Tag: CUSTOMERSERVICE

It's no secret that tech support and customer service, in general, are deep black-holes of wasted time and unsolved problems. What you may not realize is that there are actual reasons for tech support's frequent suckiness. For example, call centers are staffed with the absolute minimum number of agents, in order to save costs. And, while it may be annoying to be asked if your PC is plugged in ...

Verizon touts its high-speed fiber-optic FiOS service as "the top-rated broadband service in America," providing faster Internet access than cable to go along with its "first-class installation." Though plenty of folks would agree that the FiOS service provides fast downloads, one recent customer (and his wife) would vehemently take odds with the company's "first-class installation" claim. Sam, ...

These past months have been tough for retailers, particularly ones selling frivolous electronics that people don't really need. You'd think they'd be a bit more careful with their customers, but not so much, apparently. First we heard about a number of shady dealings at Office Depot and then some improper refusals to match competitors' prices at Best Buy. Now, we're hearing that the latter ...

As Office Depot and Best Buy attempt to one-up each other in their ongoing war against the American consumer, one brave shopper recently infiltrated enemy lines and performed a little undercover espionage of the latter big box store. The honorable HD Guru (disguised as an average citizen looking for a new Panasonic HDTV) recently went to Best Buy with high hopes of uncovering the truth about the ...

Wow. Things at Office Depot appear to be worse than we could have possibly thought. In fact, the alleged apparent systematic misleading of customers makes the shenanigans at BestBuy look quite tame by comparison. Laptop Mag has published a follow up to its initial report of employees being encouraged to lie to customers at Office Depot. It turns out that salespeople at other Office Depot ...

Giving us yet another reason to hate Ticketmaster, the company revealed that it has been scalping tickets through its secondary TicketExchange and TicketsNow Web sites. Designed as a means for fans to sell tickets they've already purchased, Ticketmaster senior vice president for legal affairs Joseph Freeman told the Wall Street Journal that TicketExchange and TicketsNow "only rarely list tickets ...

Some Office Depot sales managers have been encouraging their employees to lie to customers, Laptop's blog revealed in an investigative report Tuesday. According to a number of the Web site's readers, who also claim to work for Office Depot, the practice of lying in regards to laptop availability is a common at the company due to strict corporate sales quotas. One reader named Rich, who Laptop ...

It's no surprise that Americans are overpaying for cellular service, but you may be disturbed to learn exactly how much cash you're actually coughing up per minute of air time. A new study from the Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN) estimates that people are paying an average of $3.02 per minute of actual talk time. Of course, that average is skewed by a relatively small percentage of ...

You thought the days of the pop-up ads were over didn't you? You thought, "I got my fancy browser with the built in pop up blocker. I got me Google Toolbar and it's got a pop up blocker too." What more could you need? Well, in case you haven't noticed, pop-ups are coming back worse than before, and one of the companies responsible is Adimpact. The business makes software specially designed to ...

If you've a hankering for one of Subway's finest come noon-time and find yourself in the 212 or 646 area (New York City) it's only a text away. All you need to do to get started is set yourself up at the Subway Now site with a shop near you, your credit card details, set up a list of numbered favorite sandwiches, and get your hunger ready. Ordering is done by simply texting "menu" to Subway's ...

Our time is valuable, and there is nothing more maddening than spending it wading through automated phone menus. That's why we are excited by Fonolo, a new Web service that allows you to bypass those menus and hop straight to where you want to be. According to the Fonolo site copy, this new convenience is known as "deep dialing." Here's how it works: After creating a profile with your phone ...

Back in the day, we'd have to drive to a local car dealership to check out the different models and options, and to maybe even bring home a colorful brochure with the same information. These days, we just start up Firefox, type in a URL, and virtually shop for cars from the comfort of our own homes. But not every car maker's Web site is as good as the next. According to a Web site usability ...

Woohoo! It's really working! The government is getting almost $1.2 million from two telemarketing companies that violated the Do Not Call Rule. Take that, suckers. Westgate and All In One Vacation Club now respectively owe $900,000 and $275,000, after repeatedly violating the Federal Trade Commission's rule against calling people on the Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. Westgate bought the phone ...

The Sirius Satellite Radio and XM merger is rankling more than a few of the service's subscribers now that many of their favorite stations have been eliminated in new channel line ups. As with most mergers, the two companies are, at best, trying to remove redundancy, putting a positive spin on their new combined effort. In actual practice, that means switching some channels from one service to the ...

Frustrated with his beloved iPhone acting up on him, Popular Mechanics writer Glenn Derene used the opportunity to write this piece on the iPhone, and the larger state of electronics today. After struggling to coax functionality from the iPhone's buttons for months, Derene finally caved in, taking the phone to his local Apple Store's Genius Bar. The resulting tale should not be unfamiliar to any ...