Bad customer service experience…

June 25, 2007  

Today has really taught me a lesson about keeping your promises to your customers.  And if you can’t, keep them informed.   Not once, not twice, but three times today I have been disappointed and / or confused as a customer.

1. I ordered a new mobile phone online the other day and was told it would take 2-3 business days.  Well, ok, today was the second business day but I’m sure that somewhere I saw that it would be due today – of course it never came.  I eventually logged into the site’s order tracking system to find that the phone that it has been “Awaiting Shipping” all day.  Does that mean it will be shipped and delivered tomorrow?  When, coincidentally I will not be home for most of the day? Or will it be shipped tomorrow and arrive some other day in the future?  When will I get my phone?!?!!

2.  My husband and I took some prints we bought in Amsterdam to be framed on Saturday.  The framer promised they’d be ready at 2pm today.  I went at 3pm, to be safe, and no… “5pm?” he says.  Argh. The traffic will be terrible at that time.

3. And this is the worst of all.  I went to bed last night after a quick check to my email, all good, no problems.  I awoke this morning to find no email working.  Checked my websites, all I got were directory listings.  Ditto with all of my clients’ sites.  Checked the databases – still there (phew! so I backed them up!) but no email accounts!  It has taken me all day going since first opening an Urgent ticket with my hosting company (whose support is based in Russia) to get everything running again – including two complaints from me to a supervisor to get some action because all I would get is useless responses or questions like “we’ll look into it” or “which email is not working?”.  They got the websites up late in the morning and only now, at the end of the day, are the email accounts back (however, they’re “locked” by some process so I still can’t use them).  And did I get an apology?  No!!  I get told that it must have been my fault, I must have deleted the email accounts myself in Cpanel.  What?!?!?  Oh yes, I was sleepwalking last night and somehow logged in to CPanel and manually deleted 15 email accounts.  Oh and all of the files on the filesystem.  Needless to say, I’m moving from this hosting company ASAP – probably to somewhere Australian where people can understand what I’m saying and work in the same timezone.

Ok, rant off my chest.  But there’s a lesson here: keep your promises, keep the customer informed and never blame the customer!!