“You double charged me!”

We get this so often I get a little chill down my spin every timeI hear the customer service reps in the next room dealing with it. The problem arises from those banks that are so helpful as to show authorizations on your card as well as the actual transaction. An authorization is when a company first checks to see if the money is available, and then later closes the authorization for either the amount checked or a part of it. Various business we all use do this every day, such as pay at the pump gas stations and restaurants that allow for tips to be added later.

Simple concept, right? Apparently not.

Another version of this is when we do issue a refund to a client, which appears as a credit on their statement. Somehow that +/- difference, sometimes shown in the typically accounting fashion with parenthesis surrounding the number is a difficult one to grasp. Even when it says “credit” next to the transaction we get people who assume this new line item on their statement means we have the gall to be charging them again. Pick up that phone and lay into a customer service rep, that’ll teach ‘em!

The kicker is that those that don’t get this concept right off, and take the time to call in and complain, either never get the concept or won’t back down on it. These people will hang on the phone forever arguing with reps that are sincerely trying to explain this in the simplest of terms. Our reps often will have to resort to asking the customer to fax in their statement as proof, which many do not do, likely because they finally realize their error. Yet, somehow we have customers that will fax things in only to show that it does in fact say “credit” or “authorization” right next to the transaction just like we are trying to explain.

“You need to refund every charge I have on here that is unauthorized”

This is another oft repeated concept in a variety of ways. When people purchase products online, they seem to do it in spurts. I find this is true of myself in fact; though I try hard not to compare my spending habits to those I complain about here, they are on a much different level. Because our company actually answers the phone because are a legitimate company we tend to waste a fair amount of time trying to convince people that we cannot in fact provide customer service for other companies on their statement.

Does this sound ridiculous to you? I hope so.

Sadly, there plenty of companies out there that try hard not to help their customers with billing customers as a part of their business model. Their modus operandi is to see if customers will just give up and let the business keep their money. We on the other hand feel good about the products we are offering, and though we deal with our share of loonies that we end up refunding, the bulk of our customer base is happy and enjoys the services we charge for.

Funny thing is, next to every charge on your statement is a “descriptor” that a business can customize with a limited number of characters to help customers identify the charge. We include our toll free number as part of that descriptor to help customers get a hold of us, as do many other businesses. When our reps suspect a charge is not from us, they ask the customer to read off what it says next to the charge – no small feat in many cases – and even when it says another business name, the customer will refuse to believe it is not our company! No matter how hard I shake my head, I cannot get my mind to clear enough to understand the logic on this.

Our reps are repeatedly called liars, thieves and many other choice names when they continue to deny these charges are from us and therefore not our responsibility. Just today a lady just kept screaming “LIAR!” over and over to a nice girl on our end until she finally had to just hang up.

BCB – The Better Customer Bureau

I really am baffled out people like this can act this way to customer service reps. Even beyond that, I just don’t get how people that cannot read a statement or understand the concept of taking responsibility for their purchasing habits can feel justified in trying to bully their way into getting a charge refunded. I really think there needs to be some business reporting process that allows companies to report errant or fraudulent customers back to credit card issuers and banks. Some kind of flagging system so you have the ability to know if a “problem” customer has a history of buying and charging back items without basis. Though the eBay system is flawed in many ways, having some public accountability for their actions keeps many customers acting nicer than they might in a more anonymous world. Think of it as the Better Customer Bureau. I know there are many privacy issues and other flaws with this concept, but I’m here to tell you that most BBB and Consumer Protection Agency complaints I have seen over the years are just if not more flawed..

What really gets our customer service reps going is nearly all of these people will never accept the fact that they did actually sign up and agree to the service, no matter how much explaining or proof you provide.  Is this just a gene that some people are born without?  A common sense ability that simply is not available to everyone out there?

Granted, I understand when people are “tricked” by some marketing tactics out there, but when the details of a product or service are repeated multiple times in the purchasing process, I really have little no sympathy.

Typically, going hand in hand with the “unauthorized charges” statement is the claim that “This is fraud!”  Another baseless and completely misunderstood statement being spewed vehemently in an effort to try and scare a representative into refunding all of the charges ever made by a company.

Funny thing is, we not only keep full records of the enrollment by the user, we also take note of the IP address used when the registration took place.  Even without delving legally into the precise user in an ISPs records to know that this was in fact the actual person, you can, with public look up services, identify the city and sometimes even more detailed location of the computer that did the transaction.  When this lines right up with the address of the credit card holder, we can feel fairly safe in knowing that yes, this doofus did in fact sign up.

In the end, though, we typically refund much of the fees charged, which irks me to no end.  We do this for two, sad reasons.  First, the merchant industry is so screwed up that customers can in fact typically charge back anything they want on a credit card, whether they make false statements in the process or not.  Though there are some basic yet futile ways for a merchant to dispute a customer charge reversal, in the end having too many charge backs will get your account shut down whether you have resolved them or not.  Second, we simply find it easier to refund these noisy, annoying customers than deal with long term liability of them making noise with the BBB, State Attorney Generals, etc.  Yes, whether they are true or not, their false claims to organizations end up hurting you more as a business than just giving their money back.

What really bothers me about all this is that our company is in fact in the right; yet, it doesn’t matter.  In the name of protecting consumers, both private and governmental groups are so skewed to the customer that they hurt businesses.  I’m all for protecting consumers from actual scams and deceptive marketing practices, but what about protecting the small businesses of the world from predatory and negligent consumers?

More on the failings of the merchant account industry another day.

I read a lot of information online. I don’t get a paper edition of any newspaper, and I even rarely watch the news on TV because I get all I need online. I enjoy the ability to pick out the articles I want to read, when I want to read them, and to be able to consume information from sites I enjoy. This means I read a lot of blogs these days as well. Say what you will about the reputability of blogs in general, I find many of the postings on blogs much more than I do many news sites.

Anyway, in my perusing I have read many a rant about terrible experiences with customer service. These range from not being able to close down your AOL or cell phone account, to a complete inability to get a service agent that has a clue about the service you are needing help with. I feel for these people, and the situations they are often describing sound horrific. I have had my own customer service woes, and even one shocker that made me want to reach through the phone and strangle the rep on the other end of the line.

A Personal Example

In my extreme situation I was trying to cancel a credit card that had gone past its promotional period and had lost its usefulness for my situation. I had other cards and this one had been for a business startup that I didn’t need to carry the card for any longer. So, like the average consumer, I looked up my statement and called the number provided. After wading through the menu options, I finally arrived at a live person and made my request to cancel the account. I expected a few “save sale” attempts, and my expectations were met. I politely declined and waited for the rep to get the job done. Instead, the rep took it upon himself to ridicule me saying things such as “So, are you just a freeloader then? You just got our card for the zero interest period and then you’re off to get another card?” I was floored. The comments continued for a bit until my blood pressure rose and I had a few choice yet calmly worded things to say back to the rep. I had never been so insulted in a customer situation before and I really was at a loss as to what to do. I requested his name, agent number and to speak to a supervisor at which time he hung up on me. I’m not sure if this was a prank or if he had not taken his medication that day, but he was way off base and out of line. I called back, got a supervisor, but there was no record of the call (of course) and I had no identifying information to help track down this imbecile.

The Customer Is Not Always Right

Throughout my life I’ve always heard the phrase “the customer is always right” as a mantra to how service should be given by “good” companies. Though this may have worked in some previous generation, I am here to tell you that the customer most definitely is not always right; in fact, in my industry the customer is often wrong, and not all that intelligent either. I know, that sounds pretty harsh, and I’ll give a few details to soften that statement a bit.

I work for a company that sells informational products online, most of what include a monthly membership that customers can keep for as little or long as they want. We offer a free 14-day trial on most of our offer pages that allow the customer to check out what we have and decide to keep it or not. We make this very clear in the process that if the customer doesn’t want to keep the product, cancel (by phone, email or online) and they are charged nothing more. If they want the product, they get charged automatically each month until they cancel. Think of Columbia House Records, BMG, a monthly gym membership, etc. Not that hard to understand, right? Apparently not.

We get the craziest people calling, irate that they have been charged for a membership, and they have the widest variety of excuses, claims and outright lies they give to try and get their money back. We have come to know that these customers usually fall in one or more of the following categories:

• Forgetful – they don’t remember what they sign up for online
• Fraud – the favorite among most is to claim that they never signed up for this and someone has stolen their identity (even though we have all their info correct, even the IP address of their ISP that points right to them having actually done this)
• Scammers – those that are trying to get something for nothing with online offers, or even worse, try to trick you into giving a refund when they have also charged back the transaction to try and double dip against the company to get some “free money”
• Angry people – will try to bully or scare you into refunding everything ever charged because of how angry they are
• Bluffers – threaten legal action of every possible kind to get their $1.87 shipping fee back
• Selectively illiterate – they can’t read the important facts of what they are signing up for, but they sure can pull out that credit card and enter the number into the right boxes
• Imposters – will act like they are someone else, such as a bank manager, police officer, etc. to try and sound official to get you to refund fees for the “victim” they are helping
• Victims of a disaster – some major catastrophe in their lives has happened, so you must feel obligated to give them a refund on anything you ever charged them.
• Liars – fall into any of the above categories, but they can get even more creative when pressed for details.

The list can go on, and on, and on, and…you get the idea.

The Vocal Minority, Again

To temper the above description, I happen to know we hear from the lively, noisy with apparently the time on their hands to check their bank statement daily go to battle with customer service over a few bucks, but not enough sense to use that time to actually track the obligations they signed up for. We have thousands of clients, and the majority of them either a) cancel using one of our easy options, typically online or by email, during the trial period if they don’t want the product or b) use the product for as long as they want and then cancel when they are done. Who we hear from are those that simply do not want to take responsibility for their actions and want you to “make it right” by giving back the money rightfully charged to them because of their choice to buy something.

These people drive me, and our entire customer service department crazy, but they are 99% of the people they get to deal with. You may wonder why it bothers me, because I don’t work in customer service; my office is right next to them though, and I often overhear the conversations, or the summary they share with each other on the particularly ridiculous gems.

More to Share

So, one series of posts I’d like to start sharing are some of these “gems” as I call them. Where possible, I might even share some recordings of the really good ones, but we’ll see on that. Just the summary alone should be comical enough that you’ll enjoy reading them. Either that, or you’ll simply shake your head at the type of people we get to hear from.

How these people are ever given the ability to make financial transactions is beyond me.

I am fortunate to have health insurance through my job.   I know that many people do not have that luxury these days due to the rapidly rising cost of premiums.  Health costs are astronomical; we all know it, we all hate it.  What gets me though is that medical billing is like no other business out there.

How many business do you deal with that don’t tell you up front pricing, can bill you for months and seemingly even years later from the various parties involved, and can provide terrible service with no assurance of quality or outcome?  Let me break that down.

When you head in to a hospital for care, you have no idea what things will cost.  Of course they don’t always have time to explain every treatment option and applicable pricing for you to make a fiduciary decision at every step of the way.  That said, it would be nice to know up front based on your insurance what your costs are going to be for the daily stay, doctor fees, etc.  In the heat of the moment, you are not going to be ticking off a list of what you can afford, but I do know I am the type as a parent that I would like to have a daily summary of my increasing bill printed out so I know what to expect once treatment is finished.

I always wonder if hospitals don’t want to produce an ongoing bill for you because they are afraid you will find their errors because it is so fresh on your mind.  Do they wait months to start sending out bills so you have let the individual procedures and people involved slip your mind and just have to trust that they got things right?  Perhaps they don’t have any idea themselves until they get some creative accounting underway and see what your insurance will tolerate, then send the remainder of costs on to you to cause another heart attack and start the treatment/billing cycle all over again.

Then comes the way billing takes place.  Getting billed much later is not the only kick in the gut you are going to receive later on; it is the repeated kicks that really get you down.  Usually the facility itself is the first to arrive in your mailbox, large and in charge.  After you work your way through that painful check writing process, then comes the treating doctor.  Yep, they bill separately.  Did you need any anesthetics in the process?  Yep, different billing group for that.   How about oxygen therapy…they have their own bill.  Physical or occupationaly therapy…the list goes on.  Even if all these treatments are housed and received under the same facility, they all have their own billing, and it all adds up big time.

Now, on to the quality of service and guarantee of outcome.  Ok, I realize doctors cannot insure you will always get better simply due to the nature of various injuries.  I think I am typically a reasonable guy.  I do think there should be some discount or reduction in costs if they fail to accomplish the tasks they set out to do.  That kick in the gut I mentioned about delayed billing is nothing like the one you receive when you are paying for services that failed.  I have a friend that talked to me about how painful it was to pay the bills for a difficult late term miscarriage they went through.  Yes, after having lost a child at near full term they had to pay costs that exceeded had the child actually been born.  Let’s just kick them when they are really down.

Given the fact that medicine cannot solve all things, at least there should be some measure of the quality of service received and the ability to challenge fees when those services do not meet the required criteria.  I know I have personally experienced mistakes and failings that have gone on to actually hurt a child of mine in a very real way.  Though I never took this to a legal recourse, I likely could have.  With so much fear of legal battles the medical field cannot even reveal an ounce of wrong on their part for fear of big liabilities; because of this, we have no means of oversight or quality assurance in the care we receive.

All this comes to mind because of the recent hospitalized care my son is receiving.  He was quickly moved to a care facility for his needs, but now that we are working through the treatment we have begun talking to the billing department to get a handle on what our costs are going to be.  We are finding that even after what insurance covers our costs of being in this outfit rival a full hospitalization.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we have had very frank talks with his treatment team on the ineffectiveness of most of what they are doing, to which they actually agree.  Will we receive a discount because of their lack of ability to effectively treat my child…of course not.  1/3 of the treatment team seems adept at what they are doing, and that is the primary side of what we came for anyway.  So, for the other doctors involved, I really don’t feel justified in paying them for services they cannot effectively render.  Of course the cost of the facility is fixed, and the doctors are billing on top of that.

In the end, I will pay the fees and move on; I really do not have a choice.  Before you receive any services they force documents on you that are essentially a blank check.  You promise your life away so they will begin care.  In effect the document you sign says you will pay whatever they deem necessary to bill associated with the treatment of your child.  Other than medicine, what business these days could get away with that?

Today my company is moving into our brand new building.  This is not a long distance move mind you, literally just across the parking lot.  We scheduled the transfer of our phone lines and DSL to the new building to be done during 8-12 this morning.  The first surprise is that they tech just before 9 am, so I was hopeful to see a new side of Qwest.  Nope, the old Qwest reared its ugly head.

The lines were turned off at our old/current building and the tech headed over to the new one…only to find that there were no actual/physical lines laid to the new building yet!  You’d think Qwest would know this when drawing up the order for the location. So now our lines are disconnected and going nowhere, and we have no access to the Internet, which for an online marketing company is our lifeblood.

Fortunately they were able to turn the phone lines back up relatively quickly, but even after reassuring us they would have the DSL up too, no connection was to be found.  After an hour of working our way through various tech support levels we were able to get the DSL back up an hour and a half later.

Somehow I don’t think this kind of experience is limited to just Qwest, but because they are the only option in our area, I don’t expect to see much improvement either.  Why is it even the seemingly simplest of tasks  within the boundaries of what a company is supposed to be offering as a service just can’t get done right the first time?  Is that too much to ask?

Though I am not making a new car purchase in the foreseeable future, I’m always interested to see whether picks are and what they have chosen to base them on.  You can view the summary of their results on the Consumer Reports website, or see a version of it at CNN.com.  there are some decent cars, and it’s always interesting to see what is rated best for reliability, performance and particularly with today’s gas prices the most economic options.

This is a rant site, so why am I bringing up the best options for 2007 as rated by Consumer Reports?  If you have already looked at the list, take a look again and see if you can show me which of the top picks come from American automakers.  That’s right, none of them.  As noted at the end of the CNN article, this is the second year in a row that no American-made car has made the topics list.  That is not only pitiful, it is a sad commentary on the current state of the American auto making industry.  Perhaps it is even a commentary on the current status of the American ability to produce raw goods.  I am no economist, and I hate when people try to act like they are.  I particularly hate when people try to blame everything on the current political leaders, when there are so many other variables to consider.

Keeping focused just on the fact that no American vehicle made this list, it makes it difficult to expect people to “buy American” when the American options are not up to snuff.  Having the size of family I do, having a minivan is a part of our vehicle landscape.  Again CNN included in their summary the fact that once the minivan category was established, Dodge won the first spot.  In every year since then Toyota and Honda have traded the top spot.  I would think he American automakers could do better than that.  I personally own a Dodge Grand Caravan, and enjoy it, but many people I know have chosen the Honda option simply because it is a more reliable and better performing vehicle.

Not that my opinion matters, but the opinion of experts such as Consumer Reports should.  CNN did point out that American automakers have made strides and improvements in recent years, hopefully this is something they can continue to do and hopefully we can see them once again appearing on the best of list.

The losses alone are a huge problem I hope they can overcome, but that quote really took me back.

I am really not sure what it is about Apple that generates so much brand loyalty, but believe me, they have it. I have owned a few in my day, all the way back to the Apple IIc. I enjoyed the computers when I owned them, but at heart I consider myself brand and operating system agnostic. Not carefully the definition pertaining to doubtful and noncommittal, not the god part though that could apply to how some fanboys seem to believe in Steve Jobs. I consider myself computer versatile enough to get my job done on any computer, just give me a few minutes to figure it out.

The thing that gets me with apple press is they seem to get positive coverage, no matter what they do. Granted, they have done some good things. The iPod along with iTunes received the blessing of the industry and has done what no others have been able to do in such a big way. Their current computers, both hardware and software, have broken a long slump that they were stuck in, now providing something worth considering using, albeit with a pretty good sized budget.

What about the failures? Those seem to go away without fanfare and seemingly without a blemish on Apple’s reputation, or ego for that matter. What every happened to the Newton, the mini or the much touted yet far underperforming line of computers throughout the mid-90s? Those just slide under the rug. But the loyalists in the media foam at the mouth come each MacWorld for the next big product announcement. Hollywood seems to love placing macs in every movie and show – ok, they do look better in that home office scene than a boxy PC, I’ll give them that.

The iPhone looks like it could be a decent PDA with some nifty new things. The big touch screen look could be some fun, but destined for some serious scratches from the way I have seen most phones handled. I think the software ideas could be good, but the first generation is bound to have its issues and limitations. I do hope they make it easy for the independent developers to make some cool little apps for it, because that is what has made my Treo such a fun phone to have.

Just to counter some of the fanfare and flagwaving, here is what I think to be a realistic review that notes a few caveats when considering jumping on the iPhone bandwagon. Plus, just announced a day after the big iPhone hoopla, Cisco – who everyone knew owns the trademark on the word iPhone for a product – has announced their lawsuit against Apple. Apparently those licensing talks that Steve was confident enough were done weren’t quite as complete as anticipated. No worries, Steve will make it happen.

All joking aside, I do hope Apple can push the industry to do more with the mobile phone, particularly the mobile computing variety. Apple, with their loyal fanbase, has a way of entering an industry and doing something to shake it up with a little style and panache (look it up, it’s good). What typically follows is the vast legions of companies that simply follow Apple’s lead and produce worthy knock offs drive the big players in the market to play catch up. in the end we get better, more interesting products to choose from – most of which are more reasonably priced and capable that what we had to begin with.

So maybe all the Apple fanfare is a good thing. Go Apple, do your thing!

From what I have read, this is quickly becoming a hot topic to discuss, with strong messages on both sides of the argument.  I can understand this to be seemingly idiotic and business suicide from a customer perspective.  This policy can also be abused by always thinking the company is right – there has to be some balance.  Be willing to be wrong, but also be willing to act when someone else is wrong.  We have all grown up hearing that the philosophy “the customer is always right” is the key to a successful business, but in today’s world I can’t always side with that.  There are a lot of demanding, unrealistic customers that are simply trying to get ahead at your expense.  If they can get it cheap, free, or otherwise come out ahead, it doesn’t matter what they have to say or do to get there.  That includes lying, cheating and acting like you have somehow committed an atrocity at their expense.

What makes this worse is the number of fraudsters out there using tactics against customer service departments, knowingly working the system simply to get something for free.  Chargeback routines, threatening BBB and attorney general reports, and claiming shipped orders never arrived are just a few of the common practices people will use.  This has grown to a level that even people you would never call an outright thief will do it, justifying that these online companies can afford it, so it is somehow ok to do.

On a level less thieving is the tech company’s worst nightmare – the bargain minded business enlisting their services.  Small web development firms deal with type constantly.  I spent years acquiring customers for my outfit I ran with some partners and great friends.  We worked very hard to keep ourselves in business, and I am afraid often because we were willing to take on almost any contract, no matter the amount of work we had to agree to at any rate, just so as we had work and income coming in.  I was likely the worst at this admittedly.  We had a good business, though, and we enjoyed ourselves.  Eventually I left this company to pursue some other opportunities, which was a catalyst for some necessary changes in the company.  Along the way, they changed their policy to “let go” the noisy, demanding and otherwise unprofitable customers and to better organize their bidding and billing procedures.  Sure, they had some unhappy customers that went away, and some that stayed but complained about the apparent price increase; but in the end they are more profitable and living more sane lives as a result.

We can’t please everyone, especially those that can never be pleased.  As a business, shoot for pleasing 90% of your customers, and in the end you will be more successful.  You will spend your time building and offering services or products that make the bulk of your customers happy, and you won’t be wasting time with the vocal minority that drain your resources trying meet their demands.  This is a valuable lesson for any entrepreneur to learn, hopefully sooner than later in their business growth.  Some sage advice, from a big time CEO (Homestead) as well as a small time guy like me.