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| Photo by Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr. |
On Saturday I did something that made me very sad. I canceled our Chicago Tribune subscription.
It was a decision, even in the midst of Saturday’s unfortunate confrontation with a particularly nasty “customer service” rep, that was pretty hard to make.
We’d had this subscription since 1996, not long after Sim first moved to Chicago.
It followed us through moves from Rogers Park to Oak Park, to NW Indiana and back again to Illinois.
We kept up our print subscription even after we started getting the bulk of our news online. Sunday is still a big newspaper reading day in our house.
Yet, this is our last Sunday with the Trib landing on our front porch. I made the decision to cancel despite an enormous amount of respect I have for the Tribune’s editorial operations. Even with cutbacks, the Trib is still an innovative operation doing some pretty impressive things online. More importantly, the paper continues to do valuable reporting on political corruption, food safety and environmental threats.
But I had to personally draw the line at being treated like absolute garbage by the Trib’s billing department, especially over such a small matter.
When I got the billing call on Saturday at about 8:05 a.m., I was pretty sure there’d been a snafu with our credit card, which we’ve been straightening out ever since we found out it’d been hacked by identity thieves. We’d managed to switch over most of our automatic bill pay from the card, but a few things – including our Trib subscription – slipped through the cracks.
So when I picked up the phone, I was startled at the level of hostility coming from the other end of the line. The billing rep asked to speak to my husband, when I said he wasn’t there, the rep said he’d call back later. But I wanted to go ahead and get the matter straightened out, so I asked, “Is this a billing call?”
Oddly irritated, the rep said in the snottiest tone you can imagine, “Of course it’s a billing call. Why else would we be calling at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning?”
Wow.
I responded that I was trying to find out how much we owed….and he hung up on me.
Wow.
When I called back to the billing department a couple minutes later, the next rep wasn’t much better. He told me the reps are trained to hand up on people who are rude to them.
Again, wow.
At this point, I was pretty resolved that we’d be canceling. I still didn’t know how much was past due. I asked to speak to a supervisor, and was shaking and angry at this point.
She, I have to say, was really nice and apologetic. But I was pretty sure I was done. I knew for sure when I found out how much we owed – $13.
Thirteen dollars past due on a credit card that was no longer valid. All we needed to do was update the number. A polite request – even a neutral request – would have been appreciated. And I would have been the one to apologize for prompting them to have to call to get this straightened out.
Instead, the Trib lost a print subscriber.
I’m constantly amazed at the low level of customer service I experience on a daily basis. Register clerks don’t make eye contact or make me feel like I’m inconveniencing them with my purchases. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve completed transactions with the cash register clerk engrossed in full-blown conversation with another clerk…or worse…the floor manager.
In this economy, I’d think customer service would be a priority. For me, a track record of good service will keep me coming back to a particular store or buying a brand product, even when that means I pay more.
I’ll even put up with cranky cashiers or sales reps from time to time. But I have my limit and the Trib found it.
Virtual Farmgirl 
