Hobson's Choice
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I fought the man, and I won
I spent some time on the phone yesterday with the phone company and the cable company, trying to work out a computer error they had made which was costing me $5 a month.
Afterwards, I realized that one of my major thrills in life is making customer service people do what I want them to do merely by being polite and persistent. It took 8 customer service representatives and 2 hours.
And based on that experience, here is Jenny's Handy Guide on Getting What You Need from Companies That Are Doing You Wrong:
It's a game and you only lose when you give up. Remember that premise and everything else will fall into place. With persistence alone, you will get what you want 90% of the time.
Corollaries of the "It's only a game" theory:
(1) The corporation wants to make as much money as it can, any way that it can within the letter of the law. It wants to be profitable. That means they are going to have confusing phone trees; they are going to shuffle you from person to person; they are going to try to put you off; they are going to try to make you take responsibility for whatever the problem is. They want you to give up and save them dollars.
(2) Don't take it personally. It's a rotten and inhumane way of doing things that probably eventually rots the soul. But it's not directed at you personally.
(3)Just because a process is slightly unethical doesn't mean that you have to drop to that level. You are far more likely to get what you want if you remain pleasant and remind the person on the line of the good business principles that they individually believe in: fairness and good service to customers.
(4) You have after all signed a contract with this company for certain services; they are obliged to provide them correctly. They may try to get you to give up your quest. But time is on your side. Eventually, you will get them to honor the terms of your contract. Eventually, it is less profitable for the company to continue talking with you on the phone than it is for them to correct the situation. In my experience, it usually takes around 3 phone calls over a period of several days.
(5) Never, never threaten. You don't need to resort to threats of lawsuits or the Better Business Bureau (unless you're dealing with something terribly shady and wrong that's going to have big effects on your life. And even then you don't threaten them with it. You just do it.). The closest thing I ever get to a threat is: "I'm really sure that this is not the way that Company X wants to be doing business."
(6) Keep your humor. It's not bowel cancer or the death of a child or schizophrenia. It's a game, kind of like euchre or chess. It's a not a game I would seek out, not something I really want to play. But, hey, if I've got to play, let's go. And I'm playing to win.
Oh and by the way, the phone company that rhymes with Horizon, their customer service is phenomenally bad.
And uh, if you now want to sign a HIPAA release and get me to do all the talking with your insurance company, let me know. My rates are reasonable.
8:38 a.m. - 2006-01-24
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