Customer Service Under Suspicious Circumstances

With some firms’ customer-service departments, the aim seems to be not to serve the customer, but to keep him or her at bay. They seem set up primarily to insulate companies from their customers or to test customer persistence.

Consumers tell me all the time that when they call customer service, they have a terrible time getting past tape recordings to human beings. Then, all too often, they get the runaround. They are blocked from talking to supervisors and issues go unresolved for months.

It can be even worse when a company assigns an outside firm to deal with the toughest complaints. Just last week, for example, I was able to verify an account by Culver City resident, Linda Arenson, about one such situation.

Arenson said that a Colorado outfit, assigned by the computer company CompuServe to deal with complaints about rebates that had failed to arrive, would not even provide such basic information as their firm’s name or corporate telephone numbers--let alone make any meaningful response.

This was certainly the case when I called. They wouldn’t give their name and, not only that, neither would Anne Bentley, a spokeswoman for CompuServe, which was purchased by America Online Inc. (the celebrated AOL) in 1998.

Neither Bentley nor staff of the firm in Colorado would say clearly why the name need be such a secret, although Bentley said that it is only an offshoot of CompuServe for a special purpose and that 560,000 rebates had been sent out without problems and no customer need to contact it.

When consumers do get my attention, and almost invariably as soon as I--a columnist for a large newspaper--contact the company’s public relations department, the matter usually is resolved. But corporate spokesmen often insist this is just a coincidence.

This was CompuServe’s claim concerning Arenson, who had gone six months without getting a $400 rebate that was supposed to come in eight to 10 weeks. She was told CompuServe had gotten her address wrong the first time. But she couldn’t seem to get anyone at the mystery Colorado firm employed by CompuServe to correct the address and send her a check.

Even Jim Hindi, the computer department manager at Circuit City’s Culver City store, where Arenson purchased her computer, told me he called customer service five times to try to get her the rebate, without immediate result.

But within four days of my talking to Bentley at CompuServe, Arenson got her rebate check, which came on Monday, made out for the full $400. And so, for that matter, on the same day, did Bill and Judy Lovold, South Bay residents, who had also failed to get a $400 rebate for six months and whose case I had also brought to Bentley’s attention.

Bentley maintained that the checks had gone out before I called her. She said Arenson’s check had been sent out Jan. 4. Why it did not arrive until Feb. 7, she could not say.

Bentley also said the Lovolds had failed to buy the right CD-ROM to actually qualify for the rebate. She said the Lovolds were told of the problem in a November letter, but the day before I called CompuServe had sent him a rebate check anyway.

Bill Lovold provided me a copy of the letter. It said nothing about a CD-ROM problem, explaining vaguely, “Our records indicate that you did not register under the rebate program price plan. The program . . . eligible for the rebate is the CompuServe 2000 Premier program at $21.95 per month.”

Lovold said he was paying $21.95 a month and did not understand the letter’s meaning. By the time the couple contacted me, he said, he had made 12 calls and sent six e-mails to try to get the rebate.

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Obviously, I suspect that the rebate checks did not actually go out until after I called Bentley last Thursday. After all, four days is about the proper time to elapse for most transcontinental mail.

But maybe I’m particularly suspicious this week, because several persons took me to task for last week’s column, reporting with enthusiasm that Sprint PCS had made “progress with their customer service” in handling a complaint by Dana Laine of Westchester on behalf of her mother. It had offered Laine a chance to learn its decision on her complaint by contacting a Sprint Web site.

Even before the column appeared, a copy editor here at The Times, Elizabeth Troy, suggested I modify the laudatory lead. After all, she reasoned, Laine and her mother had spent hours talking to customer service before getting any satisfaction at all.

I rejected Troy’s suggestion, but several readers agreed with her when the column appeared.

Particularly persuasive was an e-mail from Jonathan Mendel of Los Angeles.

“As a Sprint PCS customer of 14 months, I’d like to say that I wish that you had given more space to the fact that Ms. Laine and her mother had so much trouble calling Sprint PCS’s customer service line,” he wrote.

“I have had to call this number on many occasions and it is an extremely frustrating experience. The wait time is usually at least half an hour, just to speak to someone. . . .

“Sprint PCS’s customer service reps have repeatedly told me that they know about the long hold time and that they are in the process of hiring more people, but nothing seems to change. I can also attest that Sprint PCS supervisors may not call people back even after a request has been made that they do. . . .

“I can also confirm Ms. Laine’s story that the Sprint PCS Web site was not working [when she called in]. This has happened to me many, many times and I am a computer consultant. The main page will be working but when you try to access the customer service area it will say that it is unavailable.”

There was more from Mendel and from several others.

The upshot of this is that I feel in this case I should not have been quite so upbeat. Recalling that columnists, no less than consumers, can be naive on occasion was helpful in dealing with the CompuServe case.

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventures at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com.