I am continually amazed by this new buzz title. Every company in every field now refers to their Customer Service as Customer Care. What's interesting to me is the lack of actual care they provide.

As an example, last year I actually had to file an FCC complaint against T-mobile. Their sales department promised me a phone twice, and made me wait at home all day for two days for a phone that never arrived. After two weeks of trying to resolve this with their sales department, I finally got a supervisor on the phone that told me I couldn't get a new handset upgrade via the link on my account website beause my account was a SmartAccess account. This is a nice way of saying my credit is borderline.

After going through all that pain and angst and having to deal with all those people in sales, I figured they owed me, so I filed the complaint. I won, as you may see by my previous post and I now have the phone I originally wanted for the advertised price of free. But, is this really Customer Care?

Yesterday, I spent 4 hours troubleshooting a problem with a friend's phone line. The robotic voice at SBC told me, "If my phone was dead, and I couldn't receive calls, press 1." This was certainly the problem, so I pressed 1. The very next question is: "If you are calling from the phone you are reporting trouble with, press 1." Hello! And then after going through all the appropriate menu options, I have to wait a good 20 minutes on hold before I get to talk to an actual person to get a repair person over to find out whether the problem is theirs or the building's wiring. Is this Customer Care?

Today, I had a tech from Dell come over to my house to replace some parts on my laptop. He was very nice and started to work right away. After he had my laptop all taken apart and was getting ready to replace the parts, he found Dell had sent him parts for an entirely different laptop that I've never owned that is not anywhere listed on my account with them. So now, I have to spend another day at home tomorrow (if the parts arrive in time) waiting for another tech to come and do what the first tech should've done.

Pardon me if you think I'm whining. It's just that when I have to stay home to wait for someone to do anything, or wait for a delivery or something of that nature, I lose money. Companies don't seem to understand that. I'm a freelance computer geek by trade, and I have to be available for my client base. It looks really bad when I have to say, "Oh sorry, Dell's coming by today sometime between 10a - 5p, so I don't know if I'm going to be able to help you."

Someone, somewhere should re-educate these corporate weirdos on what the definition of the word "care" is. I think then the world would be a much better place.

Thank you for letting me rant. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes it's just got to be done. :)

Peace!