The One in Response

 
Several people on my facebook page shared a link to an article that sort of put the onus of bad customer service on the customer. Basically it said you get bad customer service because you are a bad customer. This hit at a time where I have been battling customer service with a company we will call ShitHead.
 
Here’s the story. I bought a piece of equipment that we will call ShitBox, from ShitHead and used it very minimally because I was in a slump of sorts and just not interested. It worked fine. I picked it up one night, did my stuff, then carried it from my studio to my living room. Not a long walk, I didn’t slay a dragon with ShitBox, I didn’t swim a lake to get to my living room. Just a simple walk from the back of the house to the front of the house. I don’t live in Spelling Manor or anything…so really. I was on the phone with my sister and she was talking to her children and not me…nothing unusual. I went to turn on ShitBox to use it while I talked to her, multi-tasker here people. Well ShitBox didn’t do anything. I thought, oh it needs to be charged, so I plug it in and it is one of those things you can use while it is charging. So I waited about twenty minutes to see what the battery level was (it was over half full when I used it earlier) and nothing. ShitBox appeared dead. I get online and find some solutions in the "help" forums, yet none of them worked on ShitBox. It was just dead. So the next day I get online with ShitHead in a chat session and Customer Service Representative whom we will cal DNK (Doesn’t Know Shit) could not help me. This was after he implied I was an idiot and can’t follow simple instructions. After a battle of sorts, in which I had to concede because at that point I wasn’t sure I was chatting with a human, I had to send ShitBox back to them and they were supposed to send me a new ShitBox. Did I fail to mention that my original ShitBox was less than two months old? Because it was.
 
So I ship ShitBox back and I wait. And then I wait some more and then I contact Customer Service because it has been a long time and I know they have it and I have heard nothing. Well Phone CSR #1 makes me give all kinds of information and can’t spell simple english words and then proceeds to tell me they will send me an email when they ship ShitBox replacement. Oh yeah and she tells me "Do Not Call Back". What? Seriously? Don’t call back?
 
I wait a few days and defy CSR #1 and call back and am told by CSR #2 who also cannot spell simple english words, that I have to count two to three weeks from X Date. What? That does not tell me the status of my ShitBox. 
 
How is ShitHead still in business? And do their Customer Service Representatives fill out applications? Do they receive any sort of training or are they told "do whatever the fuck you want."
 
So then the article appears and I feel as those on facebook are saying that if you have a problem with customer service, you are the problem and are a douchebag. I let this simmer without response, because honestly I am not going to fight my cousin on facebook over something as stupid as this, when I know for a fact that she is usually a raging, complaining bitch.
 
I usually contact ShitHead every Wednesday. I figure at some point they have to have someone who knows what the fuck is going on. I was going through email tonight and decided to contact them. Chat support is bullshit. That is all. I call and get a dude and he is not bad, he too can’t spell, but at least he is trying to be helpful. And he is. He gets me to a higher level of customer service, who actually apologizes and bypasses the process and gets a new ShitBox sent to me. I even got an email with tracking! Persistence pays off kids. It really does. And you know what, I pretty much held my calm. I wasn’t all kill them with kindness, because I have zero patience for this kind of service. I didn’t call them fuckers or raise my voice. I just explained that their lack of assistance was not acceptable. I was not asking that the ShitBox be sent, I was asking for a STATUS UPDATE. That is all. An email saying, expect something by this date. It has been almost a month! And Higher Level Guy understood that and even got better shipping for me. I wish I could have understood him a little better so I would know his name.
 
Now don’t think that that last sentence was a snip at outsourcing. I am happy for everyone to have a job, I just wish I could understand them a little better with their accents. I know about a hundred people personally who don’t have jobs because of so called disabilities, that could easily answer a telephone and be less than helpful to people. But they rather sit at home and suck off the system, so yay for these people willing to do this work to pay their way in the world.
 
My point, which I failed to make, is that the article was ignorant. The example they used, real or not, was an extreme. They failed to explain that there is bad customer service out there. Don’t call back? Does that sound like good customer service when all I did was ask for a status on my return? Why couldn’t the two CSR’s I talked to earlier transfer me to the Higher Level of Customer Service? Life would have been so much easier and I wouldn’t have felt like a dick for two days thinking I was at fault for shitty customer service from ShitHead.
 
Not surprisingly, I will not be purchasing anything further from ShitHead. Hopefully ShitBox works until the next release of it’s competition.