Category Archives: customer service

keystone collections group

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My mood is like that sky out there right now.

Many of us as residents in Chester County have to deal these third party tax collectors for the local taxes. Like Keystone Collection Group out of Irwin PA. 

Since May they have been harassing me over a tax year I was NOT a  resident of Chester County. I was at that point only dating a resident of Chester County. As far as I am aware that was not a taxable event?

When they sent their first death threat masked as a tax collection nasty gram, I promptly sent them my federal return that clearly shows (and was professionally prepared, no less) my address, municipality and county of residence and so on. My federal tax return gave them every piece of information they needed to say “I’m sorry we made a mistake” and  then close the books on this.

Instead, they sent me a second letter basically telling me that a federal tax return was not acceptable proof and a long laundry list of items for me to prove where I lived.

Being somewhat outraged at this point I called them. Basically I was told that a federal tax return was not good enough and unless I sent them all this other information I was a liar.

Then the person on the other end of the phone says something to the effect of well maybe I was confused about the years. And I said no I wasn’t confused about the years it was the year I was treated for breast cancer I know exactly where I was all year long.

So I sent them everything they asked for and it was remarkable I had some of what they wanted which included copies of old bills with my  address at that time. It’s only because I’m such a paper pack rat that I had any of those old bills as I had shredded most of them. They also got a W-2 and the state return I had filed with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for that year. And oh did I mention when I called them they told me that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania directs them to do this?  Really? 

I sent them all of this  additional information and it should have once again been  the end of it with them sending me an apology and closing the book on this but they haven’t. 

I have even contacted my elected representatives offices regarding this. And Keystone has gone back to them saying now they wanted my federal tax return even though I sent that in the first place and as per their instructions on their last correspondence I have satisfied everything they requested and they told me a federal tax return wasn’t sufficient proof when I submitted it several weeks ago. They already have the information.

I am done. I gave them what they asked for, they have made a mistake with this particular year, and they won’t let it go. At this point they are harassing me. I have complied with the requests and it should be case closed.

The other problem with dealing with this company is there is no secure way to send them information. When you have to send a company like this your personal information wouldn’t you rather do it with some kind of a secure email or fax? How do we really know what they do with the documents you send them that have your personal data on them?

I have heard many, many horror stories regarding this company Keystone Collections Group. I don’t know why they find this so difficult it’s really very cut and dry: I wasn’t living here as a resident then. I was a visitor, albeit a frequent visitor. I was a resident of not only another municipality, but another county entirely. 

As residents of various municipalities out here we shouldn’t have to be paying for these people and their mistakes and their harassment. They are taking money out of residents’ pockets. As far as I’m concerned or municipality should be able to handle this in house, saving all of us money that could be put to better use.

Thanks for stopping by.

today at giant

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  Something  I did not like today in the checkout line. I had a developmentally challenged adult man who was bagging my  order. He had an aide with him who was kind of pushing him too hard.

The grocery store was picking up with a lot of people in line to check out and I could tell he (the bagger) was getting a little flustered. The aide attached to the man bagging was not picking up on the cues being given by this guy that he needed a break.

 I wasn’t pushing them to get out of the store more quickly, I was happy to wait an extra few minutes so that the man doing the bagging who was developmently disadvantaged could complete his task. But what was happening is the person there being the aide was not particularly patient with the person he was assigned. I don’t know how else to describe it. 

The aide was reaching up and around him and basically just push push pushing him when you could see the man doing the bagging reacting much the same way a child who was upset and being pushed too much would react – he was getting very flustered and I felt very badly. The aid kept saying “you have to do your job, you have to do your job” or something basically like that.

So I went to the store manager on my way out.  The manager was reluctant to go over there and told me that the Giant employees don’t generally interfere with these people and their aides. I was at the Giant on Boot Road in West Chester.

I do not know what the protocol is here, and the gentleman who was with the aid during the bagging did not appear to be Down’s Syndrome but something else.  He was fully capable of doing his assigned tasks, he was just doing it a little more slowly than probably the average person would. Again, I had absolutely  no problem with the job he was doing, I had concerns about the way the aide was treating him.

when non-profits become bad neighbors

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Your eyes do not deceive you. This is  indeed a photo taken Monday of a parking lot resembling an obstacle course. This parking lot is not in Chester County thank goodness, the  location is Ardmore, Pennsylvania. In Lower Merion Township where West Chester’s former borough manager Ernie McNeely is now the Township Manager. 

The Junior League of Philadelphia is doing a huge renovation project at the thrift shop and headquarters in Ardmore. I applaud them for all the good works they have done for decades, but they are being astoundingly dad neighbors now.

Ardmore is a town that suffers from parking issues chronically. So if you add a construction project where construction vehicles park every which way and dumpsters get put and left in thru lanes for very tight parking lots,  it creates a driving hazard and an impediment to small businesses.  Believe it or not, close to that dumpster out of the sight line of the photo is an outdoor dining space for a small café. I can’t imagine they have much business with a giant dumpster RIGHT there.

One of my closest friends owns a store that you literally cannot get to through this parking lot a lot of the time right now because of these construction vehicles. So if customers and suppliers can’t reach the stores and store owners and employees are having a hard time, how are small businesses coping? The answer is not really well and it’s just not fair.  (I also have to note that many of these buildings have apartments and office suites above them and all of those people are having a hard time too)

Why can’t the Junior League find other parking close by for the construction vehicles?  Why does it seem like they are getting preferential treatment and everyone is letting them get away with murder in the parking lot? Other businesses can’t stop being in business because the Junior League is renovating their building.  

Don’t misunderstand me, the building they (The Junior League) are in has been long in need of renovation, it’s kind of a pit, but they should be more considerate of their neighbors and they aren’t. If there are projects which have to block portions of the parking lot at times during this project (which keeps occurring), why not start it a little earlier in the morning before businesses open or why not provide neighboring businesses advance notice that the parking lot will be blocked on certain dates for certain amounts of time?

I used to be a big fan of the Junior League of Philadelphia, and hopefully someday I will be able to be once again. But right now they are simply a nonprofit behaving badly. Think of this post as #dogshaming of a charitable organization. Somehow I don’t think when Mary Harriman founded the Junior League in 1901 being a bad neighbor was part of her plan.

This is yet another reason why I am glad I no longer live on the Main Line. I would however love to be able to navigate this parking lot safely so I can patronize my friend’s business. I  used to donate to the Junior League for their shop once in a while and I never will again after this. 

  

apparently complaining about the postal service is un-american ?? their customer service doesn’t think so…

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Yesterday I finally had enough of mail going missing, arriving opened or damaged, and so on.  So I blogged about it.

I have received many, many comments and not just the ones I have published on my blog.  Here’s one  I received off blog:

I mailed a couple of things a couple of months ago. It never got there and was never returned. The guy I spoke to said they have had problems since they go through Wilmington. My question is why did they have to change things?  🙁

I totally understand how the commentor above feels. I am actually sitting on hold for the United States Postal Service in Washington DC, not that I feel it will do any good.

My mail , even local mail, also gets routed now through Wilmington, Delaware. I find it ridiculous that is a Pennsylvania resident, my mail goes out of state before comes back in state. 

Other commenters mentioned similar issues of mail not arriving, arriving damaged, arriving reeking of cigarette smoke.

But then there are the commenters who feel they have to defend the United States Postal Service at all costs. I am exaggerating , I don’t understand how hard they have to work , and how they now have to pay for some of their benefits and so on.

Here’s  one of my favorites, because it had absolutely nothing to do with what I was discussing in my previous post:

Perhaps you need to learn something about the USPS … it has to sustain itself since it does not receive US tax dollars. However, it has Congress critters who are determined to kill it since USPS has to ask Congressional permission for virtually any action to become more efficient or to streamline. On top of it, USPS is the ONLY entity that has to prepay retirement liabilities for retirees decades in advance … for future employees who are not even born yet. That was a bon-bon that Congress enacted during the Reagan years on the march to privatizing the USPS. Of course, private companies are not going to maintain service to Podunk USA. After all, for those places,UPS hands off the packages to USPS since USPS, by law, must deliver to Podunk.

Funny, I don’t remember writing about their retirement benefits or “liabilities”. And I’m sorry it has to sustain itself as a business and it is supposed to be a business? And as a customer isn’t my part in sustaining this “business” dependent upon the service received and delivery of my own mail? And yeah, Podunk. Sorry, I kind of live in Podunk so I hope that’s not too dreadfully inconvenient to deliver mail to us?

Then there is the man who keeps writing in that I am exaggerating and basically he knows this because his mail is perfect. HUH?

I am not exaggerating. My mother sent me a card, nothing fancy just a greeting card… Over a week ago. She lives in Center City Philadelphia.  Still hasn’t arrived.  Someone else has sent me something from Holmdel, New Jersey twice in two and a half weeks. Neither times has it arrived. Things mailed to me from Berwyn and Wynnewood have also not arrived. 

A package marked fragile containing a gift for someone arrived yesterday looking like it had been kicked around like a soccer ball. And that was sent some degree of “Priority” mail.

I have a great postmaster at my local post office, and the gentlemen who handle our residential route know where everyone lives and do a great job. But they are only as good as the mail that the actually reaches my local post office. Obviously there is some sort of problem with where my mail goes before it reaches my post office.

So it has been a while since I started this post.  I called the hotline number for the Office of the Inspector General for the United States Postal Service this morning. Hotline phone calls are answered M-F 11:00am – 3:00pm EST 1-888-USPS-OIG (1-888-877-7644).

The customer service woman I reached took close to an hour with me on the phone going over delivery issues and opened, destroyed, and missing mail. I have opened a case and she also gave me the number to consumer affairs in our area which I’m going to share with you my readers. That number is 215-863-6060.

This woman I spoke with tracked the path of some of my mail that she was able to track using basically the tracking numbers that a couple packages arrived with.  And she agreed there was an issue with my nail because I wasn’t just telling her about one type of mail going missing routinely, it’s a little of everything , bills included.  

I told her honestly that I was a blogger and I had written about this on my blog. And that I was doing a follow up post. I told her about the comments I had received, and she was very polite and didn’t discount anything I was saying. She also told me if mail is arriving and it reeks of cigarette smoke that means my mail is sitting somewhere for longer periods of time then it should be. She said people smoke, but for me or anyone to get mail where the odor is pervasive and strong and lingering it means that your mail was sitting somewhere. For quite  a while. And I have read this complaint in groups I belong to.

Maybe this hour out of my day will amount to nothing, but I hope it will amount to mail reaching me better and reaching my friends and neighbors having issues with their mail delivery as well.  

I think it is absolutely ridiculous that they used to sort or mail through Southeastern PA, and now it sorts  through Wilmington Delaware. This woman also suggested that we contact our Congress people. So Ryan Costello tag you’re it.

I end with USPS trivia: the new postmaster general is a woman and she hails from Pottsville PA



u.s. postal service: they deliver for who?

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USPSWhat is your mail delivery like? The only thing I like about my mail delivery are our mail carriers. And our postmaster is really nice. But that is where the liking of the U.S. Postal service ends.

THE US POSTAL SERVICE IS SO NOT IMPROVING!

I have a great post office and mail carriers BUT the US Postal Service  changed how our mail gets routed to our post office to deliver to me! My mail used to go through Southeastern PA and now they route my mail through a different state— my mail routes through Wilmington, DE!

A lot of our mail goes missing.  One person mailed me something almost 2 weeks ago at this point…and I should have had it in like 3 days. And yes, they had the correct address and so on.

A lot of mail is damaged or arrives partially opened like someone was taking a peek.

And sometimes it smells like the bottom of an ash tray.

And when I call to ask, well what can they do? All of the local mail gets routed out of state so it can come back in state. (Or so my postmaster tells me.)

Unacceptable. (But so is much of anything else which has born the touch of the US Government…..)

 

true vintage: collecting and using dansk 

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Caveat Emptor is Latin for buyer beware. Like everyone else, there are things I collect and love to use. A lot of times I have a hard time sourcing things locally, so I have to go out onto the Internet to find what I want. But you have to pay attention and research what you are buying.

Dansk Kobenstyle cookware, specifically their Dutch ovens, is one of those things I love . But I only collect the vintage and I only cook with the vintage.  Dansk can also be purchased through William Sonoma and other outlets again now, but in my humble opinion they are just expensive they aren’t necessarily as good as what you can find vintage.
Dansk Kobenstyle Dutch Ovens or covered casseroles were introduced originally in 1955. The Kobenstyle Casserole was originally designed by Jens Quistgaard….in Denmark.  Interiors of pans are white. This is enamelware (enamel coated steel) , so you have to baby it and hand wash it. One of the really cool things of the design of the pot is the lid can be used as a trivet! It’s just fun and practical mid century modern. 
The time during which Dansk was originally produced in Denmark was a mecca for mid century everything from cookware to furniture. (I think some of the furniture of that era can be retro cool, but some of it I don’t care for.) 
My mother also had the Dansk flatware when I was growing up. She also used the Kobenstyle cookware ( Dutch oven and a casserole pan of I recall correctly. ) Simple design with a great weight….and basically indestructible. 
Also note that Dansk was a US company no matter where the items were produced.  Dansk as a line was born out of the Great Neck,  NY garage of a couple named Nierenberg in 1954 after seeing the work of Jens Quistgaard at what is known today as the Danish Museum of Art and Design. Eventually Dansk corporate headquarters to Mt. Kisco, NY in the mid 1960s.


I don’t  like things from the entire line but I do love the Dutch Ovens and stock pots. For example, some people swear by the rectangular casseroles, and I hate them as everything sticks all the time. I had at one time a casserole and small sauce pans but I got rid of them.
Dansk originally appeared in Neiman Marcus ads in 1955. At Christmas time. These items were originally produced in Denmark. The pans were first produced in turquoise, red, and yellow. There was also a bright green color which was pretty awful,  but it didn’t last and was discontinued after year I think.
I have attached some photos of the vintage logos for Dansk. You will notice one says “Made in France”. That is because in 1965 production moved from Denmark to France.
What I collect and use, are all basically from the years 1965 through 1975. I can date my pots from their colors. White ( circa 1971-1973), Brown ( circa 1975), and Sun Gold Yellow (circa 1965)
In my opinion at the end of the 1970s, Dansk sort of faded from popularity with a lot of their line until it was reintroduced in 2012.  And it was sold as a line in 1985  and then acquired by another company around 1991 and then again in 2009. 
The Kobenstyle pans today are made in Thailand, and the bottom on the newer pots introduced in 2012 through to today are also slightly different (not just because the bottom is black, as the ones manufactured in France sometimes have black bottoms). I have looked at them in stores and the weight is slightly different and I just don’t like them as well. They have also tweaked the design in some cases which makes them look slightly like cartoon pots to me. So I continue to use the vintage versions of the Dutch ovens/stockpots .
I use these Dutch ovens regularly and eventually I wear them out. Which means I start looking for other vintage Dansk to replace them with. I like to do this before my Dutch ovens don’t have enough of a resale life in them. While I use mine, a lot of people just buy them for display and I have resold some of mine that way.
I have found the vintage Kobenstyle everywhere, but it is easiest to find on eBay and Etsy. So as a result, I was looking on Etsy the other day.
I saw a listing. It was what was described as a vintage Dansk. It’s not. And I knew it as soon as I saw the photo of the bottom of the pan. There was a very modern Dansk logo and “made in Thailand”. That’s not vintage anything,  that’s current to within a couple of years. Even the handles were not the traditional style for the vintage Kobenstyle Dutch ovens or stockpots. (Dansk is now owned by the company that owns Lenox. And don’t get me started on Lenox because while true vintage Lenox is divine, modern Lenox? Not so much.)

I contacted the owner of the Etsy shop to let them know what they actually had for sale. I have noticed on eBay and Etsy that most sellers enjoy getting additional information on what they are selling because quite frankly it helps them sell items quicker. Not everyone can know everything – some people just know certain kinds of items better than others. It’s why you will see so many antique and vintage dealers specializing in specific things.
The owner of the Etsy shop came back to me with the reply “What is your point?” and some other rather rude comments I won’t share. (I am also doing the store owner a favor and not outing them. Everyone can make a mistake.)
Guess my point to the store owner was that I was trying to be helpful.  She left her listing to stand with the incorrect description overnight and then removed it.   But she is a seller who has now lost me as a potential customer.  Not because of her mistake, but due to her attitude. And the shame of it is for a modern Dansk reincarnation her pot was ok, but it was definitely not vintage. All she had to do was change the description and she could have even sold it at the same price point she had listed.
The moral of this rather long Aesop fable is to check out your items. Ask questions. If it’s something you collect and the seller doesn’t know something about the item, tell them. To be honest it’s a little bit hard to be an expert on everything vintage, so feel free to tell us what you know about things. It actually is helpful.  And if you run into a seller who strikes a discordant note with you, move onto the next seller.

worst parking lot in chester county -frazer 

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local biz shout out: uhler’s seed and feed

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Supporting local small businesses is important in any community. It is often difficult to do that along parts of the Route 30 (Lancaster Ave/Lincoln Highway) corridor because of a lack of town centers. So often, unless you know the stores are there you spend years just driving by.

Such was the case with us until recently when we discovered Uhler’s Seed and Feed. Uhler’s Seed and Feed is at 160 Lancaster Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355. (610) 644-1945 is the phone number.

Traditional feed and seed stores barely exist anymore even out here in Chester County. A lot of it has to do with how hard it is for these types of businesses and plant nurseries to compete with big box stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot and Walmart.

Uhler’s is family owned and operated still and it’s wonderful! We started going to them because we feed our birds in the winter and they have the best selection of seed at the best prices and are so knowledgeable. They also have an amazing selection of very good birdfeeders. You can get a custom mix of birdseed if you choose as well, which you can’t find a lot of places anymore.

I have been noticing them the past couple of years because of the plants and things I see outside during the growing season. They are going to be one of my go to places the spring because this is old school. I am a person who does her own gardening. I know what I need, I know what I like, I know what I want to buy. And an old-school seed and feed store it like this is terrific. I can’t wait!

They also sell Deer Out which I have been buying online until now – it’s a deer repellent that is made up of natural things and has a minty scent that isn’t too offensive, and it works!

Another thing about this business I like is it is currently run by three generations of women. They are awesome to every customer who walks through the door.

You can like them on Facebook but they are pretty busy in their store so you won’t see them on social media much. But go in person to check them out! They are awesome and their pricing is terrific!

Uhler’s is right on Route 30 down across Lancaster from where Lincoln Court is. They are on the stretch of Route 30 between Route 352 and 401. They are on the same side of the road as McKenzie Brew House.

So we are crystal-clear I am not receiving anything for writing this review, I am paying it forward because they are a local small business and they deserve the recognition.

Check them out!

pnc bank is so disliked web pages are devoted to them and not in a good way.

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I never knew until today that there were entire websites devoted to hating and bashing PNC Bank. There are things like PNC Sucks , a whole slew of complaints on Consumer Affairs and RipOff Report.

I also realized today that I am still waiting for the “retail escalation specialist” Tracy St. Clair from PNC Bank to return a phone call.

I had contacted the bank at the end of December 2014 after a couple of frustrating occurrences. Actually I had contacted them about one of the other occurrences prior to this date.

First there was the joy of walking into a PNC Bank branch to open a business checking account. Only to be told as an existing customer check in hand that I had to come back on another day. If they advertise that they are full-service how come they are not a full-service bank? That account went elsewhere and the commercial banking twerp I was put on the phone with that day spend the next couple of days arguing with me via e-mail and then checking out my LinkedIn profile. Very professional.

Then shortly after Christmas before the end of the year I paid off my credit card with them. It wasn’t a huge balance, but I paid it off in it’s entirety. I paid it off via their online banking system that told me the exact amount I needed to pay to pay it off that moment in time and have it be paid off. Only I came back to check the account and discovered an obnoxious after the fact finance charge. I understand the theory of debt and interest rates, but when a bank tells you via its own system what you need to completely pay a balance off right then and there that should be the end of it.

I tried calling PNC on December 31, 2014. After being stuck on the phone for about 40 minutes at two different times in the day without speaking to a real person, I went and contacted them via social media. I was in short assured I was valued as a customer and sure enough the first week of January 2015 I received a letter dated December 31, 2014 from Tracy St. Clair retail escalation specialist. She provided a toll-free number of 877–631–8998 and an extension. I called her, and I’m still waiting for the return phone call and in between the first week in January and now I’ve contacted PNC for their social media customer service again and they assured me almost exactly a month ago that Ms. St. Clair would be calling me.

For me it is the principle of the thing. Don’t advertise that you are customer friendly and small depositor friendly when you really don’t give a crap about your customers on a retail level.

I don’t think PNC consistently makes an effort towards customers any longer unless you are a multimillionaire captain of industry.

This of course makes me sad because I have had a PNC Bank account since my college years. But I want to financial institution that is with you through thick and thin and you don’t seem to have that in this country much at all. I know PNC and the casual disregard of customers is not an unusual occurrence.

If you have any complaints about PNC or any other bank feel free to post a comment.

Thanks stopping by.

corporate america and the lost art of customer service

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So while breaking news out of Washington the other day was Pat Toomey is now in charge of the candy drawer in the United States Senate, life goes on. My only comment on Senator Toomey is I hope he will be paying for candy out of his own pocket and is not expensing it to United States taxpayers. He was already sending out junk mail news updates about it this morning, and somehow I doubt he paid for that personally, right? Fair is fair, he wants to live his conservative values, he should be paying for the candy.

Meanwhile, let’s focus on what we, as every day people “pay for”. I would like to particularly zoom in on customer service. Now there’s a loaded topic, right?

Customer service. I think it is a lost art form. 2015/01/img_2768.gif

Let’s begin with Pennsylvania based banking giant, PNC Bank. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, they used to offer terrific service. Today, I’ve discovered not so much once you get past a friendly local teller and lots and lots of fees and service charges…..but not customer service one would expect. It seems like they want your money, but they don’t really care about the customer.

In November, I walked into a local PNC branch during their posted business hours to open another account. I was told I couldn’t open it that day, but I would have to make an appointment to come back another day.

HUH?????

Yes it sounds like the opening lines to a very bad standup comedy routine but it was true. A woman walked into a bank to open an account check in hand and was told to come back another time. Yup, it happened.

But no worries, the gentleman I spoke to on the phone from the branch when they told me as an existing customer with check in hand it was not possible to open a new bank account in a bank branch during business hours has been having a swell time checking out my LinkedIn profile. (Yes dear, peek a boo, I can see your profile too!)

I wrote to PNC Bank about this, and basically, they don’t care. They sent me a brief note in response to my feedback and said they would notify the branch and regional managers. Can you hear the crickets chirping?

My better half and a lot of people I know asked me why I still deal with PNC. Having been an account holder there in good standing for so many years (errr decades actually) , it’s probably habit as much as anything else. After my year-end negative experiences with PNC Bank, I’m thinking a New Year’s resolution might be to shop for a new bank. I opened the new account PNC couldn’t be bothered opening that day at Citizens Bank. So far they have been amazing as far as service. But this wasn’t my only customer service issue with PNC before the end of 2014.

2015/01/img_2764.gifAt the end of December, I paid off a credit card balance in full. I don’t like carrying balances, so I chose from their menu the painful option of pay the full balance off. It wasn’t the largest balance on the face of the earth, but I honored my obligation and paid it off. The credit card was with PNC.

A few days later, even though I paid off the balance in full, they added on one last finance charge. So instead of pulling up my account and finding a zero balance, what I found was what amounts to a nuisance charge. One would think with computer software being what it was that if you choose the option of paying off your entire balance that they would include all charges right?

It was just a few dollars, but at this point I have decided it is the principle of the thing. So I decided to contact customer service. I could not contact customer service on this topic from my account online and conveniently send a message that way, I had to physically call them. That happened to be New Year’s Eve day. I sat on hold for 40 minutes two different times without getting through. That’s 80 Minutes total of the inanity of hold music and the occasional syrupy voice saying how valued you are as a customer without reaching a real person.

My time is worth something I think, so I gave up and contacted them through their social media customer service. On Monday, as in this most recent Monday, January 5th, I received a form letter dated December 31 from a retail escalation specialist at PNC Bank telling me they were unable to reach me by telephone. The letter wasn’t even on letterhead, and my contact information is always updated. I spent many years working in the financial services industry, I know how important that is.

I called the woman Monday who was listed in the letter and left a message with my phone number. I will admit it wasn’t the most pleasant message because I’m pretty hot about this at this point. But it’s Friday, and no one has been able to return a phone call, and that is even after I contacted them again this morning asking why their escalations specialist hadn’t contacted me yet even though I responded promptly to the form letter not on letterhead. How is that customer service? But they thanked me for following up…..

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Of course because I contacted back their social media customer service and told them I hadn’t heard from anyone and that I was going to blog about it, I expect now the phone will ring eventually. I have come to the conclusion that as PNC has grown, customers aren’t really valued any longer unless they are giant mega millions depositors. That’s sad.

But moving along let’s talk about another Pennsylvania corporate giant, Comcast. Comcast is based in Philadelphia. If you live in the city of Philadelphia depending on where you live even in Center City you have very little in the way of choice for cable. Where my mother lives it’s Comcast or Comcast.

So my mother is a senior citizen, she wasn’t weaned on computers or fancy cable and digital television equipment. But she’s not an idiot. She’s been calling Comcast for a couple months at this point with problems with her service. Service she continues to pay for even though she isn’t getting all of the service she is paying for which includes basic customer service.

I wish I could switch her to Verizon FiOs but she’s like prisoner of Zenda because they don’t offer it where she lives. She has lost hours and days off for life waiting for Comcast to come and fix the problem. She is incredibly frustrated by the fact that they outsource their customer service offshore to foreign countries at this point. She said she would have no problem speaking with someone from any country if she could simply understand them, and they her.
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My mother is very clear spoken as well as well spoken, and there’s nothing wrong with her hearing. But when you call Comcast customer service and you go to one of their call centers offshore, the accents are pretty heavy, and they also don’t get apparently a lot of the nuances of every day colloquial American English. And they seem unable to deviate from an inane script for the most part, and frustrate her by not addressing the questions she’s asking.

In the good old days of the not-too-distant past, you used to be able to call Comcast and get call centers in Delaware or Northeast Philadelphia, if not other areas of the United States.

So in addition to the frustration of my mother dealing with Comcast offshore “customer service”, there is the frustration of they are now worse than Time Warner apparently in timeliness of keeping appointments. My mother has been blown off completely for some appointments, and kept waiting hours after the “appointment window” without a phone call on others. And let’s discuss the technicians.

They arrive, and no one seems to know what to do. It’s always someone else’s responsibility to fix it I guess for lack of a better description. Finally they decided that they would have to rerun part of the wiring in her home that they had run in the first place, and not too many years ago. So my mother said okay fine, just have to put the carpet back the way it is supposed to be. Apparently that was a big huge to do and in the end what happened is some technician stapled my mother’s expensive drapes to the floor when they stapled the cabling all around the apartment again. She takes pride in her home, personally I would have been apoplectic when I discovered my curtains stapled to the floor. What kind of slob does that kind of work anyway?

I guess I don’t understand how they could be that sloppy and if the cable was originally run under carpets and such so as not to be obtrusive or a trip hazard or visually ugly why they couldn’t do that again? I get that they don’t want to do extra work, no one does, but if they had installed it in a certain way using their Comcast technicians in the first place, why couldn’t they just put it back that way??

Comcast has a lot of expensive real estate around the greater Philadelphia area, including their monster buildings in the city of Philadelphia. But what they have sacrificed as they have become giants is customer service.

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I’m beginning to think in corporate America, customer service is a lost art because so many companies don’t want to really offer actual customer service. It almost seems as if they feel customer service is counterintuitive to their best practices and bottom lines, as some of these giant corporations have so many more people that they should be able to service so many more people. But they don’t. You spent forever on hold losing your mind to that hold music and a syrupy automated voice thanking you for your patience as you mentally throw darts at a dart board trying not to scream. If you do tough it out and get an actual “customer service representative”, you might get someone who will listen to you but in the end will they actually do anything that is “customer service”?

It used to be American-made and American corporate customer service meant something. But today everything is outsourced or automated in addition to the customer service shortfalls. So when you call for the most American of companies, like American Express for example, you don’t know where your call center is, and that is if you can stand going through all of the call menus, the prompts, the autolady computer voices, and so on.

I remember once years ago having to call American Express on behalf of my then boss who was traveling in Europe. I got a call center in India, and I couldn’t understand them and they couldn’t understand me.

A recent call to my health insurance company Aetna, landed me in a call center in the Philippines. The customer service rep I got on the phone was incredibly pleasant, but she totally didn’t understand what I was trying to do. All I was trying to do was find out where my ID cards were and to verify my binding premium on my new policy was correctly credited.

The only thing this girl got out of our conversation (and was somewhat unable to process or think outside of her script) was she kept trying to sign me up for automatic debiting every month. As a matter fact I had to call back and say I want to be transferred to a United States on-shore call center to make sure I wasn’t signed up for things I didn’t request. And I had been signed up for the automatic debiting I did not want. In this case the language barrier was incredibly frustrating, but there was a true attempt at customer service.

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When I get a good customer service person on the phone these days, I am so complementary I’m sure they think I must’ve lost my mind. But, it is so seldom you actually get really good customer service any longer on the phone that I feel compelled to praise those who actually take the time to do their customer service jobs.

And I tire of the outsourcing, it’s all about the corporate dollar bottom line and what does it do besides line the pockets of executives of that company with a little extra jingle? What does it actually do for the customer who is frustrated by language barriers and hold times?

What about the person to person customer service in bank branches or with your cable service guy comes to fix a problem? Where has it gone? Why has it disappeared? Why is it inconsistent? I spent years in the financial services industry and even when a customer was driving me crazy I didn’t want them to get off the phone feeling less than 100% satisfied. So basically, I treated them the way I wish to be treated.

To me, good customer service should be part of the work ethic. I don’t think you can just do the job, I think you need to do it well. And if people are paying for customer service no matter how small or how large a customer they are, how old, how ordinary, how important, it shouldn’t matter. The customer is a customer is a customer.

This is why I like supporting small businesses so much. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule too. A local Chester County exception would be Athena Pizza in West Chester.

When they are “on”, their food and customer service is excellent, but their largest downfall is their inconsistency. And when you have a problem with an order, it all depends which member of the family owned business you get on the phone. There is literally the nice brother and the horrible brother. When you get the horrible brother, you understand how comedian Jerry Seinfeld got inspiration for one of his most famous characters the soup Nazi.

For 2015 it would be really nice if corporate America, or any business actually practiced what they preached as far as customer service goes. It doesn’t take much to be nice and helpful to customer. Not every customer is going to get the precise resolution they seek, but at the end of the day it’s all about how you treat the customer. And sometimes it would be nice if the company actually admit it when the customer is actually right. And yes the flipside of this argument is we is customers should try to be nice to the companies and their employees.

However if you want corporate customer service anywhere to pay attention to you these days you have to take your complaint to social media it seems. It’s like dog shaming for business. Why can’t the simple phone call take care of things anymore?

One final note is a couple of places where customer service is awesome on a local level is the Wegman’s in Malvern and Kimberton Whole Foods in Malvern. Wegmans is a big chain and Kimberton Whole Foods is a small chain, but somehow they managed not to forget the core values of customer service. Also the Verizon Wireless independent non corporate store in Frazer next to the Giant in the Lincoln Court Shopping Center should be mentioned as they are terrific.

Thanks for stopping by today.

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