The Good, Bad, and Sketchy of Customer Service

I grew up in a time when conspicuous consumption was viewed as gauche. People who were rich tried not to show it. Displays of money were crude and if you went into clothing stores, the cash register was not infrequently hidden in a back room. You talked to the sales clerk, picked your items with his or her advice, provided your cash or check and he or she would go to that back room to wrap up your item and get your receipt.

During that time, there were ridiculous warranties on some items. For example, there was this brand of jeans, Billy the Kid's, that my mom used to buy.

If your jeans wore out at any time within two years, you could return them and get a new pair, no questions asked. As a kid, I'd go through jeans in about six months. My mom would buy them a little big so she could get the same size for free six months later. Then they fit perfectly. Six months after that she'd get another free pair and they'd be a little tight, but wearable for another few months.

Sears did this too with their jeans into the 1980s. I became aware of this policy when I was working at a Denver Sears in 1978 during the Christmas shopping season and a drunk derelict came into the store, took off his jeans, stood at the cash register in his underwear, and said to me, "These are worn out. I need a new pair."

The jeans were filthy and down to the threads with holes in quite a few places. "How long have you worn them?"

"I dunno, about a year and half I guess."

"You wear them every day?"

"Yeah, ever day."

"These were good jeans then."

"Yeah, but they're worn out. Sears gives me a new pair every time."

"Every year and a half?"

"Yeah."

"Let me talk to the manager." I walked upstairs and was told that indeed this man was fully deserving of a new pair of jeans. I walked back to the cash register, the derelict still standing there in his briefs and told him to go pick out a new pair.

In the 1980s all that ended. Money and conspicuous consumption became a national obsession. We now live in a cruder and shallower society. I can't say I like the crudeness. Somehow with our new love of the crude and rude, interest in satisfying the customer was abandoned at run of the mill stores like Sears (although they still guarantee their Craftsman tools - which cost a pretty penny - for life). It became something that was only present at places where wealthy people shopped. That's been true for decades now.

I was reminded of the fact that we only believe in customer support for the upper class this past month when I had to deal with two problems: my laptop video card went haywire after two and a half years; my cell phone keyboard went dead after three months.

The laptop problem was an easy fix. It's an Apple. You pay a premium for an Apple laptop, about 30 percent more than the equivalent generic PC. It's worth it. Laptops are complicated pieces of machinery. Apples, I've found, are so well built that I can get years out of them. The longest a name brand IBM or clone laptop has lasted for me is 20 months. Plus the Apple operating system is far slicker. Then there is the subject of customer service.

Let's look at the case of my video card problem. With any other company, I would have had to talk to a customer service agent from some place like Bangalore, be put on hold for who knows how long, be probably be told I was S.O.L., and finally be told to "have a nice day and thank you for calling HewlettLenDellShiba".

But with Apple, I had my choice of two Apple stores within two miles of my house. I made an appointment at one of them. I walked in. They looked at the laptop promptly. A guy brought it into a back room. I waited five minutes. The guy came back and said, "Well your laptop is out of warranty, but the video card - and you may know this from looking around the web - is defective so we'll replace it for free."

"Free?"

"Yes, free. Just sign the paperwork and we'll have it done in a done in a day or two."

I signed the paperwork. Eight hours later, I got a call that my laptop was ready to be picked up. You really do get what you pay for.

This brings me to my other electronics problem in April. I had a cheap cell phone provider, Virgin. For $25 a month, I was promised unlimited messaging and internet plus 300 minutes of call time. I bought a phone from them in November. In early March, the physical keyboard on the phone started to act up.

The phone was under warranty so I sent Virgin an email. Three and a half weeks later Virgin sent me a refurb replacement. The refurb couldn't do internet except through wifi. I called Virgin - someone answered from the Philippines, I think - about 4 times about this. They had me do this, that and the other thing with the phone and kept telling me "wait four hours everything will work properly". It never did work properly.

I was polite with my conversations each time. Then out of the blue, my phone service was disconnected and Virgin dropped my phone number completely. They didn't know if they could get it back, but said they would try and gave me a temp number. It took a week before they reinstated my phone number, which meant people who had my business card and tried to call were out of luck for a week.

Virgin also sent me another new refurb phone. Again I had the same absence of internet. Again I kept calling customer service. Sometimes I'd talk to someone in the Philippines. Other times it was someone in Mexico. Again they had me do this, that and the other thing with the phone and kept telling me "wait four hours everything will work properly". It didn't. Finally, they sent me a third refurb phone and told me that this time they were sending me a "Class A refurb". I asked them what they had sent me in the past. The answer? Class B. They were sending me defective phones.

Thirty two days after I received my first refurb phone, I finally had a cell phone that worked completely. I probably spent close to 10 hours total dealing with Virgin over that time. I don't consider Virgin all that unusual in its atrocious customer service. I'd actually say it was par for the course although I have changed to a new cell phone provider in the hope that I'm wrong.

What's the take home message from this? America has definitely become a rougher and tougher place. We are less trusting. We are more money conscious. Customer service is a dicey thing. I note that yesterday I went in to have a couple of funny moles on my face biopsied. As I left the dermatologist's office, the receptionist shouted, "Wait!"

"Do I need to fill out some paperwork?"

"No, you need to pay."

"Huh?"

"We don't bill you. And we've already checked and found out you haven't met your deductible."

"You want me to pay for the visit?"

"Yeah, and the biopsy, too."

I sighed. "You haven't even done the cultures yet and I have to pay in advance?"

"Yes."

"Oh dear. American Express?"

"Visa or Master Card only." I handed her my card. I signed the little piece of paper and I thought of my mother, the careful shopper, buying Billy the Kid's jeans for me in a little store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin called the Squire Shop where they hid the cash register in a back room.