Garber on Business: How to lose customers through sheer stupidity
Garber on Business: How to lose customers through sheer stupidity
Sounds insane, right? Well, this is precisely what both Shaw Cable and Telus phone services are doing right now!
Here's another shot at the little guy, consumers like you or me: You're sitting at home, minding your own business, and a "service representative" from one of these "connectivity" companies calls you to ask if you're happy with your current service from them. You think for a beat and say, "Sure, I guess…" Next, your friendly neighbourhood service rep suggests you might like to expand your commitment to them. In the case of Telus, it's a free offer; you'll be able to receive your Telus high-speed internet service at a MUCH higher speed. . .for free. You ask all the pertinent questions, such as "Really? No extra cost?" and "Will I have to be home for a service installation?" and "I can cancel if I don't like it?" Everything seems to point to a genuine, free deal, until the service is "switched over," and you discover you have neither internet nor phone service AT ALL!
Oops! Well, it seems Telus will have to send a technical support guy over to install a new box, but don't worry, it won't cost anything, except (whoops, again) you will have to wait home all day on a designated day (a few days away), and (uh-oh) you'll have no internet service or land-line telephone until then. So you remember the offer to cancel if you don't like it, but -- guess what? -- like taking lithium, it's a one-way street. Now that they've switched you over, you cannot go back. Your only recourse is to switch providers (which I did). Nothing emphasizes the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" cliché like personal experience, n'est-ce pas?
Now, moving on to Shaw, I was sitting in the living room one evening recently, when my husband answered a call from Shaw about adding 25 free, new, digital channels to our existing cable TV service. Listening to his end of the conversation, I could tell that this "free" offer actually would cost $2.95 (monthly) for rental of the new digital box, but otherwise, it sounded pretty painless. My husband asked all the right questions (such as: "Really? No extra cost?" and "Will I have to be home for a service installation?" and "I can cancel if I don't like it?") Easy-peasy, right? So a few days later, the unit arrives by messenger; we don't even have to sign for it; and my husband spends 90 minutes on the telephone with Shaw support to get the thing working. And -- you guessed it -- another service we have (our Slingbox unit) turns out to be incompatible with the new digital box. (By the way, we did ask if it would work with our Slingbox before we ever said yes!) By this point, my husband is so fed-up and annoyed at all the time and trouble this new unit had cost us (for "free"), that he decided to heck with it, he didn't want it anymore. So we call Shaw back, wait through the necessary telephone-loop-hell and find out that the only way we can return the unit is to drive it downtown -- a daytime trip we have been studiously avoiding since the RAV line construction began almost two years ago.
Long story short, we put about six hours total into this new, "free" deal from Shaw, and both of us ended up spending the rest of the day trying to bring our respective blood pressure down -- after an exasperating and completely unnecessary ordeal.
So the moral is . . . several axioms and clichés to keep in mind:
* There's no such thing as a free lunch;
* If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is;
* If it ain't broke, don't fix it;
* There's a sucker born every minute;
and not the least:
* Big companies actually do not value the business of the "Little Guy," no matter how persuasive their advertising might suggest to the contrary!
These "upsells" are proof-positive that desperate times call for desperate measures, but there's no reason for individual consumers to get sucked-in to freebies that are anything-but! Shame on these big communications corporations for making their hapless customer service people into phoney pitch-men.
Garber on Business How to lose customers through sheer stupidity - To learn more about this author, visit Anne Garber's Website.
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Here's a corporate idea: We'll advance our "small potatoes" customer base by offering existing clients something wonderful for "almost free." And then -- when it doesn't work -- we'll make it really difficult for the consumer to cancel the product they didn't really want in the first place.
Sounds insane, right? Well, this is precisely what both Shaw Cable and Telus phone services are doing right now!
Here's another shot at the little guy, consumers like you or me: You're sitting at home, minding your own business, and a "service representative" from one of these "connectivity" companies calls you to ask if you're happy with your current service from them. You think for a beat and say, "Sure, I guess…" Next, your friendly neighbourhood service rep suggests you might like to expand your commitment to them. In the case of Telus, it's a free offer; you'll be able to receive your Telus high-speed internet service at a MUCH higher speed. . .for free. You ask all the pertinent questions, such as "Really? No extra cost?" and "Will I have to be home for a service installation?" and "I can cancel if I don't like it?" Everything seems to point to a genuine, free deal, until the service is "switched over," and you discover you have neither internet nor phone service AT ALL!
Oops! Well, it seems Telus will have to send a technical support guy over to install a new box, but don't worry, it won't cost anything, except (whoops, again) you will have to wait home all day on a designated day (a few days away), and (uh-oh) you'll have no internet service or land-line telephone until then. So you remember the offer to cancel if you don't like it, but -- guess what? -- like taking lithium, it's a one-way street. Now that they've switched you over, you cannot go back. Your only recourse is to switch providers (which I did). Nothing emphasizes the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" cliché like personal experience, n'est-ce pas?
Now, moving on to Shaw, I was sitting in the living room one evening recently, when my husband answered a call from Shaw about adding 25 free, new, digital channels to our existing cable TV service. Listening to his end of the conversation, I could tell that this "free" offer actually would cost $2.95 (monthly) for rental of the new digital box, but otherwise, it sounded pretty painless. My husband asked all the right questions (such as: "Really? No extra cost?" and "Will I have to be home for a service installation?" and "I can cancel if I don't like it?") Easy-peasy, right? So a few days later, the unit arrives by messenger; we don't even have to sign for it; and my husband spends 90 minutes on the telephone with Shaw support to get the thing working. And -- you guessed it -- another service we have (our Slingbox unit) turns out to be incompatible with the new digital box. (By the way, we did ask if it would work with our Slingbox before we ever said yes!) By this point, my husband is so fed-up and annoyed at all the time and trouble this new unit had cost us (for "free"), that he decided to heck with it, he didn't want it anymore. So we call Shaw back, wait through the necessary telephone-loop-hell and find out that the only way we can return the unit is to drive it downtown -- a daytime trip we have been studiously avoiding since the RAV line construction began almost two years ago.
Long story short, we put about six hours total into this new, "free" deal from Shaw, and both of us ended up spending the rest of the day trying to bring our respective blood pressure down -- after an exasperating and completely unnecessary ordeal.
So the moral is . . . several axioms and clichés to keep in mind:
* There's no such thing as a free lunch;
* If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is;
* If it ain't broke, don't fix it;
* There's a sucker born every minute;
and not the least:
* Big companies actually do not value the business of the "Little Guy," no matter how persuasive their advertising might suggest to the contrary!
These "upsells" are proof-positive that desperate times call for desperate measures, but there's no reason for individual consumers to get sucked-in to freebies that are anything-but! Shame on these big communications corporations for making their hapless customer service people into phoney pitch-men.
Garber on Business How to lose customers through sheer stupidity - To learn more about this author, visit Anne Garber's Website.
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