[Edit: Please note that as of 5:51pm my phone service was restored by an act of excellent customer service. Credo will be contacting me next week with a corrected billing statement, and my cell phone service will go back to normal. After having spent about 10 years of my life with a recurring participation in the customer service industry, I've decided to leave the following blog post up, unaltered except for this preamble, with the following caveats:
1) If you read the blog post, please also read the comments. Mark from Credo kept his promise and got my phone turned back on immediately. That scores MAJOR POINTS for me. As a customer, I know businesses are run by imperfect humans, and that I am also one of those imperfect humans. I don't expect humans to treat me like I'm right all the time, because I'm not right all the time, or even most of the time. I do expect human beings that are part of companies to treat me as a human-being-customer to their company, one that has feelings and emotions and a real life apart from the dollars I give in exchange for goods and services.
2) If you are a customer, and we all are at some point, please remember that the people in a business are also human, most of us just trying to get that mortgage and rent paid for. There are plenty of awful customer service experiences that I've declined to post about for various reasons. But if something bad has happened, blog it, or youtube it, or write letters, or take that crappy toy back to the store, or whatever! It's up to us, the customers, to make sure our society works like it is supposed to.
Enough soap boxing. Thank you again to Credo for the speedy response, and for making sure that we both doing our best to make this does not happen again.]
Dear Credo Mobile:
Life has been peaceful for the last few days since you turned off my cell phone. Someday when a truly better alternative to cell phones appears I’ll give it up, but I still find it necessary. I’ll admit I only really miss talking to my wife, my mom and my dad, and I being in touch with them is necessary to me.
Thank you for allowing me to switch my plan last month and not once informing me that the moment I switched my plan to a lower minute usage that my phone bill would sky rocket to around $450. Yes, I’m clear that $150 of that is for my wife’s canceled phone, but I figured a person who actually understood customer service would warn me that my new, requested $49.99 service plan was really going to net out to a $300 fee due to minutes accrued previously in the month. I can see how you might think that by asking for a less expensive service plan I actually wanted to pay you more money.
I know I’ve checked my address with you on 3 separate occassions, but I have yet to receive a bill from you since I’ve moved to my new home. I should understand, after all I live on a street with a Spanish name–Escuela–and it’s given your agents angst, given how many times I’ve had to re-spell it to them. I have faith that your bills will make it to me someday, or that someday you’ll grant me access to log-in to your website with what I could swear was the email address I provided to your agents.
But I really can’t wait for someday and I’d like to just wire you the money. However it seems that by shutting off my phone, you’ve made it completely impossible for me to contact you and get the dollar amounts I actually owe you. I know, I’ve tried to call you every way possible today. I’ve even gone to your website, clicked on that orange “Click to Talk” weblink and attempted to get your operators to call me. Nope, looks like not even your operators can reach my phone.
And, to be fair, I did just find your customer service email address, and I will be emailing them right after I post this blog. You’re lucky, not many people read my blog, and those that do are a bit desensitized to my whining in moments like this.
Here’s to hoping we can resolve my problems with my phone service soon. I have no problem paying you what I really owe you, as my previous year and a half of on time payments should prove.
Take care,
Jeremy Osborne
PS. You should make sure you train the agents to never again tell a customer the following, “Yes, Credo may have overchaged you, and they might reverse their charges, but you will still have to pay for the extra [utilities] taxes due [to our mistakes].” Tsk, tsk, that’s a big customer service no-no.
