Customer Service

Let me play in the dirt all do, make huge messes in the kitchen, stand over a hot stove canning or create with a needle and thread but do NOT ask me to deal people!

I am not saying the names of either of these companies. Many of you know who we deal with on both and if you know, please don’t mention names in the comments. If you don’t know .. I kinda hope you don’t find out by dealing with them.

Having said that, customer service is pretty much dead, in my opinion.

Cell Phone:

In early 2021, probably in May or June, shortly after Vince moved here, we got new phones. I hadn’t had mine long when it met an untimely death. I had it in my lap in the car. We stopped at the furniture store, I got out, it fell, hit the parking lot. Even in a good case, the screen cracked but the phone still worked somewhat. By August, it wasn’t working so well so we ordered a new phone, this time we paid for insurance.

I have been super careful not to drop it. In March, people started telling me “I tried to call you three or four times and it goes straight to voice mail.” Why was it going to voice mail? We use wifi calling so if it was in the house, it should not be going to voice mail. I called our phone company several times, they had me do all kinds of things, including a master reset. The phone was backed up but there are always things that don’t “take” and I’d have to add a few passwords, change a few settings, re-set some ring tones. No matter what we did, it never got fixed. I’d just deal with it. I’d go to the doctor and the lady would say “We tried to call you to change your appointment time but your phone just goes to voice mail so we left a message.” I had no message. One day recently Nicole sent me a message on Messenger and said “Call me!” I did and she said she had called me five or six times in the last few hours and it always went to voice mail. She said she left a message. No message. Sometimes, a week or so later, I’d get notification of a voice mail and it was from several days or even a week before. We have called the phone people probably a dozen times. Finally about three weeks ago, I told Vince “This phone is going to be out of warranty soon and I’m really tired of dealing with it.” So, he began calling them. They wanted us to switch our SIM cards and see what happens. Since my phone only messes up intermittently, I didn’t really see the value in doing that but we did it. The phones both seemed to be working fine so they told us to put the SIM cards back in our respective phones and let them know if the problem continued.

It continued to they sent me a new SIM card.

Last week I was talking to my uncle on the phone and the call was dropped. I kept trying to call him back and my phone would look like it was calling but then it would just end the call. I was cooking dinner so I put it down and would try again 10 minutes later and then 15 minutes later. After about 30 minutes of that, I asked Vince to call me. The phone went straight to voice mail again. He called the phone people again. They said we had to call the insurance company. Vince did. Went through everything with them and they said “No, it’s still under warranty and that’s mechanical. Call Motorola.” Vince called Motorola and they went through all kinds of testing with him and said no . . you need to call the phone people about this. They will be the ones to replace the phone.

Vince called them and he was on the phone probably 2 hours with them. They insisted I do another master reset and, though I grumbled, I did it. The man said “OK. Now that you’ve done the master reset, that’s the final step. We’ll send a new phone to you.” He got all the info, said it would go out Thursday.

Usually when we get something from them, it comes in two days but it shows up on my Informed Delivery as soon as they ship it. Today the phone still wasn’t here and wasn’t showing up in my Informed Delivery so I called. Nope. No record that the guy we talked to approved sending a new phone and no new phone ordered. But, before they can send us a new phone, Vince and I have to switch our SIM cards . . even though we’ve tried that AND the SIM card in my phone is less than a month old and the phone was having this issue with the old SIM card and with the new SIM card.

We are so getting a runaround here.

When Vince gets back from his trip to town, we’re ordering new phones from Verizon and we’re switching service!

Dehydrator:

Last week or maybe it was the weekend (a week ago), I realized the dehydrator wasn’t working. Vince took it apart, figured out it was the thermostat. Called the company and that has been a bigger fiasco than the phone.

They wanted all kinds of info, including the receipt. Thank goodness I bought if from Amazon or I would not have the receipt from something I bought 8 years ago. Every time Vince talked to them, they wanted something else. They wanted pictures showing the back plate with the serial number and something else. They wanted a video that it wasn’t working. We had to take a video showing it plugged in, showing us turning it on and showing nothing happening. Honestly, if that’s all it takes, we could flip the breaker and do the same thing but . . that’s not what we did.

The first lady Vince talked to said “OK. It isn’t working. We’ll send you a whole new unit.” She needed our credit card because we have to pay for shipping. She sent Vince an email with other info she needed – mostly our address (which I had already provided) and a couple other things. She told Vince that once she got the email, she would call him for the credit card. I think shipping costs depended on where we live and apparently he couldn’t give her our address over the phone. I swear . . I am not making this stuff up.

Vince didn’t hear back from her so he called back the next day and talked to some man. He said “OK. We’ll send you the parts to fix it.” Vince said “A lady yesterday told me you would send a whole new unit.” NO! We’ll send you the motor and the thermostat. OK . . we’ll take what we can get to get it working. The man told Vince he needed our address and he’d send us an invoice for shipping. “You already have my address.” Nope – he needed it in an email to him.

Vince sent the address and never got anything back so he called back Friday and was told they no longer send parts, they will only send a new unit. But before they will send a new unit, we have to cut the cord off the old unit and send them a picture with the cord and the unit . . proving the cord has been cut. Makes no sense because if we were trying to be dishonest and try to get a new unit while ours is still working, all you have to do us re-wire a cord but again, we jumped through their hoops and sent the pictures with our address. Then Vince gets an email that said “Call us with your credit card number!” Of course it was after hours so Vince was going to call them back on Monday. On Saturday, he got an email that said “You haven’t called us yet!” It was already Saturday night when Vince saw the email but he responded that he didn’t realize they were open on Saturday so he would call on Monday.

He called this morning and the lady told him “Our systems are being upgraded and we can’t take your credit card number til after 4 p.m.”

It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. It’s like Vince said . . our kids and grandkids will never expect good customer service because they’ve never had it. Those of us who do expect it feel like we’re beating our heads against a brick wall!

Will I ever get a replacement phone? Probably not because it isn’t worth the time or effort since we’re changing phone companies. Vince wants to get it because he feels like we deserve it. I want to close that door and never think about them again.

Will I ever get parts or a replacement dehydrator? I’m beginning to wonder.