Remember when it paid to complain about poor customer service? Well, that doesn’t happen anymore. I suppose it’s because of the pandemic. We can blame pretty much everything that goes wrong on Covid-19. And some people really don’t care if you like their service or not. When the coronavirus crisis is over, I have a feeling that’s not going to change. According to a recent survey at Arizona State University, Customer Service is on a downward spiral, and consumer rage is increasing.
For us, it started last summer with the delivery of the Indianapolis Star. We’re a two newspaper household. For over three decades, a carrier delivered both papers to our side door. But when our local paper went to five days a week, the Indy Star had to find another carrier to deliver on Tuesdays and Sundays. That carrier decided she couldn’t take a few seconds to turn in our lane, roll down her window, and toss the paper on our side porch. In spite of repeated instructions to leave it on the porch, she kept throwing it near the street. Which means that I must get dressed and walk to the end of the lane so as to have our morning paper when we wake up. Not bad in the summer, but I’m not looking forward to ice and snow.
After exchanging e mails with various customer service representatives over a four week period, nothing changed. The Indy Star representatives repeatedly assured me the paper should be delivered to our side door, but that hasn’t happened. The Indy Star is still out by the road on Tuesdays and Sundays..
I suppose it’s hard to find paper carriers in ordinary times. But with all the people out of work, and scrambling for Uber delivery jobs, you’d think the Indy Star could find someone to take a few seconds to deliver the paper to our door.
Recently, we had another bad experience with the customer service department at Lazy Boy. Although we had thought bulky recliners were kind of ugly, we finally succumbed to the urge for comfort in our old age. We didn’t buy any old recliner. Ours was a custom job with all the bells and whistles, and pale blue upholstery. When it finally arrived, the dealer gave us a phone number to call if anything went wrong.
We enjoyed that recliner for three years. Just press a button to move it back, lift the leg rest, massage your back, or provide heat. And then, one day, it went all the way backward, but wouldn’t move forward. My husband found the Lazy Boy Customer Service phone number. He had to wait 50 minutes to get an answer. They said they’d have to schedule an appointment with a repair man. That was on November 23. A week later, they called to say they couldn’t come until Jan. 7. That meant six weeks with our recliner spread out across the room on its back. Seems the service center is in Texas, and it takes them awhile to get to Indiana.