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Thursday, May 17, 2007

One of the worst examples of customer service I’ve ever experienced

May 17 2007 10:25AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (7) |
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In my last blog I talked about my best customer service experience. Today, I’m going to talk about the other end of the spectrum. Recently I purchased an all-in-one printer for personal use and had a problem with it right out of the box. When it escalated, I sent a letter to the board of directors at the manufacturer, because that was the only contact I could find beyond a customer service call center.

Here’s an abridged version:

Dear Board of Directors,
Good morning, please let me introduce myself. My name is Greg Frazier. I do apologize for contacting the Board, if there were another way to contact someone at the company in the States I would have done it. Let me start by saying I am not a home tech guru and this is really my first experience with the issues I am about to describe.
I went to a retailer last Saturday to purchase a printer/fax/scanner/copier/photo printer for my wife's small real estate business. At the store, there was a brand representative who was quite helpful in assisting me with my purchase of the all-in-one machine for about $250. It had all the features I needed and I thought connecting it to my home PC would be rather simple. Your company has an excellent reputation for customer service and I didn’t even debate the cost or brand decision.
I got home and went to work installing the printer. Remember, I said I am not a techie, but I was determined to hook-up a simple printer to my wireless network. I followed the instructions and got it hooked up. I must admit, I was rather proud as a non-techie kind of guy.
It prints great, copies great, faxes and receives faxes great, but I could not get the scanner to work. I looked at the troubleshooting guide and there was nothing I could find about the scanner not working, so I assumed it must be a simple fix. I called the 800 number for support at about 2:30 p.m. on Sunday . It rang through and a nice young man answered.
I walked him through the problem and he started giving me directions on what to do. This went on for roughly two hours before I had to go to an appointment and he was out of ideas. He said he would call back in a half hour. I told him I would be gone then and asked if two-and-a-half hours would work. Yes, that would be fine. I was dutifully home at the agreed-upon time. I am sure by now you can guess that no one called.
So, I called back on Tuesday about 7 or 7:30 p.m. and expected to be on the phone until it was fixed. I talked to a lady and told her my story, and that I did not get a call-back. She said she was confident she could help me and asked if I would be willing to turn my PC over to her so she could implement the fix. Wow! Now we are cooking. I forget about the guy that did not call me back because in just a couple of minutes I would be scanning to my heart's content.
Four hours later she had to do a restore on my computer so that it would work. Well, kind of work. Not too bad, but some of the functionality is now missing. But I know she tried everything known to her to fix and she did not try to tell me she would call back. She is a keeper. She told me that she had exhausted her fixes to the problem and that if it was possible, could I call after 8 in the morning so that her local call center supervisor could arrange a con call with someone in the U.S. Wow again! An escalation process for a $250 printer. I told her I could not call back Wednesday and that it would be Thursday. She said that was fine, just make sure that the U.S. was awake when I called so we could get this resolved.
I called on Thursday morning. This time I got a gentleman. I told him the story and he kept asking me questions that had nothing to do with a con call. I repeatedly asked for a supervisor and he repeatedly ignored my requests. Finally, he asked if he could take-over my computer. I said no and asked to speak to a supervisor. He told me that there was a technical group there and they would work on my problem and call me within two business days. NO! I want to talk to a supervisor and get my con call so I can get my scanner to scan and be done with this. Now he says, “let me try one more thing.” I am now over the edge. I want to talk to a supervisor!  I was not abusive in any way and I hope you have the call recorded. I was however put on hold (or hung up on) for 30 minutes.
By the way, this e-mail will end. I just wanted you to understand what has transpired. So let me get to the point. I am an unhappy customer. The easiest route on this would be for me to box-up the printer, take it back to the store, and get another brand of printer. That is not what I want to do. You learn nothing from that and I think that is wrong. And yours is a great company.
Over and above my $250 investment in the printer, I have invested about seven hours of time trying to fix it, and now another one to write this letter. If I am willing to make that investment to tell you what is going on in the market, please take the time to help me. I can believe that the market has wrung every cent of profit out of the printer business and that outsourcing is a way to minimize the losses. But, episodes like mine with your customer support are impacting your brand. I now have a different mental picture of your company and cannot help but remember this incident negatively.
I find it amazing that the only way I am able to contact the company is by sending an e-mail to the Board of Directors. I tried the customer service numbers on the Web site, and they all went to the same call center that couldn’t help.
This issue has not ruined my life; I still have a sense of humor about this, and I have done my best not to exaggerate. I did leave out most of the items that annoyed me during the calls. I hope this e-mail is taken in the spirit in which it was intended and thank you for taking the time to read it.

The end to this story: The company eventually contacted me as a result of my BoD letter and recommended I return the printer. This was after I had invested a grand total of 13 hours.

This blog post was contributed by Greg Frazier, executive VP of supply chain services, worldwide, at Avnet Electronics Marketing. Greg is charged with designing supply-chain strategies for the company’s global suppliers and customers. He also has responsibility for Avnet's global-accounts model and the business migration initiative, helping customers that are transitioning their business to different global regions.

Reader Comments


at 5/17/2007 12:57:29 PM, Suzanne Deffree said:
Very few people would have gone through all of this trouble to help a company get a more accurate view of how cutting corners in service areas can so severely harm brand. I applaud your diligence, Greg. Since you note your sense of humor in the letter, I suggest you watch “Office Space” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space). If you haven’t seen it already, I think you’ll especially enjoy the fax machine destruction scene.

at 5/17/2007 1:16:30 PM, Roger Bohn said:
I don''t get it. If seemingly competent tech support people can''t fix a problem in one hour, in my experience they won''t be able to fix it in any number of hours. It''s time to cut your losses and ship it back either to the retailer, or to the manufacturer for exchange. The last six hours suggest a strong element of masochism! I''ve just had this experience with a $150 radio. One call to the retailer, one call to the manufacturer (two actually, since they were closed the first time), and back it goes.

at 5/17/2007 3:11:35 PM, Jim said:
So who''''s printer is it? My money is on HP.

at 5/21/2007 11:56:57 AM, Lee said:
OMG! I experienced the same thing when I bought an HP scanner/photo printer/fax/copier. The scanner absolutely refused to work and we spend 8 hours on the phone with people -who placed us on hold and did not call us back - sent us to other help desks. Bad product, bad customer service, bad company.

at 6/2/2007 4:11:57 PM, Shirley said:
Greg, I truly feel your pain in your letter. I'm sure most people can share a story that's equally frustrating for them. One of my biggest frustrations is when I call our help desk to report a problem and the response is, "No one has reported a problem." I’m always attempted to say, “Well I'm Somebody, and I have no idea who No one is.”

at 6/11/2007 3:50:31 PM, Stoney said:
Greg, I feel very sorry to hear your story, but it is still a tip of the iceberg. I am a peacemaker who sometimes make war only to achieving lasting peace. After the first two calls failed, I would physically go over to the vendor/retailer and request my money back and let the supervisor there come up with the techie fix proposal. I may still refuse if my instincts smells a fowl play. I call it "getting it as you give it" but please be advise that you first need to confirm the problem wasn''t from yourself but really the product.

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