Dealing with Customer Service

[WhitewaterWoman]

I had an interesting exchange with McAfee Antivirus customer service yesterday. Basically, they needed to refund me the cost of a subscription because I was requesting cancelation within the 60 day window.

My request was refused.

I won't go through the entire exchange, which was unnecessarily extended on their part, but in the process, the supervisor I spoke to told me two lies and expected each lie to satisfy me that they could not refund the money.

Lie #1. They told me it was impossible to give me a refund because their software did not permit it.
Lie#2. The supervisor I was speaking to, when I asked to speak to HIS supervisor, told me he was the top supervisor.

I pretty much laughed at each lie. I told him I had enough experience with computer software to know that was not true and even if it were true, surely there were supervisor overrides.

I also told him I suspected there was someone at McAfee higher up that he was and to please give me that information. I told him if he refused, I would explore the company on with my own research and take it as high as it could go. (I once took a dispute up to the CEO of Centurylink in order to get my money refunded.)

He finally put me on hold and came back and agreed to refund my money after talking to "his team."

So, I post this here to give others the strength in their battles with customer service departments of large corporations. It infuriates me that large corporations will lie to us little guys to increase the profits for their shareholders. The lies infuriated me more than the amount of money.

Share your customer service experiences. I'm sure this is a difficult scenario for many of us. I have only gotten good at it because of my advocacy work.

 

[maycontainthunder]

I find that being polite with a competent company might get me freebies....

 

[Judge]

Sounds similar to an experience I encountered when attempting to cancel an allegedly "free" trial subscription to Experian some years back. When all I really wanted to do was to formally get my credit record. Thought I had become a dentist attempting to pull someone's tooth just to cancel something that I had a perfect legal right to cancel. I had to threaten them legally before they agreed to do what they should have done immediately.

It also reminded me of how much trouble my brother got into as a teenager when he became a member of the Columbia Record Club. More like becoming a made member of the Cosa Nostra. Once in, never out!

In the case of McAfee (a company and product I would never deal with) this may give you an idea of who and what you are dealing with:

"But their marketing was often spammy, to the point where ads for antivirus programs became hard to distinguish from the very phishing scams they claimed to protect against."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/news...rom-mcafee-nortonlifelock-stuck-in-bygone-era
More reason to abandon Windows altogether and go with a Linux distro.

 

[Aspychata]

Stand up and get your refund day. It should be a national holiday, and taught to high students.

 

[Judge]

I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with my boss, working as a product website designer in their marketing department. I mentioned to her that I purchased a product with a prominent rebate. She literally laughed about my chances of actually collecting the rebate based on all the requirements it entailed.

Probably my first real moment of clarity when it comes to the relationship between a corporate entity and its customers. The product in question was one from the company we both worked for. Being in the marketing department, her crass response about our own product's rebate resonated with me, and in a very ominous way.

I would go on to interact with other software entertainment producers and marketers to see just how tight they were with developers, corporate officers and particularly their shareholders. Not their own employees, and especially not their customers.

An experience that has forever soured me on computer gaming in general. Ironic to see that such indifference and contempt has since spread to hardware manufacturers, particularly those most prominent in the industry making CPUs, GPUs and now even motherboard manufacturers.

Caveat Emptor. (Buyer Beware)

 

[Shamar]

I had an interesting exchange with McAfee Antivirus customer service yesterday. Basically, they needed to refund me the cost of a subscription because I was requesting cancelation within the 60 day window.

My request was refused.

I won't go through the entire exchange, which was unnecessarily extended on their part, but in the process, the supervisor I spoke to told me two lies and expected each lie to satisfy me that they could not refund the money.

Lie #1. They told me it was impossible to give me a refund because their software did not permit it.
Lie#2. The supervisor I was speaking to, when I asked to speak to HIS supervisor, told me he was the top supervisor.

I pretty much laughed at each lie. I told him I had enough experience with computer software to know that was not true and even if it were true, surely there were supervisor overrides.

I also told him I suspected there was someone at McAfee higher up that he was and to please give me that information. I told him if he refused, I would explore the company on with my own research and take it as high as it could go. (I once took a dispute up to the CEO of Centurylink in order to get my money refunded.)

He finally put me on hold and came back and agreed to refund my money after talking to "his team."

So, I post this here to give others the strength in their battles with customer service departments of large corporations. It infuriates me that large corporations will lie to us little guys to increase the profits for their shareholders. The lies infuriated me more than the amount of money.

Share your customer service experiences. I'm sure this is a difficult scenario for many of us. I have only gotten good at it because of my advocacy work.

I recently had a legal order of garnishment I had to serve to Amazon for one of their employees. They would not allow it to be served at the location she worked, neither the department nor HR due to company policy (they were legally required to accept it there, but said it had to be served at their headquarters in Seattle). I called customer disservice and explained the problem, and was transferred to another person. After explaining the situation again, I was transferred to a third person. He gave me a number to call. That number turned out to be an alternate to the original customer service department. At the end of the second cycle I understood the pattern. I eventually serve it to one of their offices in Boulder (the offices in Denver seemed to have no address), where somehow it eventually went through, even though they claimed they could not accept it there.

 

[selena]

I find that being polite with a competent company might get me freebies....

Smaller companies probably. Larger companies tend to be disorganized and hierarchical with the customer service people being at the bottom of the ladder who likely have pre-written scripts to work with (I imagine some just know how to sound spontaneous to convince customers they've pulled some strings when in reality the "favor" has always been an option pre-approved by management).

Edit: These days I mostly would just take the L. In the past when I gave customer service a hard time I'd always end up feeling terrible and ashamed anyway, and note that the original Karen meme was of someone who'd ask to speak to the manager as if the rule would change for her.

Customer service are paid like $10-12/hr with very basic benefits (if that). CEOs do take advantage of customer overpayment, but they mostly profit off paying starvation wages to their front-line workers (who sometimes aren't even hired directly but through staffing agencies to avoid legal liabilities) as well as using the loopholes in the tax code. Keeping customer overpayment is illegal (even if refunding isn't always enforced), but paying starvation wages and following the tax code are perfectly legal. If you really want to take corporations down, start here. Start with the injustice embedded within the legal system and the level of exploitation it allows. Nobody becomes rich without stepping on other people's backs.

 

[VictorR]

In some organizations, the front line staff member is not empowered to make certain decisions - some utilities, for example, cannot offer any sort of discount or rebate through customer service. But if you state that you wish to terminate your services, then you end up with the retention department, who can offer custom terms or match a competitor offer.

I once took a dispute up to the CEO of Centurylink in order to get my money refunded.

I have used executive resolution before to get something done myself, and for publicly traded companies, it's pretty easy to look up the CEO and the corporate HQ and to send a registered letter. Also, the people who respond to those tend to have much more discretion than a standard call centre manager to make things right.

 

[Mr Alligator]

With some companies I find tweeting about them helps. E.g. saying their customer service is rubbish, they often get in touch to sort the issue.

One example was a web form I filled in. It needs various things like the barcode, batch code etc.

A week later I got an email on a do not reply email address saying please give us the barcode and batch codes with a link to a new form.

I filled that new form in providing three with the things I new but said I threw away the product a week ago and can’t give them the barcode that I already gave them in the first place.

They then replied saying they couldn’t help me without that information - from a do not reply address, so all I could do was tweet about their service!!!

 

[Princess Viola]

I'm always as polite as possible as I can be to customer service because it's a thankless job and so many people think that the front-facing agents they deal with are somehow also the ones who decide the company policies or whatever problem they need help with and try and take their anger out on them.

Of course, sometimes I do get frustrated, especially so if it's an issue that I've been dealing with for a while but I always try to be clear that my frustration is with the company and not them as a person.

 

[Shevek]

There was a time when mail order got me lots of rare things at reasonable prices. Now, most of my once-favorite companies ship defective probucts and make the return pay about 5% of minimum wage with all the complex requirements. Also I could write reams about Magic Jack, but will just warn everyone to stay away.