Rosa Say over at Talking Story has a great post about customer service today. She talks about her experiences trying to check in to a Hotel Room she booked in advance in Prescott Arizona. As the experience goes from bad to worse you can feel the text on the page get bolder and bolder. Rosa has always been an inspiration and a gentle voice of compassion and calm. To feel her anger you know the experience must have been extremely frustrating.
The title of her post is “Be right… or do right.” As the frustration dies down she asks the question…
Why is it that people have this need to be right, instead of just doing the right thing for other people? Why try to teach your customer a lesson? What good will it do? Hey, even if you don’t care about the customer at all, why give yourself a miserable day in the process? Why not be mea ho‘okipa, a gracious hostess, and give your guest a reason to cheer for you, and a reason to appreciate you? A reason to be your biggest fan?
I can really relate to Rosa’s question. I am in the middle of the worst customer service nightmare of my life. I echo Rosa’s inquiry: Why can’t some businesses treat people with respect instead of disdain and anger?
My problem started two months ago with my domain and hosting company. I received a strange e-mail saying my domain e-mail address had been changed. I couldn’t log into my account and when I contacted my credit card company realized my domain account had been compromised to the tune of thousands of dollars in bogus domain names and high speed hosting accounts. I found this out on Saturday and it was Monday before anyone at the domain company could help me. My credit card company closed my account and issued me a new card. It took a week of calls (being on hold at least 15 minutes each time) to resolve the problem. At least I thought it was resolved.
When I was finally able to log into my account, I noticed over 50 new domain names. I called them back and they could not remove them. They just marked them “fraud” and left them in my account. The fraudulent hosting accounts were still there too. Instead of fixing my account they just patched it up. Why couldn’t they just open a new account and move my dozen or so domain names? Why was every experience with this company frustrating and fruitless?
After numerous calls and hours of time I was able to get most of my domain names repointed and my hosting set back up. Since my account was still messed up I thought about moving my domain names elsewhere, but I didn’t really know how to do it. Unfortunately I left things as they were.
Everything stayed the same for a month and then another strange e-mail arrived. This time saying my account was closed. All of a sudden my whole web empire was down. My hosting was inaccessible and all of my domain names were suddenly pointing at Search Ad pages. No warning, just everything down. I called them three times to find out that my credit card company has issued a credit against them. After checking with my card company I found that this company had double charged my account and had issued a credit for only half of the amount. The credit from the card company was for the additional half. Basically a complete draw.
This should be an easy fix. It should only take a few minutes to get transaction numbers and the problem would be solved. For some reason the domain company won’t talk to me or answer my e-mails. I’ve gone to the corporate level and still no satisfaction. Talk about frustration. I’ve done some research online and many other customers of this company are experiencing the same thing. Must be the lucrative ad revenue from other people’s domains?
I have school sites, Toastmaster sites and library sites that are now pointing at lousy search ad pages. And I can’t fix the problem. I’ve gone to the upstream domain provider and they can’t help me. Does anyone have an answer?
I’ve learned a few things through this whole ordeal.
1. Customer service is GOLD. A low price does not make up for bad service.
2. If you have a problem with a company and they don’t fix the problem, go elsewhere as fast as you can.
3. Do some research before deciding to do business with a particular company.
4. Be very careful of spam e-mail for domain and hosting companies. Phishing and other scams abound.
If anyone has any recommendations for good hosting and domain companies I would love to hear from you.
The company I used… when you register, it just don’t fly.
