Customer Service FAIL, Customer Service Whoo-hoo!

(I know this has nothing to do with babies or motherhood or whatever, but it's my blog, so I'm gonna post a rant.)

In the last week I've had the displeasure of dealing with a huge customer service fail (Virgin Mobile), and the pleasure of a great customer service win (Sirius XM).  First the FAIL.

I've been a customer of Virgin Mobile for about 9 years now.  In fact, they are the ONE AND ONLY mobile phone company I have ever had.  That certainly doesn't seem to matter much to them however, because after a colossally bad experience trying to just get a new phone, they've lost me.  3 weeks ago, I ordered a new phone online.  Within 2 days I get a shipment confirmation and a tracking number.  Hooray!  I check the tracking a few days later, and see it says "Anticipated Ship Date"... meaning that the package has not actually made it into Fed Ex's hands, even though it's now 3 days after the supposed ship date.

I wait a week and call Virgin Mobile's customer service.  Twice, because the first guy disconnects me.  The second person tells me, oh, that just means it's on the way and it will be there by the end of the week, check back then.  Um, yeah, pretty sure that's not what it means, but OK.

The next week, sure enough, still "Anticipated Ship Date".  So I call again.  This time, I patiently explain to the person that it's pretty obvious that the package is lost somewhere in their shipping department.  Oh no, all he wants to do is blame FedEx.  I don't really care WHO is at fault, just get me the phone!  After being on hold about 8 different times, I see on my phone display that the call has taken FORTY TWO MINUTES of my life.  And I still have no resolution.  I suggest that all they need to do is send me a new phone, and work it out on their end on their time.

Here's where it gets good.  He says they can't do that BUT, he'd be happy to take my credit card info and make me place ANOTHER order, then, I can just dispute the first charge with my credit card if it never arrives!  UM, REALLY???  Why on earth would I want to do that??

I take my case to Twitter, figuring that social media complaints always get recognized, right?  Yeah, not so much.  VMUCares, my butt.  After an entire week of back and forth, promising someone will look into my case, etc etc, I have to pretty much beg them via Twitter to look into it... and I get the SAME DAMN CANNED MESSAGES about how they are emailing their shipping department about it.

You know what?  I don't care where the phone is.  I don't care if your shipping manager ground it up to snort it.  I don't care if the FedEx guy stole it to sell on eBay to finance his porn habit.  All I care is that I DON'T HAVE A DAMN PHONE AFTER 3 WEEKS.

The simple, simple, simple resolution here would have been for someone to just send me a new phone, the FIRST time I pointed this out.  And then look into the first one on their time, not mine.  'Cause you want to know the BEST part about this?  It's not a $150 smart phone. It's not even a $49 average phone.  It was a stupid TEN DOLLAR basic phone.  That's right folks.  They couldn't manage to send me out a $10 phone as a replacement.  Why, in case I was trying to scam them?  Puhleeeze.

So end of story, I'm running down my current phone and will find a new carrier at the end of the month.

On to the great customer service story!  I have had a Sirius XM subscription for about 5 years now and I love, love, love it.  Recently my radio started to lose the signal, so I decided to get an upgrade.  I was having a problem ordering it online, however, because in order to get the best price on the radio, you had to be a new subscriber.  I thought, surely if I call, they will be able to make this happen for a long-time customer.  And sure enough, not only did the CS rep manage to get me the phone for the promo price, she also:
- Waived the $15 swap-out fee
- Waived the shipping on the new radio.

It gets better.  When the radio arrived, I called to activate it.  I also wanted to change my package, since all I do is listen to music, not the talk.  There's a $75 price difference.  The CS rep said, oh no, I can get you the full package you have now for the price of the music only package.  And she made it happen.  And, waived the change fee.  AND, changed the other 2 radios I have to match the cheaper plan and all have the same start date.  AND, waived the $7 I was going to owe on the 3rd plan. (thud.  that's me hitting floor in amazement)

Virgin, ya might wanna take note of that story. Or at the very least, empower your customer service folks to ACTUALLY PROVIDE SOME SERVICE.