Whatever Happened to Good Customer Service?

We purchased a new refrigerator and stove from Lowes roughly 3+ years ago.  Our stove was in a dangerous situation, emitting natural gas throughout our house do to an internal leak in the oven.  We decided that if we were going to buy a new stove we may as well buy a "matching" stainless steel refrigerator too!  Given our luck, the refrigerator would probably die soon too since both the stove and the refrigerator were the same age.  Learning from past mistakes, we opted to pay for the extended warranty and the service plan.  The service plan allowed for us to have a repair person come out and fix the appliance without any additional out of pocket expenses.

The refrigerator has always been noisy and the freezer (which is located on the bottom portion of the appliance) wall was continuously covered in thick frost.  I had a repairman come out to take a look at the refrigerator a year ago because it was making this very loud and funny noise and the refrigerator portion of the appliance didn't seem like it was cold enough.  The repairman pretty much told me that it was fine and that I was just imagining it.  He did though, say to keep an eye on it.

Last weekend, I opened the refrigerator to get some milk for the kids and it just seemed very warm to me.  The last time I experienced this kind of "warm" was at my parent's old house and the refrigerator was in the initial stages of catching on fire.  So given that experience, I didn't like it and nor did my husband.  He made a call to the "service" company and they couldn't get out to our house until Tuesday.  We had to wait 3 days for someone to take a look at it.  Meanwhile, the old refrigerator that I thought would have been dead by now is in our garage working like a work horse and we began transferring items over to it to get by.

The repairman showed up at our house with an attitude.  Fortunately, I wasn't home and my husband managed to handle this whole appliance debacle.  Turns out the fridge was broken and needed new parts, parts the repairman didn't have and had to order.  The order and receipt of the parts would be two days.  My husband kindly asked the repairman if there was a place that he (my husband) could purchase these parts in an effort to expedite the repair?  The service guy had such an attitude that he pretty much told my husband, "if you don't like it, you can always call another service repair company and pay out of pocket."  He seriously said that!  Really truly said that.  Can you believe that?

Well, I get home from work on Wednesday and the package with the repair part was sitting on my front stoop.  We get in the house and there was a message on the answering machine, the service repair company cancelled our appointment because a part was not going to be delivered until Thursday.  They cancelled our appointment without talking to us first.  And they called the home instead of my husband's cell phone like they were instructed to do.  Needless to say, we were livid beyond belief.  My husband is an attorney, I just started a new job two weeks earlier and my husband had to rearrange his schedule to make Thursday's appointment fit in his day.  He now had to attempt to reschedule his Friday.  I, given I'm on a 90 day probationary period, can't take time off of work.  The refrigerator is a necessary evil.  And we find we are at the mercy of the service company.

My husband called up the service company and they pretty much told him that someone would be at our house between 8-11am on Friday.  My husband asked to speak to the person in charge.  That person wasn't available to speak with over the phone.  Instead my husband received this email later in the day.

Hello Mr. Hyman,

Laura, our office supervisor, forwarded me some concerns that you had.

- Attitude of technician.  I apologize that if you felt our technician had an attitude.  I will address this directly with the technician.

- Concern of time.  I have reviewed the route, the earliest time we can offer you is 8-11.  The technician's first call should be quick.  We are anticipating that it will be very possible he will arrive right around 9 AM.

Thank you for addressing your concerns.  We appreciate your business, and have a good afternoon.

Best Regards,

Adam Butcher

Vice President 

Fred's Appliance, LLC

My husband responds …

I appreciate the quick response. I appreciate that you think the 8 am call will be quick, but let me explain to you why I am so upset that I am second in line tomorrow.

While I understand the need for parts, I don’t understand when I asked the repairman a simple question (can I go get the parts somewhere to expedite the process), the only answer he gave me was, “You have a service contract, and you’re stuck with us. If you don’t like it, go pay out of pocket for some other company to do it, if you can find one!” That attitude has colored my opinion of your entire company.

Second, today’s appointment was cancelled with only a phone message left at my home, when I provided you my cell phone as the primary contact number. I would never cancel an appointment in my business without speaking to a live person. The appointment should have been kept open until someone could speak to me to reschedule.

Finally, I do not see the harm in rearranging your first and second appointments, which are a mere 10 minute drive from each other, when you had no problem cancelling an entire appointment without even speaking to me first. I do not accept that the calls cannot be reversed. It’s an easy fix to appease a very disgruntled customer. I have now re-shuffled my schedule, which is not easy to do, three times this week so that you can fix my refrigerator. Given my level of inconvenience, I do not think it’s too much to ask that I be the first appointment of the morning, a request that I made and was told would be honored.

I am available to speak about these issues at any time. I would appreciate either a response that I am the first call tomorrow morning, or the courtesy of a phone call to explain why that’s not possible.

Regards,

Jon Hyman

cell phone xxx-xxx-xxxx

The Vice President of Fred's Appliance responds ….

Hello Mr. Hyman,

I will look into the technician's response to you further.  The appropriate response would be: we are unable to obtain parts for your extended warranty company from anywhere but them.  Your particular extended warranty company has parts distribution locked down.  They are looking for ways to cut costs.  One way they are accomplishing this is by requiring us to order parts from their particular distribution channels.  They cut the servicer's distribution channels right out of the picture.  This also cuts our ability to pickup any needed parts at a local distributor.  In result, the customer suffers waiting longer times for parts to arrive.   Unfortunately, you are at the mercy of this extended warranty company.  If we could change it, we would!  The service that we can provide under your particular contract doesn't represent the service we truly can offer an end customer.  Any other time, parts are generally just 1 business day away.

In regards to the cancellation of your appointment today - this was a delay in obtaining parts.  You are at the mercy of the distribution times by your extended warranty company.  I apologize that we didn't call your cell.  We are processing many service orders a day.  Minor mistakes can happen.  You were called though, and not left hanging.  

I do understand that you made a request of first call.  It is simply a "request."  We absolutely in no circumstance ever promise time frames.  We must run routes in a logical and most optimized order.  I feel that your appointment time that was given of 8-11 is very fair.  The best we can offer you is 8-11 as the first customer on the route has already confirmed their appointment.

Thank you, and have a good afternoon.

Best Regards,

Adam Butcher

Vice President

Fred's Appliance, LLC

His response was well and good, but when an employee makes a promise to a customer, the company needs to do what it can to make things right. So my husband responded to his email as such ...

But I confirmed my appointment for yesterday, which was then cancelled from under me. You could certainly swap the appointments, if for no other reason than as a showing of good faith to make up for the attitude of your technician. Needless to say, this hasn't helped. I really would appreciate a phone call instead of this back and forth.

I could appreciate the systematic scheduling and efficiency.  I understand too that they may have their hands tied to their supplier.  But, Fred's Appliance gets our business because of our service contract with their supplier.  In essence we are keeping them in business.  And the professionalism of the service repairman was abysmal at best.  Mr. Butcher's response below is what totally blew me away.  

Mr. Hyman,

There is nothing more to discuss.  We will see you tomorrow between 8-11.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Adam Butcher

Vice President

Fred's Appliance, LLC

Had I ever spoken to a customer at any of the jobs I worked at, like Adam Butcher did to my husband, I would have been immediately terminated from my job.  I've dealt with customers in all of my positions.  There have been times when I wanted to crawl through a phone and smack the crud out of someone, but I always kept a level head and professionalism.  

Good or even respectable customer service is a thing of the past.  For some reason, companies forget that without customers they are no more.  You treat each and every customer, even if you want to smack the crud out of them, like they are the King of Sheba.