I don’t know about you, but I like to feel good about the people I do business with. I like to know that when I hire them, they’ll show up and do the job and that if I have a problem, they will look for a solution that makes me feel good about giving them my business.
We recently loaned our beach house out to family and friends while traveling out of the country and arranged (and paid) to have Allied Waste pick up our trash. Imagine my surprise (and my stress levels) when I received e-mails from our guests saying the trash people never came. Now mind you, almost all the neighbors had their trash picked up. Luckily, a kind neighbor took pity on my guests and offered to drop their trash off at the town dump.
I’m back from vacation this week and called Allied Waste to rectify the matter. I was placed on hold at least three times by the customer service rep who was unable to answer what were fairly simple questions. The first being, “Why wasn’t our trash picked up?” After ten minutes, she finally agreed to credit me for one missed week. I then had to ask her what about all the other missed weeks? I then told her we never had this problem with the other trash company we did business with. This company was bought out by Allied. She told me several times that I was doing business with the same exact company and I reminded her this wasn’t the case.
Customer service reps are in place to service the customer. Not to be argumentative. The icing on the cake was when I was told that I would receive a credit to my credit card come September. I wonder how they’d feel if I didn’t bother to pay my bill until September. Maybe they wouldn’t pick up my trash. Oh wait? They’ve yet to do so.
