Bank of America isn’t the only bank that enjoys canceling their traveling customer’s credit cards. HSBC canceled my card while I was living in New Zealand, and as part of their “continuing efforts to fight fraud,” sent an active replacement card to my address 9,000 miles away.
supervisors
AT&T Supervisor Takes Back Refund Offer Because You Dared To Question Her
By 3.31.09
Claire was told the wrong thing by an AT&T Wireless rep regarding international long distance, but when she called back to sort things out, she came up against the Nurse Ratched of the AT&T call center—a woman who refused to give in, or offer any help at all. In fact, when Claire finally admitted defeat and said she’d accept the credit that had been offered to her, the supervisor refused. Apparently Claire only had one chance to accept that and since she said no, it was off the table.
Cablevision: It's Impossible To Hook Up Basic Service Without A Converter Box
By 2.22.09
Cablevision told Chris that his boss’ 95-year-old uncle couldn’t receive basic service without a cable box, “no matter what.” Chris, who installs home theaters, knew that his uncle’s cable-ready tv didn’t require a cable box. Pointing this out to Cablevision’s customer service representative, however, was apparently “disrespectful.”
VISA Won't Replace Dusty PS3 After All
By 1.8.09
Remember that guy with the PS3 Sony said was too dusty to repair? The saga continues.
Orbitz Supervisor Plays Hardball With USAir, Gets Them To Rebook Tickets
By 9.11.08
Nicholas had a business trip go bad quickly when USAir canceled a flight and wouldn’t make things right again. His tickets were through Orbitz, and although he had a terrible experience with Orbitz’s first line of CSRs, he eventually managed to find a supervisor who made sure USAir helped solve the problem—even going so far as to let Nicholas secretly listen in on a call with a USAir agent.
AirTran Agent Screams, Curses At Travelers While Supervisor Looks On
By 8.25.08
Forget about those dowdy old-school Olympics. What we need is an international competition to see which airline can suck the most, since everyone is getting so good at it. In the category of Random Rudeness, this AirTran agent and her equally hostile supervisor would have a good shot at the gold—especially since they aimed their hostility at a honeymooning couple.
WaMu: "It Is Not My Problem If You Did Not Plan To Pay Your Bills On Time"
By 7.15.08
WaMu goes out of its way to convince you that it is staffed by friendly, outgoing people who want to help you if something goes wrong. Their “About” page on the WaMu website says: “We’re informal, friendly and fun. We take our customers’ money seriously, but not ourselves.” We suspect that reader Drew would disagree with the whole “friendly” part of that sentence. He arrived home a day late from a business trip to Europe and was in a rush to pay his rent before it was due. He made it to the WaMu branch 5 minutes before it closed, but it was already locked.
Sprint: Military, Eh? Here's Your $500 Bill
By 5.24.08
Sprint thanked Ryan for his tour with the Navy by charging him $0.75 per minute for airtime, resulting in a $500 bill. When Ryan complained, Sprint’s customer service representatives called him irresponsible, and gently explained that they couldn’t care less about his problem.
5 Confessions Of An Apple Tech Support Supervisor
By 4.18.08
A tech support supervisor, from what we figure to be Apple, has stepped forward to break down some behind-the-scenes workings with his underlings who sometimes make both his and consumer’s lives difficult. For instance, one of the reasons you might be on hold so long is agents using fake work codes to avoid taking calls. Also, we know that metrics rule the call centers, but, in one of the confessions, he talks about how not only is it important to not go over your average handle time, you also can’t go too far under. Just strive to be perfectly average, and you’ll go far…
Exclusive: AOL's Collections Guide Encourages Agents To Lie And Deceive
By 4.5.08
An anonymous tipster sent us AOL’s 153 page internal collections guidebook for prying money out of delinquent account holders. The guide shows that AOL is following some of the debt industry’s most egregious collection tactics by encouraging agents to deceive and lie to customers. After the jump we present AOL’s scare tactics, tricks to negotiating a substantial discount, and the full collections guide.
Returning A Defective Home Theater To Circuit City Makes You Bang Your Head Against A Wall
By 12.28.07
“On November 29th, 2007, I purchased a Phillips HTS3544 HTIB (Home Theater in-a-box) online at circuit city.com for $197.47. This included the extra that I paid for expedited 3-day shipping. Done. I thought with the weekend coming up I would receive it around December 3rd-4th. And thats when the problems started rolling on it. The first problem was that the circuit city warehouse didn’t even notify FedEx until December 4th, and I didn’t receive the item until December 7th (which is 3-day on FedEx’s part). Okay, fine, I think Ill just call and have the extra charges refunded. But no way did I know this would spiral into what it has become.”
By 11.14.07
../..//2007/11/14/fox-business-network-picks-up/
FOX Business Network picks up our Sony PS3 “excessive dust voids your warranty” story [FOX Business Network]
Sony CSR: What? No! Dust Doesn't Void Your PS3 Warranty!
By 11.11.07
A Sony CSR admitted to reader Ive that dust should not void a Playstation 3’s warranty. Transcript and audio, after the jump.
Dust Voids PS3 Warranty
By 11.10.07
“I just got off the phone With PS3 customer support who kindly informed me that my PS3 is “too dusty” to be replaced under warranty. But won’t provide pictures unless they are subpoenaed.”
Amazon Fumbles Gift Card Order
By 3.4.07
Amazon failed to deliver a $75 gift card reader Michael purchased for a business associate in 2004. Michael was notified of the failure in 2006, and issued a claim code worth $75. When Michael tried to use the code, it came up as invalid. Michael called Amazon and went through three representatives before reaching a supervisor.
She eventually decided that the reason the claim code was not working was because Amazon had expired it after sending it to me, and there was nothing she could do. It didn’t matter that Amazon’s web site said that gift certificates sold to people in Massachusetts don’t expire. It didn’t matter that Massachusetts state law required that the gift certificate remain valid for a minimum of 7 years (or forever if it doesn’t clearly state an expiration date, which is what actually applies to this case). It didn’t matter that Amazon had never sent the gift certificate to the original intended recipient, it didn’t matter that Amazon had told me it was valid right before expiring it, what mattered was that the gift certificate had expired and so there was nothing that could be done.
The resolution, and Michael’s email, inside…
