Apparently water delivery requires some special security regulations regarding address changes. I can’t do it through my online account. I have to call.

I first sent in the online form that allows me to choose the subject “Change my delivery address.”  I’m e-mailed back. No can do. Call us. Not sure why they bother to allow that subject to be selected on the form.

You can imagine the call. Lots of voice prompts asking me questions, then finally a voice informing me I’m finally at the right place, but I’ll probably have to hold for 25 minutes. To change my freaking delivery address?

I email again explaining that if they can’t change my delivery address, cancel my service. I’m not going to hold for 25 minutes.  Of course, no one reads the email. They send me the same automated message: no can do via email. Maybe they have a saved voice imprint that they check against my voice during the call to ensure I’m not a neighbor trying to steal Vera’s water?

This company seems to have some serious problems with technology. For one thing, the site is in Flash.  Every few times I go there, it requires me to do a software update.  Now, I have the $1200 Adobe professional suite with Flash, but apparently that’s not going to work for them.  OK.  Now shut down your browser to install this.  “It’s Easy!” they inform me.

Not easy enough. I have built and managed hundreds of website. There is no reason for their site to require special downloads. It’s a freaking site for ordering water!

It just seems the customer does not come first at Arrowhead. They need a new IT department and a new customer service attitude.

OK. Moving brings the rant out in me.

I just can’t go back to the wretched service of Yosemite Water.

At first I thought it was just a complicated order he was inputting for the couple that was in front of me. As the man stood talking to the order taker pictured above he pawed his girlfriend and squeezed her and generally acted like he was NOT in public. Turned out he and the Tender Greens dude were just buddies catching up on old times.

Finally, the customer (not the order taker who should have known better) said, OK, let’s see, I’d like…
OMG you mean you were just having a friendly conversation while you watched other customers standing and waiting? Nice. Bye now.

I have tried over and over to use the upgrade option with my miles. No class is good enough unless it is so close in cost to first class that you may as well not waste your miles on it. It smacks of misrepresentation, because the ONLY way you really learn this is by calling them. The website does not give any information about specific fare types needed to qualify.

United Airlines has a neat little online system – anyone can choose to upgrade to a first class ticket if there are seat available when you check in. I often wonder why other airlines don’t do this – it is kind of a clever way to get people late in the game (when they are dreading the flight that day or the next) – a time when you are most tempted to spend the extra money.

Anyway, the point is that SkyMiles do not really offer upgrades that are substantive and worth the time it takes to rack them up, and Delta should really come clean on this misrepresentation of their “rewards” for frequent flyers.

Update: Southwest has by far the fairest and most flexible frequent flyer program. You fly this many legs, you get this many legs – and if here is room you can book them the same day as the flight!

I have one of Verizon’s PDAs – the XV6700 – and I just hate it. I have hated it for almost a year now. The battery life is pathetic, so I bought an extended-life battery, which makes the phone feel like a damn brick. The battery cover slips off sometimes too. I was so fed up with it today, I decided to stop into my local Verizon store (where I have bought my other phones) to see about changing. I was fully prepared to pay full retail, even though they must be smoking crack to think these phones are really worth $400 when they are largely made in China. The full-retail price is a scam.

The gal at the door put my name on “The List” for customer service. No other names were ahead of me. The two agents were busy with customers. I looked at phones, read all the specs, and my hair grew about half an inch while waiting patiently for them to finish up. One did, then took a phone call. The gal with “The List” told me I’d be next right after the phone call. I’m not sure why I came after the phone call when I was on “The List” before the call came in. I watched this guy wander across the store – I gather for more information for the person on the other end of th ephone. He wandered across like he had cement in his shoes, very casual and relaxed. Now I’m starting to get irritated.

Out of the back of the store comes some other guy who stands around looking bored and generally useless. Maybe it wasn’t his job to take care of customers (ironically, he’s probably the freaking manager). The guy on the phone hangs up, wanders over to the bored guy and they start casually chatting.
Enough. That was 45 minutes of waiting. I told the girl with “The List” that I was leaving because they seem more interested in casual conversation than in customers. She nods and says, “Ok.”

OK?

OK.

I defected from AT&T some years ago because of their poor customer service, now Verizon Wilreless is imitating that poor customer service. With the iPhone coming out soon – a very attractive temptation – and only Cingular getting the exclusive – they should be particularly cautious about alienating customers.

UPDATE: Dumped Verizon for AT&T and the iPhone

Now I am on hold for the fourth person to try to fix the issue – their system basically does not recognize me no matter what I do. Of course, no surprise, their billing system has had NO PROBLEM recognizing me and billing me each month.

This really should be one of those things where they credit you for a month of service because the long holds, the inability to fix the problem, and the continued issue time after time makes me feel like they should reimburse me for my time wasted on this idiocy.

It’s funny too – because they walk you through all the same things – even when you tell them, not gonna work, tried it, uh uh, not that, won’t work.

If I had used that email for my credit cards, personal websites etc I would have been crying the past few weeks. I feel sorry for anyone who was screwed by this email problem with Time Warner. Comcast really was an amazing company – and I am sorry to see them leave the area.

If you type Time Warner or Roadrunner support into Google you will get the picture. They are pathetic. Lucky for me, I have other email addresses, so I’m not totally screwed. I have not had email on my high-speed account since the switchover occurred. I tried phone support – told them I know I have the right password (hell, I logged into Comcast to view my bill that same day with it), but it says it’s wrong. They could not reset it – they had their own computer problems. I thought I would just wait it out, but it would be nice to be able to log into an account I’m paying for every month. They won’t even let me change my credit card on the account.
LOL. They said, get this, I would need to FAX IT. FAX IT? Holy moly, this is one sad Internet operation if they are resorting to faxes to change a credit card. Maybe they should hire someone who knows about online forms. I buy things online with my credit card all the time, but maybe the folks at Time Warner are just a bit behind the times and haven’t figured out you can do things online. Apparently they haven’t figured out email yet, so it wouldn’t be surprising.

Time Warner Cable should not call their cable “roadrunner” – they should call it “Crow” – because that’s what they should be eating after going on about how great it would be to get their service.

Imagine if there were federal regulations about phone recordings that ask you to press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for this, 4 for that, then when you select an option you get five or six new options. As you weave through these options, you become more despairing as nothing seems to match exactly what you want to ask. You choose the closest thing you hear, then wait for 20 minutes or so (if you are lucky, less than half an hour) only to have to introduce yourself with,

“Hi, I’m not sure I pressed the right number…this is what I need”

It then varies as to what will happen to you. In the worst cases, you are given yet another “customer service” number to call (and I use “customer service” very loosely here).

Credit card companies and banks are probably some of the worst offenders. You must navigate baffling choices only to be put on music-hold to wait and find out if this person can indeed help you.

Savvier callers have figured out that if you hit zero or just refuse to make a choice, some companies will let you through to a real person. But those financial institutions learn quickly to eliminate even this options – as they find out how clever their customers can be at getting around the maze of numbers, they must sit down in their little cabals and say, “How can we make it even harder for them to actually get through to a human being.”

In fact, today I wanted to talk to Capital One about consolidating a couple of cards and getting a better deal with a travel rewards card. The closest choice I had was, get this, cancel your card. LOL!

There must be some way to make these phone mazes – and their customers’ lives – a little easier! And why not let that poor haggard caller desperately trying to figure out what number to push get through to a human being at some point!

My father was first at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater – which is the hospital he worked in for many years – it’s a wonderful place with pleasant staff and amazing customer service.

Tampa General does have great doctors and nurses, but they have serious customer service problems with some of their staff. I call it a customer service problem because anytime staff acts in such a way that is negative for the patient (customer), it is essentially poor customer service. I believe any company or institution that approaches the culture of their organization from a customer service perspective can solve a myriad of problems, including the potential for lawsuits.

My father reported to us a number of stories of staff swearing at each other in the hallways – this seemed awfully unprofessional so I figured it was maybe an isolated event. Then one day while visiting I experience this completely unprofessional behavior. An assistant or tech of some sort in the hallway said, “I’m not disconnecting nothing – that’s not my job, that’s BULLSHIT!” She then proceeded to complain for a few minutes in a hostile tone with all sorts of vulgarities tossed in.

My dad looked at me and nodded and said, “That’s what I’m talking about. It goes on all the time.” I was shocked!

I immediately knew what the problem was: the insitution’s culture. All entities – whether it be a mega-corporation, a nonprofit, or a hospital – has a culture. You can think of it as a micro-society. Culture is influenced by many things – such as the rules of the “society,” the positive reinforcement for following those rules, the extra reward for going above and beyond the “society’s” expectations, and negative consequences when you defy the rules.

Essentially, customer service works from the inside out – if you have a negative internal culture, it seeps out to the “visiting foreigners” (in this setting, the patient), either by how they are treated (from impatient to downright hostile) or what they are subjected to (angry employees yelling bullshit in the hallways while you are trying to heal).

When you expect employees to treat each other with respect, and create incentives to treat each other with dignity (and help out when needed even if it ain’t your job), they become that culture – and they naturally treat their customers/patients with this same respect and dignity.
Case in point:

My father did not understand the alarm cord in the bathroom – he though you pulled it and it would do something – so he pulled it a few times thinking it wasn’t working.

Now if you had this happen and were a healthcare professional – you might think – whoah! Is someone in serious trouble? But not in this case – the woman came barrelling in furious – basically angry he pulled it more than once. Whoah, Nelly! That is no way to treat someone who has had life-saving surgery and is feeling weak and vulnerable. But this “professional” was used to treating her fellow employees poorly with inpugnity – the obvious extension of that is to treat all people in her work environment poorly. My father said even when he apologized she simply would not accept it – he pissed her off and that was that. Yikes! That is not someone who belongs in a hospital full of sick, vulnerable people!

Tampa General Hospital is in desperate need of what is traditionally called “Internal Customer Service” – a set of guidelines that helps employees know what is expected of them and gives them ways to reward EACH OTHER when they feel someone has shown exceptional customer service toward another employee. The company I work for uses “scratcher cards” – which you hand to a fellow employee to thank them for being especially helpful or positive. They scratch off a gold seal and see points or some reward which they can redeem in the company store. The feeling of good will this elicits is really wonderful – and the interesting thing is that it feels better to give than receive. It feels great to walk up to a fellow employee and say, “You really were great today – you took care of that request so quickly and really helped me out, so I’d like to give you a token of my appreciation.”

The feeling you get from recognizing your fellow workers starts to permeate the workplace, and soon the idea of saying, ‘That’s bullshit – I’m not doing that.” goes against your grain. You have created a positive customer service culture.

Various things can be used to remind people of this culture – from posters to games to pep rallies of a sort. It takes about a year for the culture to start to show significant changes. Usually the negative people feel more and more marginalized and eventually no longer feel comfortable – they either leave the culture by quitting or find ways to change and be part of the culture.

Tampa General would do well by its staff and its patients if it created an internal customer service initiative to deal with the high level of negative employee behavior in its hospital corridors. The benefits are great – it becomes a nice place to work so you get far less turnover of healthy employees and you also are less likely to get sued. Face it – it is a lot harder to sue people you like than a faceless hospital with nasty and hostile employees!

The keyboard selection was lousy – but I really wanted to get one today, so I finally picked one that was barely satisfactory. When you work on a computer 10 hours a day, you can be pretty particular about your keyboard and mouse. I also picked up a new mouse pad and went to the register. There were only two open, so I settled behind two people and figured it would be about 10 minutes – Best Buy has some sort of checkout process that takes forever even if you only have one item. Well, the woman in front of me had her credit card denied but she wasn’t backing down. She seemed to have another one, and since now there were three lines, but they were three deep each, I figured I would just wait it out. After about 10 minutes or so I gave up and went to another line.

I’m not kidding you, I was fourth in line and the first guy was buying one freaking thing and it was taking forever. I finally just said, I give up, put my stuff down on an empty register counter and walked out. I saw the guy at the door look to see if the lines were really that long. What Best Buy doesn’t realize is that a long line means nothing – three people in a line is a long wait because the cashiers are slow and their check-out process is absurdly complicated.

I figured I would drive over to Comp USA – it’s a couple of miles further away, and usually a pain in the ass to get in and out of, but I really wanted my keyboard.

First thing I noticed – everyone wanted to help me! They have definitely stepped up their customer service.

Second thing I noticed, they had an awesome selection of keyboards. Whatever CompUSA has done to change their act from a few years ago, it is working. The place was well-stocked, the workers were friendly and helpful, and checkout took exactly 3 minutes.
I realized this happened once before when I wanted to buy a scanner. I don’t know why I keep going to Best Buy for computer needs – the store covers too much territory to have a truly superlative computer department. I guess it’s the convenience, but I know next time I will remember Best Buy is fine for buying CDs or DVD players, but Comp USA is the best choice for computer products when you are buying locally (I buy my computers online).

UPDATE: With CompUSA out of business now Best Buy will have even less reason to deliver good customer service

Until over 2 months later when they sent what they “claimed” was a “final notice” – first notice I ever received. This rather dunning notice claimed I owed them $150.51 – an absurd amount. They wanted $60.62 for the one empty bottle I still had (is this Yosemite Water bottle made of silver – give me a break).

Most likely this has to do with shoddy record-keeping – as Yosemite Water delivery service did not make it seem as if this is a well-run business.

I have switched to Arrowhead Water – excellent service, a REAL website for customers to handle orders and make changes to delivery dates, automated payments – things that are for the CUSTOMER.

If you are considering home water delivery, I highly recommend Arrowhead. I strongly do not recommend Yosemite Water home delivery service as “customer service” is not in their vocabulary. Arrowhead water tastes much better too – and you can get bottled sparkling water in cases! I love getting my Pelligrino delivered.

Yosemite Waters needs some new management.