I’m curious what you guys do when you experience a company with horrible customer service? I’ve always kinda had this three strikes you’re out rule. If we get to that third strike, I just boycott them forever. My mother thinks I’m extreme and that I need to have more patience with businesses. I’ve worked in customer service. I’ve been that person on the other end of the line when people call to complain. If I had treated customers the way these places treat customers, I’d have fully expected them to not do business with us any more. Maybe my standards are too high? I’ve always kinda thought “fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me”… so really, I’m giving them an extra try with the 3 strike rule. in my mind… anyway.
It really depends on what the company offers, what they’ve done and how important what they offer is to me and my life. It also depends how often I interact with them.
For example, I’ve had some challenges at time working with my BCBS insurer but overall mostly it’s been ok. The other thing is they insure about 75% of our state so it’s easier having them to than having to use a carrier my provider may be unfamiliar with.
No, I don’t need to shame them. I’ll just take my money elsewhere. If they want to figure out why they’re losing business, they can do their own research and analysis. I’m not going to make it easy on them.
My mother told me last night for my most recent experience that I need to have more patience and that nobody is perfect. I was like right - nobody is perfect. They screwed up. That’s fine. It happens. But when given the chance to make it right, they dorked it up 3 separate times. In one evening. So, I’m out. I’m glad to know it’s not just me.
It totally depends on my whim of the time. When Amtrak’s customer service was awful over a small matter, I was done with them. Getting a snail mail “offer” from them annoyed me enough to find the CEO’s email and send him my reasons. When the head of Guest Relations (or Services, or similar) contacted me AND fixed it - well, now I’m back looking at Amtrak trips for next year.
Miracle Ear will never get my business. I’m still getting monthly (or more) snail mail ads from them for my mom who died two+ years ago and never lived at my address. Each time I call, each time they apologize and assure me they are removing her from their mailing list. Each time she ends up back on there somehow.
BCBS just went on my “never do business with them” list. We don’t do health insurance anyway since we love our Health Share organization, but mom was old enough for medicare and gets supplement mailings each year, also sent to my house. (Somehow mailing list companies don’t filter out those who are deceased - even after two years.) I fill those out telling the other end she died 2+ years ago and isn’t coming back, so please remove her from your list. It’s my feeble attempt to maybe get less mail in for her as it still makes me both sad and frustrated to get them. BCBS just sent me a 1lb large envelope with large words on it saying, “Here’s the Information You Requested.” There’s no way they could have missed my note. Someone was just being mean. Really mean. That’s a definite, “never” as far as my doing business with them.
I’m also in the “it depends” camp. I’m much more willing to cut a local business slack than a big chain/company.
That said, we had a horrible experience with our kitchen/bath designer when we did our house. We had multiple issues come up and he was unwilling to make anything right or accept responsibility. We had everything from countertop issues to wrong cabinets being ordered and then the new cabinets being “lost” in transit (I’m sure he never put in the order). He single handedly caused a 3 month delay in our renovation and tried to blame the contractor for everything when it was obviously his fault. My H wrote a scathing review and we’ve actively told people to avoid using him.
The first time I decided to boycott a company was 13 years ago at a department store that rhymes with Tears. People told me I was being silly over something small (like $75). It might have been small in the grand scheme of things, but it meant something to me. A) that was a lot of money for me at the time, and B) it was the principle behind the matter). I was told by family that it wouldn’t matter if I stopped shopping there, they’re huge and have all these other customers and they won’t notice me missing. I said I disagree - if enough people have customer service issues, they’ll stop going there too, and then, they’ll have a big problem. And, look where they are now. I can only imagine that customer service is a large part of why.
I was in one of their stores a few years later with my mom (she was buying a shirt, I was not). They had a line to pay about 20-25 groups of customers deep, 1 register open, and the person at the register was offering credit cards to each person in line. In my professional experience, that’s one of the first things you should cut out when you’re swamped. Get rid of the extra offers and get your customers through. After waiting like 10 minutes and moving up only 3 people in line (we were still like 30-40 feet away), I turned and asked my mom if she was certain that this hour + wait was really worth getting the $20 shirt. She then put it back and we left. I’m not sure if that further proved my point about customer service losing customers, or if she just didn’t want to hear me complain. Lol.
in my mind… anyway.