Friday, May 18, 2007

Calling to Complain

A stranger in a phone company jacket knocked on the front door.  He was concerned that I might be paying too much for my long distance service.  This was mighty neighborly of him, so I stood on the porch and we talked.  But I had trouble understanding just what service he was offering.  He was either a poor communicator or a deceptive one.  I wondered if he actually was from company whose name was on his jacket.

He said, “Go get your last phone bill and I’ll show you exactly how much money you can save .” I said, “I don’t know where it is.” This was true, but it was also my defense against his prying ways. “You’re not telling me the truth,” he said.

That remark didn’t go over very well, so he held up his ID badge for a few seconds, to reassure me.  I could see a corporate logo, but his fingers covered his name. “When you bring out the phone bill, I can look up your rates” – he tapped his white binder – “ and we’ll know how much you’ll save each month.”

“Do you have a brochure? I don’t sign up for products until I’ve had a chance to read about the details,” I said.  I hoped he would hand me a sheet from the binder and be on his way. “I’m not a lending library,” the fellow replied, and our conversation came rapidly to a close.  Before you know it I was back in the house dialing the company’s 1-800 number. I wanted to complain.

First I talked to someone who was, most likely, working on the other side of the world.  He was a gracious fellow whose beautiful English carried a hint of Indian accent.  He said the company forbad him from revealing his location, but he happily connected me to our local office.  Back in North America, the phone company tried to wear me down with a computerized phone tree, but I persevered and finally got to talk to a person.  He asked for a security code, or the amount of my last bill, or the last four digits of my Social Security number.  Company policy forbad him from taking my complaint without identification.  He needed to know who I was.

Now I had two things to complain about instead of one, so he connected me with a supervisor. She said that she wouldn’t be able to take my complaint either, because federal law required positive identification before accessing a customer’s records. I said, “I’m not asking you to access my records.  I want to find out if the person at the door was from your company, and, if so, I want to complain about the bullying sales tactics.”

“Well,” she said, “your complaint won’t be entered in your records.  But you can tell me what happened.” And so I did.  She said that sales agents do work door to door in our town, but that the local company’s policy was to take “No” for an answer, if that’s the answer a customer gave.  I hung up, back in the privacy of my home, having delivered my complaint.

But the experience left a sour taste in my mouth. At nearly every turn, the corporation had wanted information from me but had not been willing to give information in return.  The corporation could come to my doorstep and ask me to fetch my records, but I had to phone southern Asia and take instructions from a computer if I wanted to speak to the corporation. I still wasn’t sure whether the salesman worked for that company or some unscrupulous competitor. Our prosperity flows from corporations, but the world is being arranged increasingly for their convenience, and unless a sales agent gets a little too pushy, we don’t even notice.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on May 18, 2007
Commerce • Permalink • Printer Friendly
Google
WWW Michiana Chronicles