed the establishment for ignoring her party’s questions about the bill to deal with an “overdosed junkie” — in reality, an elderly woman who had a heart attack — the Internet seemed quite pleased. [More]
Advocate: Additional IRS Funding Should Be “Extremely Helpful” In Actually Helping Taxpayers
By 12.28.15
As we approach 2016, taxpayers might be wary of dealing with the Internal Revenue Service after last year’s identity theft problems. But according to the IRS’ national taxpayer advocate, the agency is going to be much better at dealing with taxpayers than it was last year. [More]
Macy’s Makes It Difficult For Me To Give Them Money Because My Last Name Is Slutsky
By 12.11.15
Meet Leonard Slutsky. He’s a Consumerist reader who had one desire: to give Macy’s money. But Macy’s wouldn’t accept his online order, simply because his last name is Slutsky. [More]
Yes, Amazon Will Adjust Prices They’ve Raised If You Ask Nicely
By 12.10.15
Amazon is always adjusting their prices, and sometimes those adjustments aren’t in your favor. When you throw an item in your cart and the price suddenly rises by five or ten bucks, that’s enough to make you look for it elsewhere, or maybe not buy the item at all if it wasn’t something that you needed. Yet there is a way to get Amazon to bring the price back down: ask nicely. [More]
Survey: Retailers Should Work To Be On Customer Service “Nice List” Year-Round, Or Risk Turning Off Shoppers
By 12.8.15
If retailers think they can be naughty all year when it comes to customer service, only to take their smiles out of storage and dust’em off when the holidays roll around, they’ve got another think coming, according to a recent survey that says customers can be very unforgiving. [More]
Square Users Find Their Accounts Suddenly Deactivated, Customer Service Proves Useless
By 11.20.15
If you’re a small business that needs to process credit card payments on a smaller scale than say, a big box store, there are some popular options out there, one of which is Square: you might know it as that white or black plastic card reader that can plug into a smartphone or tablet. It’s easy to get an account — but unfortunately for some customers, it’s not so easy to find help when Square suddenly deactivates that account. [More]
Comcast Insists Its Twitter Account Isn’t A Robot; Just Assumes Everyone’s An Angry Customer
By 10.23.15
Like a number of corporate customer service Twitter account, the public replies from the @ComcastCares account are of the “Sorry to hear that” variety, often with a request for a private direct message containing more specific account information. But are these similar-sounding responses produced by a computer script or by a human being who just assumes that everyone hates the company they work for? [More]
