Companies where I have experienced excellent service — and where if I should “cancel” (or whatever would be the equivalent) there is a likelihood I’ll come back in the future, and, where, in the meantime, I’ll be enthusiastically referring friends and family:

Enterprise Rental Car
Amica Insurance
Trader Joe’s
Southwest Airlines
Midwest Airlines

(And I’ve found American Airlines to also be reasonably good.)

…and a number of smaller businesses and some sole proprietorships that are less well known (including a mom-and-pop ISP).

(While I know you want to keep things positive, for this topic, but my Hall of Shame — for lousy customer service — would include: AOL, Best Buy, Huntington Banks, SBC (for pushing spyware with their DSL), AT&T calling cards (for their deceptive fee structure), Albertson’s, Days Inn, Circuit City, and Network Solutions. Did I mention Best Buy? Cookie-demanding Best Buy. Best Buy and AOL seem to share that short-term thinking, screw the customer, anti-social mindset.)

(And re Disneyland: Pleasant employees, fun experience, but their food prices are criminal — highway robbery of a completely captive market. There should be a law against such abuse of consumers. The worst job in Disneyland is the cashier at the pizza place. The customers hate you because they are duly appalled at how much money they have to pay for a slice of pizza and a soda. It’s trickery.)

This is going to sound like more AOL bashing but part of the problem is that at some level I don’t think AOL ever really believed a large part of its success was ever due to providing a technical service. They saw themselves as marketers and played every mind game in the book to buy and keep subscribers. What they were selling, the online access and experience, isn’t what made them huge – that was secondary. I really think they believe that, and in the end, that became the working reality. When you have to be shady to keep your base, it’s all over.

By the way, one of the shows I’m listening to is Glen Beck (I’m a leftist but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy his talent and the show’s comedy). Today I made a point to download the MP3 of his comments on that show he made last week about your story. I’d had heard he did so someplace. It was incredible! They went back and forth and took a flurry of callers in hour 3. Vince, let me know if you heard it or not.

Dave

As far as I’m concerned, “John” was responsible for his own actions. No one made him give you a hard time. He chose to give you a hard time just to promote himself with his employer. John deserved to be fired and I hope he stays on the unemployment line for a long time to come.

Customer service in general has become lousy in recent years and customer service reps (not their supervisors) are to blame.

Good experience? DirectTV and Verizon Wireless. I’ve had Verizon Wireless for over four years now and will never switch cellphone companies. They have treated us totally great over the years. Every time we have to call (which is extremely rare), we have been treated with great respect. DirectTV is the same. We’ve had them for over two years now and I’ll never go back to a cable company again. Once we ordered PPV and sat down to watch the movie. Our electricity went off due to a storm. (We have some serious storms down here and so far have only lost signal once. This time it was the entire house that lost power, not the dish losing signal.) We called DirectTV to explain the situation to them and they gave us another viewing of the PPV movie free of charge! It was so easy!

Because of the awsome way we have been treated by those two companies, we will continue to have use their services. As for MCI – we will never sign up with them again, ever.

You’d think they’d at least be able to read my call record and let me save my breath.

I too got a lot of crap when I tried to cancel my account (but I’d read all about it on the web, as AOL has a long history of doing this to people. It’s not just John. They are trained to make it as difficult as possible for people to cancel).

Now here’s the thing. AOL charges at the beginning of each month BEFORE usage for that month. I cancelled my account mid-month (after telling the person I was talking to that I was going to join a class action suit if they didn’t cancel my account). Then I got a bill from AOL stating that I owed them more money. I’d cancelled the card I was using on the AOL account, so they couldn’t automatically withdraw the funds.

They started calling me constantly demanding more money, and each time they called, I started telling them they were being recorded. They immediately hang up when I say that. Then they sent me a collection letter. I wrote them back detailing how much time I wasted trying fixes that didn’t work, etc., and explained that I’m not paying a cancellation fee, nor am I paying an extra month, and because of my wasted time in dealing with them, I consider they owe ME money. Can you believe they are still calling me? Talk about harrassment.

Really a dispicable company. They should be fined for putting customers through such aggravation and wasting our time.

I’m so glad you got news coverage of this. And thank you for letting me vent.

Have a gorgeous day.

wait…

UMPH…

Sorry… Got a nickel stuck in my ass.

You nailed it and I agree 100%. This is exactly how customer service should be done. Bullying and harassing a customer into keeping an account they don’t want is not good or smart business.

AOL’s aggressive tactics do nothing to regain a lost customer at a future time. They lost a customer forever….and earned a million dollars’ worth of bad publicity in the interim. Hope they thought it was worth it.

Kudos to Audible for excellent customer service.

like my old friend used to say: its a bad luck to have a nickel stuck in your ass

Either that or you’re a complete moron.