Am I the only one that has noticed the atrocious customer service efforts by major corporations as of late? They literally stopped trying to help within the last year.
As soon as COVID began all of these companies seemed to have furloughed 100% of their customer service department before I even knew who Anthony Fauci was. It’s almost as if they spent the last 20 years doing a shittier and shittier job just waiting for a pandemic to kick in so they could eliminate customer service altogether. Which is ironic because I would argue that now more than ever is when consumers need the ability to speak with humans.
At this point, you’d be hard pressed to call a company phone number and actually get past the automated robot. You can say “operator, operator, operator” until you are blue in the face and hammer the pound sign button until you have blisters. You’re not going to speak with a human. There are none left.
But have no fear. If you are lucky enough to find yourself needing some customer service, you’ll probably get an option to text or chat with a robot within 5-7 business days. I recently had the pleasure of doing just this with an Amazon “employee.” I want to show you how that conversation went below.
But before I do – I feel like I should provide some basic context behind my dilemma that led to me needing some customer service. Here’s the background:
- I purchased some instant film on Amazon on February 10th. The film was due to show up at my door on February 12th.
- I was notified within the next day or two that my package would be late. (No problem, I’m aware there are ongoing shipping issues. I’m not too worried about it.)
- For the next couple weeks I would get text messages multiple times a day that said “your package is late but coming” or “your package has shipped” or “your package is lost.” However, it was becoming increasingly evident that the thing was never fucking coming. It probably didn’t even exist. I was pretty convinced there was a glitch going on.
- So I got tired of the daily text messages from Amazon and tried to cancel the order. But every time I did so, Amazon would tell me that it was impossible to cancel because the package was “too close to being shipped.” In my estimation I attempted to cancel it between 5 to 10 times.
- I just wanted the stupid film. So on February 25th I ordered the same item again and chose for it to show up same-day. It showed up late that very night. No problems whatsoever.
- After continuing to receive the daily text messages about the first package I finally caved and attempted to contact someone at Amazon on March 1st.
Here is how that went for me:
I told you you’d be hard pressed to get someone on the phone. But the employees are readily available to live chat. Obviously it’s a huge time-saver to type out your responses on a keyboard as opposed to speaking in real-time. So this makes a ton of sense.
My reps name is Dnyanjyoti. Sounds like a nice woman guy human.
I didn’t want to deal with the back-n-forth bullshit. So I provided my entire story. Do with it what you will, Dnyanjyoti.
Easy breezy. Problem solved. Don’t give me the package. Have a nice day.
But wait there’s more.
“Trust me, Item is not shipped.” – Dnyanjyoti
“I trust you.” -me
Another failed attempt to end the conversation by me. This time she hits me with a new bomb by telling me not to cancel the order before somehow joining a chat that she was already in. The odds of this person being a bot just increased tenfold.
I attempted to send a few final disclaimers and peace out once and for all. I guess in the midst of typing my disclaimers some guy named Tariq barged into the chat from the clouds.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. As far as I’m concerned Dnyanjyoti aleady solved my problem. I exited the chat before Tariq could get a word in edgewise.
I then went back to view my orders and check on the status of the film. I was greeted with a brand new arrival date of Wednesday, March 3rd:
But I’m not too worried. Like I told Amazon, if the film shows up it’s finders keepers. I refuse to get out my scissors and tape and send anything back. So whatever…
And then about 10 minutes later I receive this email:
What the hell? Is Tariq fishing for ratings or what? Dude I never got a single message from you. You absolutely 100% did not “solve my problem.” Naturally, I couldn’t let that bullshit slide:
So that’s the end. Or at least that’s what I thought was the end.
Until I woke up to this email today aka March 14th aka Pi Day.
Are you fucking kidding me? Dnyanjyoti you SON OF A BITCH.
You told me to trust you.
I trusted you.
You guys charged me for that film. You are dead to me.
So that’s the end of my relationship with Amazon. I value customer service too much to ever go back. Jk I have already placed an order for something else since receiving that email.
At least they gave me my money back. It’s not like I was ever going to comb through my chase statement to verify that they didn’t steal from me. And Dnyanjyoti was super nice to me. He/She probably just sucks at their job.
Customer service isn’t dead yet.