Filed under: Awards, Venting | Tags: Customer Service, Jackass, Planet Beach
Our Jackass award of the week goes to Amber of the South Tampa Planet Beach. My friend Sheila Calistri has graciously provided us with her experience. So I hope you enjoy, and this just goes to show that people really are stupid and are jackasses. Enjoy!
If “customer service” means treating the customer like a pariah and making them feel like they are doing something wrong then Planet Beach in South Tampa delivers. I decided on a whim to check out Planet Beach because a couple of my friends told me how much they like it. My friends, however, do not go to the South Tampa location but I decided to go to this location because it is only 4 miles from my home. I found that I would have been saved a lot of headache had I just driven a little farther to the Brandon location. The main reason for my visit was to try out the Mystic spray tan. Amber, the attendant, was very nice (because I was a paying customer at this time) and showed me how to use the machine. She asked me how dark I wanted to go and I said I wasn’t sure because I had never done it before, but that I wanted to see some color. She said she would set it on the lowest setting and remarked that if I wanted to go darker, I could come back. With that comment, I felt comfortable about dishing out the $30 it cost for a spray tan that is only supposed to last for maybe seven days. I agreed to the lowest setting and went about getting a tan. I left Planet Beach thinking the setting was too low because I really couldn’t see a difference, but I was told it would take approximately 4 hours for it to set in so I went about my busy day. Later that night, my husband and a couple of other family members remarked that they couldn’t tell a difference so I decided I would stop in the next day to darken it up a bit. The next day comes along, Saturday, and I was in a great mood and on my way to a pool party. My husband dropped me off at the South Tampa Planet Beach before he went across the street to run an errand. Amber was at the front desk again so I explained that I wasn’t happy with the color and that I would like to go darker. Amber said sure, and that will be another $30. I was flabbergasted that she wanted me to pay another $30 to go a little darker when I had never been in the store before and she clearly stated the day before that I could come back and go darker if I wasn’t happy with the lowest setting. When I remided Amber of what she told me, she just looked at me and said she did not mean I could come back for free. To me, there was no other way to interpret what she had told me the day before and it never occured to me that she would try to charge me another $30. Amber,who was no where near as nice as she was the previous day, needs to put herself in my shoes, the customer. Would Amber want to pay $60 for a spray tan that lasts seven days? I would think not. I asked for her manager, who wasn’t there so Amber called her and explained that my skin is very light so she did the right thing by starting me out on the lowest setting. Of course, she didn’t mention that she said I could come back and go darker if I wasn’t satisfied and she never gave me the opportunity to speak to the manager myself. Initially, it appeard the manager (who turned out to actually only be the assistant manager) said there was nothing she could do and if I wanted to go darker, I would have to cough up the $30. A little later in the conversation, the asst. manager said the best she could do was half off. This was when Amber hung up and never looked at me again and I walked out. My day went from great to terrible. I felt like I had been taken advantage of and defeated. My husband picked me up and noticed my demeanor had completely changed from when he dropped me off 10 minutes prior. When he heard what happened, he called Amber for the owner’s contact information (I normally don’t ask my husband to fight my battles, but at this point I was defeated). Amber explained that she could not give that out so my husband asked her for the manager’s phone number. After speaking to the asst. manager and figuring out she wasn’t the manager, we finally obtained Meagan, the manager’s, phone number. He called and explained what happened and the manager agreed to credit $30 to my account and invited me to come back in. My husband explained that I would not be coming back and had Amber done the right thing (or at least spoke to the manager and not the asst. manager) in the first place, I would have been a happy customer who would return again and again. Geez, it wasn’t like I was asking for much. I mean, that spray tan might cost them what .50?
Long story short, I will never go to the South Tampa Planet Beach again and I will tell all of my friends and family not to go either. A friend of mine who goes to the Brandon location was nice enough to explain what happened to the manager at the Brandon location. The manager explained that their Planet Beach is owned by the same owner as the South Tampa location so she actually picked up the phone and called me to invite me to her location to try everything out for free. She said they would never treat me as terrible as the South Tampa location and was appalled at how petty they were. I am now a happy camper with Planet Beach, but will still tell all of my friends to skip the South Tampa location and drive to Brandon where they actually understand what customer service really means.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have to say that Verizon was trying to buy me off today instead of trying to resolve the problem that I had with them to begin with them. They threw everything at me to include one year of free movies, but I had to turn them all down. The lady finally said to me “none of this is going to get you to drop your complaint, is it?”
The problem with the customer support was that they were unsympathetic to the reason I made the complaint in the first place. And when I asked to know what the resolution might be, she explained that I was not privy to that information because it was privileged company information. She assured me, however, that the training that their supervisors receive once they are reprimanded, would fix the problem.
There is one problem with accepting that they are going to discipline one of there own on blind faith. That problem is that you never really know if they were really disciplined or not. I asked for a formal apology instead and was told that they could not issue a written apology. The only thing she wanted to do was give me free STUFF on behalf of Verizon.
I am a realist and know that it probably won’t be any better at Brighthouse, but at least it’s a clean start with a company that is going to give me the best deal to switch.
So Verizon is going to get the Jackass of the Week Award, again! If you have had a similar experience with, or know someone who has had a similar experience with Verizon, send them my way so we can try and give them the award a few more times.
When you think of customer service, you don’t generally get a warm and fuzzy. I hear stories of bad customer service experiences almost every day and as a general rule, most people say that customer service in America is dead.
My encounter with Verizon today was not a good one. I have talked to a few people about it in an effort to calm myself down and they have all said the same thing, “Verizon customer service sucks!”.
My experience started with my wife trying to change something on our phone/internet/cable bundle over a week ago. She was trying to save us a couple of bucks a month by cutting out some of our phone services, since we normally use our cell phones. When she did it, they offered her two months of free premium movie channels, which we normally don’t watch, but when they’re free we can stomach them. So to summarize, we took away from our phone service and picked up free movie channels.
Two days went by before we noticed that we no longer had voicemail and caller ID on our home phone. I asked my wife about the change and she explained that she thought she was just taking our long distance and call waiting off of the plan, but that she would call back to have it put back on. She called back two days after having it removed to have it put back on and Verizon politely obliged.
Now to the beginning of the fun. Two more days had passed since my wife had spoken with Verizon about having our service put back to the way we had it originally and our service still was not back up, so we called to inquire. We were told that it would be back on in the next 45 minutes and that they were sorry about the inconvenience. This was on a Friday. Saturday rolls around and still no caller ID or voicemail. We call back to find out that they don’t connect service over the weekend and to call back Monday. We do and come to find out that the order was never placed to put our service back, and get another apology and an assurance that the service will be back on the next day. Can you guess what happens next? You got it, no service. So we decide to wait a day to see if maybe there was a glitch in the system and give them the benefit of the doubt. Wednesday rolls around and still no service. So we call back again, I have now oficially wasted a few hours of my life that I will never get back, and speak to yet another customer service representative that assures me that they will be able to help me out. Surprise! This person gets my service turned on that same day. Yeah!
We are happy now, using our phone, screening our calls and sending them to voicemail again. All is good in life. Saturday rolls around and SNL is a repeat, so we decide to watch a movie on HBO, it’s free after all, so why not take advantage of a free service, sit back, relax and enjoy a movie on a Saturday night. Cue the record scratch…you guessed it, no free channels. Let the phone calls begin again.
My wife calls tech support again, Monday, to speak with them about this hiccup and they inform her that there is nothing they can do and that they are going to tranfer her to customer service. Tech support says they will explain the situation to customer service because we have gone over this diboccle for the 100th time already. My wife hands me the phone at this point because she is officially fed up.
So, here is where the fun begins. My conversation starts out with ” hello Mr. Turk” and I respond “hello, did they explain why I’m calling?” “Yes, she did.” And then there was silence. So I begin to explain this whole situation again and the lady cuts me off and says “I am looking at my screen here, Mr. Turk, and I see that your wife called in two days after recieving the free programming to cancel it.” I say, “no ma’am, she called in about the phone.” She says “It clearly shows on the screen that she called in to cancel the free channels.” Now at this point I am starting to fume a bit, but I am keeping it under control as best I can. I explain taht I understand that her screen says one thing and I’m saying another, but I can assure her that that conversation did not take place the way it shows on her screen, that the actual conversation was about the phone service and how we no longer had it and that we wanted it back. “No sir, it clearly states that your wife called in on the 24th to cancel this free subscription.” So I ask to speak to a supervisor at this point, because I’m not getting anywhere.
The supervisor: well needless to say this didn’t go well either. I start by asking if she knew 
which representative I was speaking to her about. She does, and informs me that she is standing at that persons desk. I ask for her name, and the name of the accused. Jennifer and Mr. Cassie of Tampa. I ask why it is that I call into Verizon customer service to essentially be called a liar and she says, get this, “well, Mr Turk, it clearly states on the screen that your wife called in….”, you know the rest. At this point, I think my head is about to explode. And I ask to speak to her supervisor, because I don’t feel that this is going to get very far. She explains that I don’t need to speak to her supervisor. I press the issue and she explains that her supervisor is out of the office today. I ask to speak with a different supervisor and she says that Mrs. Neely is the only supervisor that I can speak with and she is out of the office, but she would be glad to take my name and number so she can call me back in the next year. I ask for the corporate office number and she explains that she is “not at liberty to give me that information.” I ask for the name of the CEO and COO, she explains that she does not have to give me that information. I explain that they are a publicly traded company and that is public information…it goes on and on and on. Then she says in a sarcastic tone that would turn the Pope into a murderer “what can I help you with Mr. Turk.” I ask a final time to speak with a supervisor and, this is where it gets good. ” I don’t have time for this, this conversation is over”, and hangs up.
So here we go..my question to the masses is, does Mrs. Cassie of Tampa, supervisor for Verizon deserve to recieve the Jackass of the Week Award? I think she does, so she is going to be the official first Jackass of this blog. I am sure there will be many others, but she is the first. I hope you enjoyed this first post. I realize it was a bit winded, but I really felt you needed the back drop to understand it all.
Jackass of the Week 