Saturday, January 31, 2009

Citi Qwest on the rocks

I hope I’m not becoming a curmudgeon, but I really have to wonder what the devil has happened to the concept of businesses delivering on their side of the contract with their customers. Within the space of a month I’ve had to fire Qwest & a Citi affinity card; & Comcast is going to be the next to go when I move to a permanent abode. I did this because they can’t tell a straight story two reps in a row, they go out of their way to surprise you with unexpected charges & they seem to be under the impression that their customers have no options but to take whatever they choose to dish out.

Dunno when the last time you had to sign up for telecommunications or cable service, but I hadn’t had to do it for about seven years when I moved to Seattle. Trying to suss out what your options are on a Qwest or Comcast website obviously takes more perspicacity than I possess. So you end up turning to a phone center rep who rattles through a litany of packages/features/costs.

In the case of Qwest, I signed up for unlimited local/long distance with a bunch of “features” (caller ID, voice mail, caller blocking, etc.) at a promised price of around $40/month. (That’s about what I’d paid for similar services from Verizon in Virginia so it didn’t seem outrageous.)

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that this month they’d jacked up the price by $20, because the rate I’d been promised was an “introductory” offer. Trust me, José from Qwest had not stipulated that this would only be in place for three months.

When I called last week to cancel the service, they transferred me to Cheryl, an “account rep”, whose job was clearly to try to reel me back in to the basket. “We really want to keep you as a valued customer. I could take away some of the features, & that would save you $5 per month—would you like that?”

“No—what I’d like is the service level I was promised at the price I was quoted.”

After about five attempts she finally agreed to terminate the service. However, she wasn’t done—she asked me if I’d like to get DirecTV through Qwest, or open a Verizon Mobile account through Qwest to replace their landline.

Noooooo.

I gave Cheryl an email address so she could send confirmation of the cancellation (which she never did), & she chirped, “Would you like to receive marketing emails from us?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I have to ask these questions.”

It’s a tough job, but just cancel my account & leave me alone.

(The Comcast story is similar: the rep who set up my service promised me a rate of TV & broadband around $60/month. But my bills kept showing up around $90. When I called, what got their attention was saying I could switch to Qwest/DirecTV. The rep squirreled around & managed to find some magical combination that gets me back to the originally promised rate. But they seriously have a pissed off, resentful user.)

The AAdvantage card by Citi was another bizarre case. I’d had it since 2003, but they have a hard time applying electronic payments at the speed of, you know, electronics. There have been delays of four days between the time my bank account was debited & them crediting my Citi account. Then, of course, they charge both a late fee & interest based on all the charges you’ve made in that period, & possibly the national debt, as well.

In the past I’ve had to call & get them to remove the charges, but in December when I spoke to the “customer service” rep, she kept saying she couldn’t do that, because it didn’t get credited until the D+4 date, & there it is.

So, I paid the bill & the charges & spent about ten minutes getting a credit card from my credit union to take its place. With that in hand, I called Citi the day after the payment was applied & announced to the “customer service” rep that I wanted to close my account.

Well, she transferred me to one of those Hail-Mary-keep-the-customer account reps & she must have spent 15 minutes trying to promise anything to make me keep the card. Again, all of a sudden I was such a valued customer, they just didn’t want to lose me, so what could she do to convince me to stay. (Yes, I was a valuable customer: I probably used that card for more than $50K in charges in the five years I had it [I used it for house repairs & replacement windows]; &, unlike most Americans, I actually made my payments. I paid it off every month, which isn’t what they want, of course; but they still got their cut of all those transactions. & they didn’t have to send my account to collection.)

She could certainly reverse the last late charge & interest. She could give me a flock of air miles. She could put a credit of $500 on the card…

I said that was nice, but too late. If you have to threaten to walk in order to get them to stop screwing you over, it’s not an equitable relationship.

So I’m untethered in phone service (even though I hate using the bloody mobi) & have a new credit card company that doesn’t try to shake me down once a month for excess fees.

Well, so far.

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