Customer Service in America SUCKS

What ever happened to customer service? Seriously? If anyone knows, I'd love to be enlightened.

I've just spent 30 minutes on the phone with ATT to get back the $386.34 that they automatically took from my bank account to pay for an early cancellation fee that they charged me, even after telling me they would waive the charges.

I did EXACTLY as they said and called a month after cancelling my service (because they couldn't offer me phone service consistently in most of my neighborhood and my home) to make sure the charges would be removed before they pulled the funds from my account.

I called them AGAIN a month ago to say, "Hey, BLEEPHEADS, give me back my $386.43." They promise to have it "rushed" and back to my account within a week.

Luckily, Rick noticed today -- another month later--that the money still wasn't in our account.
Now it is supposed to be "high priority rushed" and refunded to my account within 24-48 hours. We'll see about that. If not, I'm really to find an address for an executive at ATT and give them a piece of my mind and a flash of my middle finger.

Then there is the local HOLLYWOOD VIDEO. Yeah. They just went bankrupt last year, got everyone to sign up for a PowerPlay plan for a monthly fee and automatic credit card deductions. They just closed up shop down the street one day and left a number on the door to call. So I call the number. 50 minutes later, I'm hung up on. The next time I call, the wait time is 45 minutes and they just happen to have a lunch break in 30 minutes. Nice try. I'm not falling for that trick. I still have no idea if they are deducting the $10 from my account each month. At least it's on a credit card and I can fight it. Which I'm sure will be super easy, right?

Then there is the new cell phone carrier we have. Sprint. Yippe. My phone works but I've been charged activation fees that I later had to have removed, insurance fees that I later had to cancel, and our "employee discount" through Rick's work still hasn't been applied to the bill. We'll have three credits and a $200 phone refund applied to our account before we even have the phones two months. And when I called to get an icon put back on my phone after accidentally deleting it, the representative told me he'd call me on Rick's cell phone and then hung up on me. Nope. He didn't call. I still don't have my icon. But I've been called two times to take a BLEEPING survey about how the service from the guy at the Sprint store was. I hung up on them both times. The guy asked me to consider giving him good scores if they called. No. I won't because you didn't help me get my icon until after I reminded you for the number and you can't take the insurance fees off my bill so you can kiss my bleep-it-y-bleep-bleep-bleep and go to you-know-where. I know, it's not his fault personally -- it's how the company is set up. I get that.

But seriously.

I will say, on a positive note, everyone I've talked to has been a native American speaker so I've understood them all clearly. They just haven't all been able to help me and that PISSES ME OFF. That's the definition of customer service -- help the customer.

I'm a mother. I want to spend my time playing with my child and my husband, catching up on work and chores and God forbid I have some free time to myself. I've easily spent 4 hours on the phone just with ATT. And the world wonders why we don't have more time. That's why.

Moral of the story: There is no moral. Companies with customer service departments that I've encountered have no morals and really can't help me without making me incredibly inconvenienced in the process and then doing nothing about it.