Customer Service

Customer Service

In today’s world, we all hear the many horror stories. “I was on hold for 37 minutes and got disconnected.” “I couldn’t even understand the person on the other end.” “I am in the right, but  my claim was denied!” ...etc. I think I’ll relate to you my recent interactions with two different corporations for just one transaction.

My aging cell phone is in need of replacement. (Is about two years really the lifespan of these necessary-for-today’s-world marvels?) (This planned obsolescence may need a discussion in the future!) When I got this, it was one of the era’s “flagship” phones. Samsung S7. It served me well, but near the end it repetitively was telling me I was dangerously low on memory. (The phone, not me. My memory is an entirely different thing, and if I remember to, I may write about that failing!) The last two or three months I would periodically have to choose which apps I could most do without, and delete them to gain a few precious mb of memory.

I had been doing a bit of research on available phones, and being the loyal Android follower that I am, I decided the new Pixel 3 would be my next last-ever phone. 

Dec 19. I navigate over to the website to make my choices….black, 128 gb, unlocked, payment method...and then I place my order, and wait. Order confirmation in my email, estimated delivery date Jan 1-6. Perfect, no need to worry about the package arriving while I’m away on vacation in sunny Florida! One day later, I get a notification that my package arrived at Fedex facility, and revised delivery date of Dec 21-26. Also acceptable, I’m not leaving until the 26th. Now my biggest concern is whether I can get the new phone set up and working prior to going on vacation.

Dec 20. The package departs the shipping facility in a Chicago at 1:30 am. Only about 100 miles away, so I assume I’ll have my new phone in hand in a couple days. I keep checking the package tracker online. Nothing. 

Dec 21. Still no update that the package has been received anywhere. I go to the Fedex website and set up an account to receive texts when any activity is logged for my package. 

Dec 22. Holiday activities are gearing up, and I’m distracted from checking on the delivery somewhat, but still no action when I do get around to checking. 

Dec 23. Sunday morning, and heading to Princeton for the day to celebrate Christmas with my wife’s family. I focus more on the festivities and less on the anticipated delivery, but still no update. 

Dec 24. Back home for holiday celebration with our kids and grandkid.  The package tracking still indicates it has left the Chicago area, but no further updates. At this point I assume the phone will not arrive before 4:30 am on the 26th when we leave for vacation, so I once again navigate to the Fedex site, and then put a “Vacation Hold” on the delivery until Jan 2, the first working day after we get home from sunny Key West. That done, I accept the fact that I will not see my purchase until the new year, and focus on the holiday, and packing for vacation. 

Dec 26. Travel day. A two-hour layover in Atlanta minus a five minute stroll between gates leaves me an hour and fifty-five minutes to people-watch, read, and check on my purchase. Still nothing. So my purchase left a shipping facility over six days ago, and hasn’t finished the 100 mile journey to my front porch. We board our second flight, and take wing to our destination. Two hours later, and we descend the stairway to the tarmac in sunny, breezy Key West. We grab our bags, pick up the rental car, and by lunchtime we’re at our home for the next five days. Beer, burger, beer, and then a long stroll up and back the length of Duval Street. Our first afternoon in Key West was perfect.

Dec 27. As always, I rise before Nancy. I go out onto our balcony to watch the sunrise, and to people watch. I’m looking through the photos from the previous day when I’m joined on the balcony by my barely awake spouse. While she gets dressed to go to breakfast, I call customer service at Fedex to try to get more information regarding my missing delivery. I explain all I know, and the service rep looks up what is going on. She asks what is in the package, as occasionally a package label is damaged, and it must be opened to confirm where it is destined. Upon hearing that it is a new cell phone, she tells me that it is a possibility that it has been taken. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. The package should have been received at their Morton facility within a few hours of leaving the Chicago area, she tells me, so she puts a trace on the package. She also suggests that I call customer service at Google to explain what is happening. Overall, she was pleasant and knowledgeable, and I felt a little better regarding the situation.

Next, I call Google. I’ve tried to contact customer service at other large tech firms in the past, and found it nearly impossible to even find a link to email, let alone an actual phone number. It seems that most companies hope that you can help yourself on the faq page. I expected the same with Google, but was pleasantly surprised to find a real phone number with only about three minutes of searching! I dial, again expecting the worst, expecting to be put on hold for 20 minutes before hearing a real live voice. Nope! One ring, one trip through the menu to be directed to the proper department, and I’m chatting with a young woman at Google. She listens to my explanation, and asks if I can hold for 3-5 minutes. Yes, I can. About a minute later she’s back asking a few more questions regarding my problem, puts me on hold for another two minutes, and is back. She is transferring my call to somebody in Warranty and Shipping (which struck me as an odd combination.) This gentleman, CJ, says that with the package off the Fedex radar for seven days now, it could be safely assumed to be gone. He offered to send out a replacement phone that day. I explained that I was on vacation in Florida and wouldn’t be home for a few days, and asked him to hold off on that until the 31st. He agreed that this seemed a reasonable solution, and then gave me his personal work email address to contact him if any other problems arose. 

Dec 28. We go about our vacation, driving highway 1 up the Keys to Key Largo for the day, with several stops along the way to look at the local parks. I was on a beach at Long Key State Park photographing para-surfers when my phone rang. Fedex was calling to tell me that my package had been located, and would continue on its way to my home. I asked if the package was physically intact, and the agent assured me that it was fine except for a torn label. It was in Morton, 40 miles from my front door. I asked if I could pick it up at the Bloomington Fedex office (which is on my way home from the airport), and she said absolutely. She made a note to hold the package there, and I said I’d pick it up around 2:00 pm on the 31st. Ah, crisis over. As soon as we got back to our inn I shot off an email to CJ at Google explaining the situation, and that he need not bother to send out the replacement phone.

Dec 29 and 30. Vacation days, I won’t bore you with details.

Dec 31. Travel day. We load all our belongings, souvenirs, and dirty laundry into the rental car and head to the airport, arriving an hour before our 7:00 am scheduled departure. Park the car, deposit the keys in a dropbox, check our bags, stroll through TSA, and find a seat near our “gate.” While is is a bit pricier, we much prefer flying in and out of small airports. As long as there is coffee available, I’m satisfied. Ah, but our flight is delayed an hour. Apparently the FAA has rules that the flight crews are required a certain minimum sleep before flying. I suppose I’d rather they not doze off at the controls, and we had scheduled a layover of more than two hours in Atlanta, so it really had little effect on our schedule. A couple minutes before 8 we walk out onto the tarmac and mount the stairs into our plane, taking off on our trip back home.

Two hours later we land in Atlanta, taxiing for what seemed like twenty minutes to get to our assigned gate. First order of business in the terminal is to determine what terminal and gate we would be leaving from, in an airport of this immensity it can be quite a trip to the next gate! I find the arrival/departure board and read that our next flight is at the gate immediately next to the one we just arrived at, so we make the fifteen second trek and find a couple empty seats to await our next flight. Oh, about that next flight. Another delay. We were originally scheduled to leave at about 11:00 am, but were re-scheduled to leave at 2:00 pm. Apparently the plane and crew that were scheduled to take us home had been delayed by a blizzard in Fargo! Now with plenty of time to kill, we find a place to grab some lunch (and a beer.) While airport food often leaves something to be desired, the beer selection is often quite good. Back to our gate we walk, with still about two hours until the flight. We read, people-watch, chat, and I walk to the other end of the terminal for a beer just to help kill time. Finally we board, and are ready to make our final leg of the vacation. On a plane that’s only about half full! I am permitted to change seats to an empty exit row and stretch out in relative comfort.

An hour and 45 minutes later we land in chilly, wet Bloomington around 3:30. I check to see if Fedex would be open still (It’s New Year’s Eve, remember), and yes, they are open until 6:00. Nancy walks over to baggage claim as I make the longer, colder, wetter walk to my car out in the parking lot. I find the car, start it up, flip on the heated seats, and pull up in front of the terminal as she is walking out the door with our bags. Again, I love our small airport! A five minute drive to our Fedex office, I show my ID, and sign for the package, and back to the car for the last five minutes to home….at last.

So, all of my concerns and worries over my late delivery were for naught. I had my fancy new phone by my side, and would soon be struggling to get it set up. I must admit, when making the two calls to the corporations’ customer service agents, I was apprehensive. My fears were unfounded. Both Fedex and Google listened to my troubles, and quickly and efficiently took the necessary steps to correct them. The total combined time I spent on the phone that morning was about a half hour. Perhaps I was lucky (if you know me well, you know that not to be the case), maybe I got the right person on the other end of the phone, but it was all in all a satisfying experience. Kudos to Fedex and Google for their help.