#542 – Tone
Posted on July 2, 2008 at 12:00 am by Chris
I once had 2 credit cards from the same company. I paid the bills in full each month through their website. I was therefore surprised when I opened a letter from them saying that one of my cards was past due and I owed them a $30 fee on top of my balance. I went to the website to check on my payments and realized that I somehow managed to send both payments to one card. So that I didn’t mess it up again I called the customer service number on the card. I told the woman over the phone what had happened and asked to make a phone payment to set everything right. She looked at my accounts and could see that I had always paid my balance in full each month and so she decided to reverse the $30 fee and I just had to make the minimum payment against the balance and all would be good. I gave her my checking account information and paid off the full balance. I was left feeling pretty good about the whole thing. At least until a month later when I got my new bill and the $30 fee was still on there PLUS a new $30 fee for not paying off the original $30 fee from the first month! This time when I called the number on the card, the friendly sounding woman was replaced with a crabby, gravel-voiced man. I cheerfully told him the whole story of what had happened up to that point, ending it with a little laugh to emphasize how silly the whole thing was. He was unimpressed. He treated me like a con artist, inventing stories to try and worm my way out of paying him money that I personally owed to his family. In the end I paid the $60, paid off the balance and shredded both cards. I never cancelled the accounts, they keep sending me new cards as the old ones expire. I put them straight into the shredder without even opening the envelope.
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d00d i hate bad customer service. it helps you appreciate good customer service, though.
Wow. Poor you. When I get into college, I’m just gonna stick with one.
Nice Biff comic, too. I think it might actually work! I’m gonna try it and let you know.
I’ve tried that; problem was, I was the only person on my block with any customer service, and bad customer service is better than none.
Tried that too, got one number, ended up at a machine about 10 times, got hold of someone was told it was the wrong number got a new number, called that, wrong place, new number. When I finally got the right one. Nothing they could do, but the poor guy I was talking to… well I think I got scared, he ended up sending me some movie tickets because of all I had been through.
I tried canceling my free-30-day-trial of AOL once. The guy on the other end of the line was from India or thereabouts, judging by his accent. Somehow I ended up with another free month. I tried canceling again a month later, and ended up with yet ANOTHER free month. I finally managed to cancel it on the third try.
Just goes to show you that earth is a sphere of retards.
Tried buying a Lenova laptop, I needed my parents to bring it to China when they came to visit me. Through a series of missteps on Lenova’s part they shipped the order the day after my parents left and two days after my dad sent them an email canceling the order.
My brother refused to sign for the computer and they kept trying to deliver it, eventually they canceled the order and a month later got another notice saying my order was processed and they had shipped out another computer.
I never got the computer and I’ll never attempt to buy a computer from Lenova again.
Torg, in my opinion, no, it is not, even though I’ve never had to deal with customer service, but I’d imagine I’d hate it, because I go psycho crazy when angry.
I had a subscription to XBox live once that would bill my credit card every few month. Then my credit card was stolen so I de-activated the card and I called the xbox number to cancel my account since I barely played anymore anyways. a few months later I get a couple new games I wanna play online and try to re-activate my account but could not. Turned out they failed to cancel the account and when it tried to bill my inactive credit card, they ended up banning my xbox username forever, and the dang indian guy (why are they always Indian?!) wouldn’t do anything to help other then repeat several times over that my account was banned due to credit card violations…
I just tell them I have lost my job and my life is in the toilet, I am living in a FEMA trailer and even that has got blue FEMA tarp on it from the second tornado …
By the time I get off the line with them, I can guarantee you that I’ll never hear from them again. (Credit cards? When I’m done with them, I can’t even get debit cards.)
Pfft. Weeds. Biff doesn’t need their business anyway.
Heh!
Bad service would certainly keep ME from coming back… But perhaps I’m not so persistent as a weed?
Leave it to Biff to find a non-linear use for horrible customer service!
Ingenius!
Lemme guess: Capital One?
I used to have a Capital One card. Then I stopped using it, but still had a balance. I ended up having to make arrangements to get the balance paid off. They called sporadically for the next two years trying to get me to pay off the balance that was already paid off.
As for AoL, the problem getting an account canceled is actually AoL’s official mandate. You should hear some of the real horror stories about canceling an AoL account.
^-.-^
I laugh at you all. Everyone, well some know that customer service is like a fool with a sword: He means good but usually ends up hurting things more than helping. That and I never buy credit cards for this exact reason. Sides, Ive never felt comfortable spending what I dont have…….
Now, you see, this is why I have avoided credit cards like the plague. I don’t like to spend money I don’t actually have.
rotfl
I agree with Kree. I prefer paying with cash anyways. Slabs of raw ore if possible. But I only use my DEBIT card when I don’t have enough cash on hand to buy something. Which always includes gas these days. Friggin’ oil prices, mumble grumble…
Chris, I know this has nothing to do with the comic, but do you take requests? I had an idea for a Biff comic yesterday, and I was wondering if I could E-mail it to you or something.
certainly a bad idea, me getting a credit card, just a money pit…
ps seeing the irony here.. theres a credit card add at the bottom of this site lol
if i get bad customer service,
i close the account. i don’t need the grief.
@bghvgjdh – No, I don’t take requests because there are legal issues involved with that. I will do commissions though. If there is something you really want to see in a Biff comic you can pay me to draw it for you. I should add that to the store.
Wow. How much do you charge for a personal Biff comic?
@ everyone – Remind me to neer get trevor angry. 😀
sorry, I meant “never”
@Chris: That’s an awesome idea! I’d definitely pay for a personalized Biff comic.
I’m happy to say that I don’t use any credit cards. I like to put as few people as possible between me and my money. Plus there’s the whole debt-free thing and long-term benefits of not paying extra fees.
I do have a debit card with my local bank, though. They’re more pleasant to talk to than someone in India.
…hmm, I see a credit card ad on your site. Love those contextual ads.
I’ve had plenty of bad customer service, but it hasn’t done anything to the weeds. Bummer.
I had maor issues with HSBC customer service about a year ago. Someone stole my debit card and used it to charge porn sites multiple times. The first time this happened they automatically reversed the fees. the Second time however they left it alone and I ended up having to pay something like 200 dollars to them and then an extra 180 to Target for checks that bounced. I left the bank once I realized they could really care less whether or not your card was stolen.
don’t get me started on bad customer service…..I might kill again…
also I work in customer service, it makes us all look bad.
Wow. These comments are starting to read like ‘the consumerist’ web blog. Anyway, love the comic, been checking on the updates daily.
Customer Service is a direct impression of the company it serves, bad customer service equals bad company. Do you remember how Nordstrom had this stellar repuatation for customer service? And then the urban legend about the cookie came out? I wonder how much that legend cost them.
Brilliant, next time my tree invites them over, I’ll just put them on hold!
No name, I wouldn’t phsyiclly (sp?) hurt you, I’d probably just tell you to kill yourself then wish I had physicaly hurt you.
By the way is it Biff in the garden week?
I love your comics chris!!! Keep doing what you’re doing!! =) Cheeeeezy i know..but thats how i roll!
Augh! You never give credit card companies your checking account information! They’ll clean you out and keep charging you! Credit Card collectors break more laws than you can imagine. Cancel the cards before someone steals them.
What kind of service would weeds require?!?!
Biff’s extra weird in this one.
I got charged £56 (over $110 usd) for a debit payment that i didn’t have the funds for. Turns out its illegal for them to charge more than what reflects the amount of paper work this caused… which is really not a lot. I found out a bit too late to fix it tho… I am still with the bank tho, they do a pretty damn good student account
I once tried to cancel my phone company-based internet access because I was moving. The service rep kept trying to convince me to keep it, despite the fact that it would have been a long-distance call to access the web from another state. When I got my next credit card statement (which was 3 months late because someone screwed up my change-of-address), there were 3 months of internet access charged to it.
2 webshops where I had bought a lot of stuff previously, have lost me as their customer because their “customer service” refused to answer a simple question i asked, and instead replied with some premade response to a request that I never made.
You ignore me once, I give you a chance to actually READ my question and try again. You ignore me twice, goodbye forever.