Today I went to bat again, defending the little guy against the tyranny of illogic and greed.

The battle over $86.93

I spent about 45 minutes on the phone today with Qwest/CenturyLink, because my bill increased from $36.99 to $67.98 in May, $54.45 in June, $50.98 in July.  Very random increases.

Qwest’s low-level customer support gal told me that some promotions expired, which caused the increase in my bill.  This was an unsatisfactory answer on a number of levels.  To top that off, I learned that I have been paying for a service called Qwest @Ease for the past 10 months – a service I never requested and certainly do not desire.

Qwest @Ease cost me $129.90 over the course of those 10 months.  I don’t know how I got signed up for it in the first place.  I certainly was not utilizing the service, which offers a yearly PC scan (I use a Mac), an email account (I use gmail), and some online hard drive space (I am the owner of a web hosting company and have no need for whatever crappy server space Qwest might provide).

The initial customer support person, claiming powerlessness, transferred me to her boss, Ray.

At first Ray was condescending and rude, telling me that I was getting too good of a deal as it was – seriously.  He copped an attitude and said that I was getting some $10 discount over the past 11 months.  Regardless of what discount I was getting, that wasn’t the issue at hand.  I wasn’t calling Qwest to check on the net balance of any over-charges and under-charges.  The issue I was raising was one of being OVER-charged, not under-charged.  So poor listening there on Ray’s part.  And double negative for being a jerk.

At the end of the day, Ray credited my account $42.97 to cover 3 months of that stupid @Ease service that I never asked for, never wanted, and never used.

So here’s the problem – I am still out $86.93 on the Qwest @Ease service.  That is not a victory as far as I am concerned.

With a clearer head tonight, I made a commitment to cancel my Qwest internet service.  I signed up for USI Wireless, which for that same $36.99 offers roughly 5x faster service – jumping from 1.5 mb/s to 7 mb/s.  Plus, I get to support a local company.  Double victory for me.

Was it worth it for Qwest?  They lost a 4-year customer over an $86 dispute.  A dispute that I feel I was in the right on.

So where did Qwest go wrong?

In my experience, Qwest has trained their customer service team to be chintzy, tight-fisted with refunds, and rude (more on this later).

Is it a winning strategy?  Maybe.

Qwest’s unwillingness to listen to WHY I wouldn’t want the @Ease service points to a bigger problem of values within the company.  What does Qwest really value?

Maybe Qwest values that $86.93 more than the value me and my paltry $36.99/month.  That is certainly how it seemed on the phone today.

But it doesn’t take a genius to see how $36.99 per month can quickly make $86.93 look small.  In fact, it will take a little over two months.

Over the course of a year, I was scheduled to spend $443.88 on Qwest internet service.  Is it worth it to piss me off over an add-on service that I never used, never wanted, and never asked for?

Me.

I own a small company and am always listening to clients.  Seriously.  I am always seeking feedback on my communication, the stuff I produce, my tone, my costs, etc.  I don’t believe that Qwest cares about integrity.  I do.  Maybe for a company of my size I need to care about each customer.  Maybe I need to listen.  Nope.

I know of many companies in my line of work who value the dollar above all else.  They are cut-throat with their clients and are inflexible.  It is very possible to make a good living this way.  Qwest certainly has.

But that is not the type of company I run.  I value every client.  I really do.  I care about people.  I have gone to great lengths and devoted big resources to making clients happy when I could have easily dropped them.  Why do I do this?

Because I value integrity.  I value my reputation.  I value people.

Qwest does not.

I purchased a new MyTouch 4G last Friday at a mall kiosk in Rockford, IL along with an $80 monthly contract.  The phone never worked properly.  In fact, it didn’t work at all.

I spent Saturday morning on the phone with T-Mobile trying to solve the issue, and the final conclusion was that I needed a new sim card.  Not a big deal, except that I was in unfamiliar territory in Madison, WI without access to the internet, so finding a T-Mobile store would not be easy.

The T-Mobile customer service representative directed me to a nearby Radio Shack for help.  The rep put me on hold while he called the store to verify that they would be able to help me.  I asked if the Radio Shack sim card would be free for me, and the rep said, “Yes.”

Upon arriving at the Radio Shack, I was informed that they didn’t have any sim cards and that I would have to go to a different Radio Shack across town.  So I drove 20 minutes to the Radio Shack at the West Town Mall.

The staff at this Radio Shack seemed to want nothing to do with me, but I pressed them anyway, explaining the situation and asking for the promised sim card.  They refused, saying that I could pay $25 for a new sim card.  Having just purchased a new phone, I wasn’t about to shell out another $25 for a sim card, especially when T-Mobile promised me a replacement one for free.

So, I left Radio Shack angry and disappointed. I decided to cut my losses and head home, with plans to bring the phone into my local T-Mobile store when I got home.

Saturday night I arrived home in Minneapolis and headed over to the T-Mobile store.  After spending the last 6 hours in the car, I had time to stew and was rearing for a battle.  Surprisingly, my local T-Mobile store was unbelievably helpful.

Within 5 minutes, I had a new sim card installed and was on my merry way with a working cell phone.  *and there was much rejoicing*

Buuuut I was still dissatisfied with the phone, itself.  The MyTouch 4G is an amazing phone – twice as fast as my iPhone and with 100x cooler features.  The big downside is that it sucks up battery life like there is no tomorrow.  I had to charge it twice per day.

Ultimately, I decided to return it to my local T-Mobile store, not knowing how the store would react.  Returns are always a weird thing, because stores like Wal-mart and Target accept returns with no questions asked, but other stores can be ornery about returns.  Thankfully, this T-Mobile store was a “no questions asked” type of store.

After explaining my situation, the sales guy at the T-Mobile store gave me everything I wanted – a refund for the MyTouch 4G and a month-to-month plan for $50/month.  +1 for T-Mobile customer service!  They earned my loyalty for the foreseeable future.

Radio Shack, on the other hand, committed the ultimate corporate sin of disappointing a customer and letting the customer leave unhappy when they could have easily helped said customer out.  For better or worse, I will probably never enter another Radio Shack store.  It’s not that I believe them to be all bad or anything, but why waste my time there when there are all sorts of other stores offering the same items?

That particular Radio Shack store definitely suffers from poor management, a topic which I will address in a forthcoming blog post.

So, I closed the page.

Why did I close the page?  Because I was a bit offended that the company either does not trust me to scrub through the videos, or the company lacks the technology to allow me to scrub the videos.  Either way, I am not going to purchase a service from a company that refuses me that basic luxury.

Video scrubbing is now the norm online!  No scrubbing is so linear (read: “1997″).

I got thinking about this today when I had a question about the Rock the Garden event at the Walker Art Center.  My question, “Is re-admittance allowed?”, is simple and could probably be answered quickly by any number of staff members over at either the Walker or at The Current.  The problem/opportunity is that the official web page advertising the event for The Current does not allow commenting.  There is also no contact email listed on the page.  So, I am left without any recourse for finding an answer to my simple question about the event.

It seems that web pages don’t allow commenting, simply out of tradition – an old tradition that pre-dates Web 2.0 functionality.

Are there other reasons why people shouldn’t allow comments on web pages?

5 days ago, I checked out a Redbox DVD from the local McDonald’s with the intention of returning it the next day.  For those of you who don’t know, Redbox is a DVD distributor that charges $1/day for rentals and has distribution outlets in all sorts of places.  Pretty convenient, eh? The problem is, I forgot to return the DVD and am now left paying $5 of what should have been a $1 bill.

This experience makes me much less likely to rent from Redbox next time around, because I feel like they are nickel-and-diming me (i.e. ripping me off).  I would rather spend the $4 to get a rental at Blockbuster and not worry about returning it on a certain date.

So, I got to thinking about my website design business.  I don’t nickel-and-dime.  That is, I am very up front about costs, and so long as my clients ask nicely, I will even make little tweaks to their websites for free that are completely outside of any agreement we may have.  I figure that sort of customer service leads to happier customers which leads to a better reputation for my business.  So I ask this of you: Are you nickel-and-diming your customers?

There is nothing worse than being in a situation where your pocketbook is at the mercy of experts in an area that you know very little about.  I just got back from a car-repair shop in Minneapolis, where I had to get my car towed due to its reluctance to start when I turned the key in the ignition.

I know nothing about cars, and car-repair shops are scary for that reason.  I cringed when the guy at the desk told me that it might cost $100 for the mechanic to simply open the hood (the coat hanger that I was previously using to open the hood fell out and was rendered unusable).  Then there was the fact that the car wouldn’t start up.  Oh boy, was I in for it!

Thankfully, AAA took care of my towing expenses, or else the final $174 bill would have been much higher.

As I was waiting for my car to get fixed, the dollar signs painfully whizzing past my brain, I had a moment of clarity.  Some of my clients probably feel the same way when they ask me to fix a website issue or build a website from scratch.  That is, my clients mostly know next to nothing about what it takes to build a website. That’s not a dig on them, quite the contrary.  We can’t expect to know everything about everything – that’s what experts are for!  So, we hire a mechanic to fix our car, a web guy to build our website, an accountant to do our taxes, etc.  All of these experts are to a large extent given free reign to charge what they deem appropriate (and what the market will bear), and we must grin and take it. We have no other choice in the matter, except to learn the trade in question, but who has time for that?!

Next time someone asks me “how much?”, I will have much more empathy for their situation.  They are probably scared, gripping their checkbook and bracing for the worst.  Like me at the car-repair shop earlier, they will have to trust the expert (me) to do a great job at a fair price.