It seems to be a national pasttime to grumble at our telecom companies, but they really do it to themselves…
Yesterday we got a call from a Rogers person asking us if we wanted to switch our phone service from Bell. (We’re Rogers cable and internet customers and we had previously indicated an interest in phone service if they could give us a deal.) I went over all the fees and premiums with a very nice salesperson and it looked reasonable compared with the Bell plan we currently have.
I agreed to be put over to the “verification agent” who would finish the sale. I was a bit amused by the voice of the woman on the line who had a strong East Asian accent but claimed her name was “Allison Williams” or something equally WASP-y. As she was going over the details of the sale, she hit on a couple of snags (one technical, one contractual) that I never heard from the first guy, so I aborted the sale.
Let me stress that both customer representatives were very polite, reasonable and non-pushy throughout. I kind of felt bad about cancelling the sale after all of their time involved, and in fact apologized a couple of times to “Allison”. She was still very pleasant, and didn’t sound too disappointed, as people on commission often do when you say “no” (maybe she was on straight salary). I finished having fairly nice feelings about Rogers, which is rare.
Then they blew it.
Later that afternoon I got a call from one of Roger’s next-tier representatives asking me exactly why I didn’t want to switch my service, and starting to play hardball. This person, by contrast with the other two, was pushy, argumentative and very quick to say “no, let me finish: YOU don’t understand…”, which is not a button of mine I like getting pushed! She also continually split hairs about whether the fact we would have to stay with Rogers for two years or get penalized was really a “contract” (another button: wannabe lawyers). It finally got to the point where I was yelling at her (NOT something I do often!), and finally hung up on her in disgust, leaving me cranky for the rest of the evening, and almost—but not quite—willing to endure a lot of crap from Bell just to spite Rogers.
Bravo, Rogers, well done.
For some reason, we tend to get a lot of calls from telemarketers (sometimes more than one per day). I have tried several strategies for dealing with them including hanging up immediately (which I decided was letting them off too easily) to feigning interest in their offers to waste their time (but it was wasting MY time too).
I finally hit upon what I believe is the optimal solution: I tell them that I am not the head of the household and am not the one who decides about carpet cleaning/long distance service/newspaper subscriptions etc. However, I would be happy to get that person on the phone. Unfortunately, that person lost the use of their legs in Afghanistan and might take some time to get to the phone, but PLEASE don’t hang up, because they are crawling down the stairs towards the phone right now. (They never suspect that I might be making this up because really, what kind of sick, immature person would lie about such a thing?) I then place the phone into the drawer. Periodically, every 5 minutes or so, I check back to make sure the telemarketer is still holding, and I repeat PLEASE don’t hang up or you will have made this legless veteran crawl to the phone in vain. Eventually, they get wise and hang up, but I figure I’m performing a service by at least tying them up for a bit before they can interrupt the NEXT guy’s dinner, and besides, it amuses me mightily.
Oooh, that’s nasty!! 😀
I tend be more-or-less civil to people on the phone (though with telemarketers I usually just talk right over their spiel “I’mnotinterestedthanksbye” click); this woman just hit all the wrong buttons and I blew up. (Peter was mightily entertained.) What I want to know is exactly what did Rogers think they could gain by bullying? As soon as it started escalating you’d think any smart salesperson would back off a tad. Or do I not understand Salesmanship 101?