your lipservice is chapping

I’d like to think of myself as a sort of consumer advocate but for now I’m my own primary customer save the occasional friend.  And generally I get some sort of resolution.  My own experience has been that stating the issue clearly, without accusation, using dates and whatever back up is available helps get things done.  Generally I get either my money back or some sort of agreed upon restitution to the issue. 

But there are two kinds of companies who drive me a little wonky.  Those who do not offer any sort of customer assistance and those who say they do, but really are the first.  I’m currently stuck in the middle of two companies with a combined offer that are doing both.  

Back in May I signed up for a limited offer TopBox deal that included a subscription to a Rogers owned magazine – LouLou.  The transaction included an opt-out option, which I decided to forgo, but no other steps to sign up necessary – to the best of my recollection.  I’ll fully admit that I’m not 100% certain there was more required, but arguably they had my address for the makeup box delivery and I’d paid in full via credit card for the promotion.  After that, I forgot about it for awhile.  I mean all magazine subscriptions say they take 6 to 8 weeks to start.  But by September my subscription was still noticeably absent, so I started down the follow up road.  As it stands today, we’re at an impasse.

 

Yes, I was a little cantankerous on Twitter.

It started with an e-mail to TopBox directly; got a polite but not terribly useful reply.  I tried LouLou, and got the same.  And now we were playing the ‘it’s not me, it’s them’ game.  So I took to Twitter.  And got more lip service.  As it stands after almost a month since this started, I have heard from neither company and have no resolution, and still no subscription.  I did however get a promotional e-mail to join TopBox; and as you might imagine, I’m not so keen to do this.  

Sure there’s always the good ol’ ‘buyer beware’ caveat.  And yes, I’m no fan of Rogers already, but now I have to put TopBox on a ‘not sure I want to do business with you’ list because of a $10* transaction, and apparently, I’m going to write a blog post about it.  Sure you looked for a second like you were doing something on Twitter, but in the end you didn’t, did you.

And because human nature inherently does not reward the good guy, I will relay the story of excellent customer service.  

As I’ve written before I’ve signed up a makeup sampling program, Ipsy.  For about $15 a month you get a package of ‘goodies’ every month.  So every month about the end of the second week of the month I get a bright pink bubble wrap envelope in my mail box with said goodies.   But not this month.  In spite of routing notices from the two postal systems handling this package, there was no delivery (to my house).  Contacted the company, we went back and forth a few times, with a suggestion I give it a couple more days, but when 4 days later there was no package, I got a ‘no problem, we’ll  get you a new one, sorry for the inconvenience’ e-mail and 4 days later a tracking code.  The following week a new package arrived with most of the goodies I was supposed to get, with one acceptable substitution.  No lip service, just service and a resolution. 

 

This month, this particular sight was missing.  Until it wasn't.

Fortunately I did get some lip balm in a recent Ipsy bag to relieve all the chapping caused by TopBox.

I write about these things in large part because I feel that the key to continued success is great customer service, no matter what your company is, or its size.  Sure some companies and some products can’t always be replaced or fixed, but there are ways to work with your customers to ensure that they feel as if you’ve heard them and you are trying to come up with a resolution.  If I’ve entered in a purchase agreement that is final sale or that clearly spells out that there are no returns/refunds then I take my chances.  If this is not the case what is the harm in trying to service your customer base, because as the old shampoo commercial goes, I told two friends…

* The approximate value of the subscription portion of the offer.

so you want to divorce your bank?!

Oh.  My.  God leaving your bank is difficult.  After *cough years with one of the blue banks, I started to feel that my faithfulness and invested money maybe wasn’t getting the best treatment.  And so I started shopping around and discovered all sorts of free chequing accounts available and perhaps even worse that my own bank was waiving fees for those with multiple accounts – like me.  But not like me because nobody ever mentioned this offer to me.  In spite of the fact that they telemarketed me at least three times a week and didn’t leave a message.  Needless to say after banking at the same place since I was a teenager, I decided I was done.  I walked my butt over to one of the red banks and signed myself up for a new free chequing account.  Then I started moving all the prearranged payments company by company to the new account.  Then I moved my RSP.  Then I applied for a line of credit.  Then I waited. 

At this point it’s been almost 8 weeks and we’re still waiting on some of this and honestly, it might be easier to divorce a spouse than a major financial institution.

First, it takes you about 3 pay cycles to figure out what comes out of your account and when.  Or at least it did for me.  Then it takes each of them about 3 weeks to move these so you need another pay cycle to confirm that the move was made.  So I get paid bi-monthly.  If I remembered on the 13^th that something came out of my account on the 15^th, and I called to make new arrangements, because I remembered so late, it took another month to confirm that everything was hunky dory. 

Secondly it takes 4 to 6 weeks and some paperwork to move an RSP.  And dealing with a venue-less bank means you do all of this over the phone and (eek) fax.  And if you’re like me, they keep sending your confirmations to your misspelled e-mail address.  Which is almost like not sending them at all.

You will have to remember and repeat a lot of things about your financial life to many people many times.  Have you ever missed a bill payment? Answer ‘Never’, ‘Occasionally’, ‘Often’.  So there’s no point in fibbing because you’ve just given six people permission to pull your credit report, but honestly the only answer reasonable is ‘Occasionally’ because yes, I probably forgot to post a payment once or twice in the 20 odd years I’ve had to pay a bill.

You will also learn a few new idiosyncrasies of your new financial institutions.   Among them PC Financial makes it so difficult to set up a credit card password that, if you’re like me, you will forget it instantly completely eradicating its effectiveness.  And if you are on hold with ING as much as I have been of late you will notice that they play only songs with the word ‘Money’ in them on their hold music.  It’s actually quite entertaining.

Finally, you will have to toggle between two institutions until this is completed because otherwise you’re just writing cheques to yourself and having to go into the bank branch – which I have spent the better part of *cough years avoiding.

Hopefully all this malarkey will be over shortly as soon as move the last of the balances over to one of my 

two new red institutions and finally give the blue bank the one finger salute goodbye.

I have a bottle of bubbly on ice for when this absurdity is finally over.  And other one for the un-cabling of Rogers.  Which is next.  But not for awhile because if you’re like me, there’s only so much of this you can take.