Called Continental Airlines today to inquire about credit that I accrued because I had canceled a flight to the Bahamas. Was put on hold for 40 minutes before I decided to try again another time. Not sure why it took me 40 minutes to come to that decision but it’s probably due to the fact that while I had it on speaker phone I had forgotten that I was still on hold.
Called back again an hour later and the wait was 5 minutes, but in this twisted universe, I wish I had disconnected earlier. The weenie that answered informed me that not only will I not be able to use the credit for anything other then another flight, I will have to pay an extra $100 to use the credit. Upon hearing this, I asked that she confirm what she had just said, and then it turned ugly. She was starting her spiel from the beginning, as most “well-trained” customer service representatives are told to do, I interrupted her to tell her that it was not necessary to repeat her spiel but to just cut to the part about the $100 fee. Weenie said that had I not interrupted her she would have gotten to that point. Taking a deep, slow breathe, I informed her that I don’t need the spiel this morning, best if she saves it for someone who needs to hear it three, maybe four times, that I only need the bottom line. Get to point of the question, please. Weenie indicated that I needed to book another flight, but depending on the cost of the ticket, I may need to pay the difference and if it’s less, I’d get another travel voucher.
I had another question, I asked if that means I would be charged another $100 for using the voucher. The spiel started again from the beginning…. Big breathe now as I asked her to save me from another repeat of aggravation and near lunacy as I was about to inform her that this would be the third time I heard the spiel. After the 40 minutes on hold, I was not prepared for another 6 minutes of repeat as weenie read from a prepared handbook on the company’s policy on purchasing tickets/cancellation and how to treat customers that are smarter then them. I was prepared for a simple, “yes, we will greedily charge you an additional $100 for each and every time you want to use your credit because we’re the slime bucket of the corporate world designed to suck any living joy and cash out of your pocket to enrich our directors’ wallets and keep the shareholders happy so that we get to keep our customer representative jobs – as that’s exactly what corporate tells us is the most desirable, sought after position in the industry. Only McJob is more desirable. Oh, and yes, you’re correct, we’re heading to bankruptcy to reorganize because people are catching on that we’re blood-sucking leeches trying to fatten our wallets and the investors are pulling out their capital and the government is refusing to back our loans.” Oops, I digress.. lets get back to the moral of this story.
Thirty seconds later and I was able to get winch to confirm that yes, it would cause me another $100 to use the travel voucher if I were lucky enough to have any credit left after booking the flight.
Why is it so difficult for people to think outside the box and actually provide services that you want rather than what they think you need? Further, why is rudeness so prevalent in the customer service industry? Is that part of their training? It goes something like this, when a customer asks if you can confirm this information with a yes/no response, inject attitude and repeat. If this doesn’t work, raise your voice, intimidate and bully so customer will mistake scare tactic as intelligence. If customer should want to ask something you don’t know because you were asleep on the day of this training, inject hostility and try to make customer seem stupid for asking a question you don’t know the answer to. If this doesn’t work, sigh heavily and while speaking loudly and slowly, repeat yourself three times so that customer will think that repetitiveness is equivalent to a high I.Q. Finally, if customer should ask to speak to supervisor, put one of your buddies on the phone – that’s priceless insurance that you will always be the dumbest, rudest customer service representative in the company. Even your buddy will be smarter than you.
Got McJob?