Do you remember what movie this line is from? If you guessed The President's Analyst, you’re right! James Coburn starred in this 1967 send-up of cold-war America. And TPC, the dastardly villain lurking in the shadows of the movie, was eventually unveiled as “The Phone Company”, with this self-same motto as its defining vision statement.
Fast-forward 40 years and Ma Bell may be coming back into existence, but hopefully not with the same commitment to non-service. Unfortunately there are still lots of mini-monopolies that seem to feel that customers should only be seen and not heard.
Case in point, my wife and I had to try to deal with our local gas company, Nicor, Inc. this weekend. I say "try to" because they’re not set up to actually help anyone with their problems. The background: My mother-in-law has been picking up the pieces of her life after her husband of fifty years passed away over Christmas. She got a bill from Nicor showing she owed about five times her normal amount. After waiting over an hour on hold, she finally got to a “billing representative” who told her to pay the bill, and who wouldn’t help her try to figure it out.
Here’s where we stepped in. Since she wasn't about to pay a bill without understanding how things had gotten so out of whack, and since the wait time to talk to a live person at Nicor was and is excessive, we offered to make the next call to try to uncover the facts. Oh, and she also wanted to get off the Nicor budget plan, which is supposed to help you budget for gas expenditures by stabilizing the cost over the summer and winter months.
So armed with bills and reading material, we took turns waiting at the phone for someone to pick up. Over an hour later we finally got through to Ricky, our not-so-friendly billing representative. His immediate reaction was "You’re not an authorized party for this account – so I can’t help you."
We tried explaining "… death in the family, bills jumbled, we’re just trying to understand the situation …" all that, but Ricky wasn't interested in hearing it. When asked for a supervisor, he said "You can’t talk to one". When asked how we could get through to one he was silent. When asked for his last name, or any other information so that we might actually be able to identify him for a complaint, he refused. We even asked to discuss the situation in a theoretical manner, so that he wouldn't have to view or divulge confidential account information. His response? He said he had other customers waiting and hung up.
I’m sure Ricky (if that’s his real name) did have other customers waiting. Given our wait time, there must have been a lot of people waiting. And if they got the same service we got, I’m sure they weren't helped at all. Interestingly, we all knew beforehand, based on past experiences, that the wait time was going to be horrendous.
Nicor is a profitable utility, providing value to its shareholders while providing service to its community. But if it wants any changes to governmental regulations, it should think about the impact its non-customer-friendly interactions will have on the voting public.
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