Dire Bare said:
Actually, this practice is quite common with ISP's, satellite TV providers, cell phone companies, just about anybody who sells you a monthly plan for some sort of service. And believe it or not, it's a GOOD policy for the company (and often the consumer) and helps protect against liability.
What practice do you mean? The practice of not automatically improving a rate or not even telling people that they could have a better deal, or the practice of first intimidating people by being condescending, then, when they cancel the service, brownnosing them, and when they won't return, harassing them for weeks?
I don't particularly like the first, but can live with it. The latter will make me a non-customer every time.
When service companies change their plans, sometimes the prices go up, sometimes they go down. Sometimes, regardless of price, details change in small ways, sometimes in large ways, and sometimes not at all. And for a company to change your plan without your own prompting, because they think you MIGHT find it a better deal would be just opening huge can of worms and possibly open them to legal action.
Sure, I don't disagree with that. And I understood why they didn't automatically changed it once the suck-up representative told me there was a different time period involved in the contract (something that the condescending guy could have told me in a friendly tone, and everything would be fine, I'd probably still be with that company)
And, like several of the above posters, having been the customer service rep on this same conversation, you'd be surprised how many people get pissed off if you do actually change them to a better plan . . . . same details, better price, but different name perhaps.
Did you treat customers condescendingly as a rule? Or harass them when they cancelled your service because they did?
I always used to laugh when customers told me essentially the same thing you told your ISP. It usually boiled down to this, "I'm pissed you follow the same practice as the entire industry, and I'm going to switch to one of your competitor's who follows the exact same policy!!! So there!"
I didn't say that, though. Read my post. I said "you not only not lowered the price, the guy who told me you don't do that sort of thing was the rudest person I talked to all week, so I'll go to one of your competitors who knows how to talk to their customers."
Besides, why SHOULD a company lower your price, "just because"? It'd be nice, sure, but not doing so constitutes poor service? Maybe I've spent too long in customer service . . . .
Doing so would constitute great service. And I've seen it. There are mobile phone service providers that automatically change you to their best pay scale - in retrospect. So if you had only a couple of calls, you'll get the one with the low base cost but high cost-per-second, but if you had lots of calls, you'll get the low cost-per-second (or even the flat-rate).
Adequate service would be telling me why they can't just change to a better offer, but telling me that something I probably would call a better offer (and outlining what changes for the worse) is available.
Poor service is when the people in customer service are rude and harass you.
That particular company is known for lousy customer service. Their usual policy is first hoping people would not know about any better offers (they used to be the only phone provider before the official monopoly was turned into a virtual monopoly), and when complaints arise, first intimidate people into dropping it, and only going into brownnose mode when customers threaten to cancel - and if they do cancel, keep calling them about how better their service is than that the competition is and that people really should change again.
