As I've mentioned before, DH bought a new car this past Friday. We decided to purchase a satellite tracking system for the car. We paid the money to the dealership, and an appointment was set for Saturday between 12 noon and 6pm for the system to be installed in the car, at our house. I won't bother you with all of the details, but suffice it to say, after many phone calls back and forth on Saturday, the system was NOT installed. In fact a technician was never sent to our house.
I spent part of Saturday afternoon and evening composing a lovely 2 page letter addressed to the Chairman and CEO of the company. Their corporate headquarters are located in the Eastern portion of the United States, so I woke up early Monday morning and called office of the Chairman and CEO of the company in order to get his email address. I spoke with his "executive assistant", "secretary", I don't really know her title, but she was very helpful and suggested that I send the email directly to the Vice President of Customer Care. Which I did, with a 'cc' to the Chairman/CEO.
When I arrived home this afternoon, I hadn't received any response from Mr V.P., so I decided to call his office directly. Surprise, surprise, surprise...he answered his own phone. I had a lovely conversation with Mr. V.P. He told me that he had received my email that morning, and had been in contact with someone on the West Coast, and he said that they had discussed my email extensively and he was quite surprised to hear that the West Coast person had not called me.
Within 5 minutes of ending my phone call with Mr. V.P., I received a phone call from "West Coaster" (WC). WC apologized for not calling me sooner (we all know she only called me, when she did, because she got chewed out by Mr. V.P.). She told me that they were sorry for the inconvience (lost time, implying that DH and I were liars...you know...minor stuff) they caused us and they wanted to try to make it up to us. She upgraded our system (approximately $100 value), said that she would send us free movie passes, and best of all, she made sure that a technician was at my house by 5pm this evening. In fact, she called me at 4:30pm to tell me that the technician might be a few minutes late, and then called me at 5:00pm on the dot to see if the technician had arrived.
Now that the system is on the car, and working, I hope that we never need it. Both DH and I are satisfied with how Mr. V.P reacted/responded to my letter. I'm thinking between my sister and I, if either of us need to make any extra money, we can always offer our letter writing services.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
good for you. Both you and Joan have managed to get customer complaints down to a science. If I need anyone to do that for me, I will know who to call.
put a button on your sidebar to remind me if I ever need your services.
sorry you had to knock some people around to get what you expected in the first place...what's with this world and the ever shrinking customer service?
Never underestimate the power of a good letter of complaint. Good for you.
I like to think we're saving all future customers the grief of having to complain about poor customer service. Hopefully these companies will take what we have to say to heart and actually fix what's wrong.
Way to press pen to paper and elicit a response. As you know my efforts haven't been very successful...
Is customer service dying? Bad service is more common than runny noses in a kindergarten class.
Well done you. I rarely write letters of complaint these days, but when I did I found I usually had very positive results.
Cheers
If things go wrong, it does seem that indeed that customer service is lacking these days. To me, the biggest problem with this company is that they really don't have a real culture of customer service. So, congrats in being that squeaky wheel that got satisfaction!
The Moose Buyer - Hopefully you'll never run in to poor customer service.
Renee - When I worked in customer service...The motto was always "the customer is always right". Now I think the motto is..."Customers?, who cares"
Meno - I'm feeling good right about now.
Joan - I would hope that policies are changed and that future customers are saved some grief.
Ms. Chica - If you ever need help composing a letter (which I doubt you would because you are an amazing writer)...let me know.
Maddy - Welcome to my blog. Reading yours, I can understand that you really don't have the time to compose letters of complaint.
Ralph - I will say that they certainly stepped up their efforts to please THIS customer:~)
Post a Comment