I’m getting some practice working with customer service people. I was having some problems with my printer, and customer service said that I had to buy a new color container cartridge. For this printer, there is a container cartridge that holds two smaller ink cartridges. You can’t buy the container cartridge separately, so if there’s something wrong with the container, you have to buy the two smaller ink cartridges with it. The ink doesn’t last nearly long enough for its $50-plus price tag.
I felt it was worth a try to ask them to send me a free container cartridge. They agreed. Can you imagine, they wanted to keep me as a happy customer!
I should have asked for a new printer.
You must have been really nice. I can tell you that, from having to do the ungodly task of customer service now and then, that if a person’s nice and all to me, I’ll do pretty much anything for them that won’t get me in trouble. Cop an attitude, and I damn near refuse to move a muscle, and will even tell them that they’re wrong, when they’re right. Bad, I know.
Yeah, I don’t get the people who are jerks to customer service people. I don’t know what they think that’s going to get them. On the other hand, though, it always pays to ask for whatever you want. You’ll never get anything, otherwise.
You know what, tho? Even the friendly ones are just patently unhelpful. I tried to buy a gift certificate from Amazon for my sister’s birthday. That was last night. Tonight, I get an e-mail from Amazon saying there was a problem with my credit card. So I went to my Amazon account and tried to update the info. Except that every time I tried, I just got a message to “e-mail customer service”.
Well, I don’t like dealing with these sorts of things over e-mail, so I figured I would call. Except I couldn’t find the customer service phone number ANYWHERE on Amazon.com. I *did* find the LEGAL DEPT. phone number, the voice mail for which helpfully provided the customer service number. So I redialed, and tried to use the automated system. Which didn’t work. And sent me to a live person.
Now, on the one hand, I was glad to get a live person so quickly. But I was so frustrated by that point (just trying to FIND the phone number), I really was losing patience. I gave him my order number and info, and asked to change my payment info. At which time I was informed, despite the e-mail and the help pages on the website, that they *can’t* change payment info on gift certificate orders! At this point, I was pissed – why not just cancel the order in the first place? I could have replaced the order in less time than this! So – get this – to cancel the order, I couldn’t just give him my user name and password…I also had to tell him the last thing I bought! So now it’s verging on invasion of privacy. Ugh. I need a drink.