You'll enjoy this customer service story. Remember I said Capital
One's back office couldn't pull up my checking account even as the
branch employee was looking right at it? It gets worse. I was there
because they failed to give me my $100 bonus for opening a high-yield
account with them and following their directions of writing 3 checks on
it within 90 days, to qualify for the bonus. Neither the branch nor the
back office understood the terms of their own promotion, but I had saved
the brochure. The branch lady followed up and promised the back office
would call me. They didn't.
She called today to find out they had not called me,
then THEY called me just now and demanded that I fax them their own
promotional brochure so they could see if I qualified!!
I was polite, and just said "Y'all are making me work awfully hard for
this $100, especially when your own branch banker is telling you it's
legitimate." She was undeterred. I have no landline so have to take it
back to the branch to fax.
Honestly, is it worth the $100 to them to thoroughly
piss off this customer?
The sequel, a couple of days later:
Just to finish off the Cap One story, I went in there today to fax their stooopid promotion. Since the manager was free, I really gave him a piece of my mind, saying their inability to pull up my account and the absurdity of having to fax them their own promotion made me question their competence to do other transactions, and the shoddy customer treatment made me want to have nothing to do with them. I made clear my problem was not with his branch, but with corporate or whomever was treating me like a terrorist to be investigated rather than a customer. I didn't need the lousy $100 but it was not worth $100 to them to treat a customer like this, etc etc. And, as a parting shot, that the corporate rep wasn't even nice.
The sequel, a couple of days later:
Just to finish off the Cap One story, I went in there today to fax their stooopid promotion. Since the manager was free, I really gave him a piece of my mind, saying their inability to pull up my account and the absurdity of having to fax them their own promotion made me question their competence to do other transactions, and the shoddy customer treatment made me want to have nothing to do with them. I made clear my problem was not with his branch, but with corporate or whomever was treating me like a terrorist to be investigated rather than a customer. I didn't need the lousy $100 but it was not worth $100 to them to treat a customer like this, etc etc. And, as a parting shot, that the corporate rep wasn't even nice.
Just now I get a phone call, and
it's the same rep. She has totally changed her tune, BUT she can't
refrain from telling me they were able to get me the $100 by 'making an
exception'.
GAAAAHHHH!! Still telling me I don't qualify, but they are doing me a favor!!
Since
I'd had my rant for the day, I just said thank you and got off the
phone as quickly as possible. Did corporate learn anything here?
Absolutely nothing.
6 comments:
The most effective thing to do in this case is send a registered letter to the President of the company, explaining the problem and asking for the $100 plus the cost of the registered letter. This results in you receiving what you asked for and sometimes even more than that!
Get a new bank!
And clearly they also never learned the 1/10/100 rule about unhappy customer’s telling the world! I will never go to Cap One after this story.
The thing about this that holds a lesson for all organizations is that, typically, the bank chose to only focus on the one customer rep, to make her 'be nice'. They totally missed the lessons about their IT systems and/or training (pulling up the account in the first place), and the poor communication between whomever makes up these promotions and the people charged with executing them. Employees struggling in a poor work environment are often tempted to take it out on the customer.
In health care, that customer is often a sick patient. Not a good thing.
nonlocal
I remember how Capital One damaged my credit rating after they offered me less than promised and left me to undo their credit card balance transfer. Repeated letters to CEO had no effect. Good luck with that one. Capital One is a giant sucking sound. Their money goes into their ads and Alec Baldwin's pocket, not into satisfied customers.
That's bureaucracy for you. There's no guarantee that a small company will provide good service, but as an organization grows that possibility seems to become more and more faint...
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