Hello readers. I hope you all had a pleasant Valentine's Day, filled with gifts, flowers and lots of love...and if you didn't, well you probably just haven't found anybody good enough for you yet, and Valentine's Day is for chumps anyways. My Valentine's Day was somewhat less then enjoyable, as it involved flowers not being delivered to a very disappointed girlfriend, and a lengthy battle with customer service agents to get satisfaction. Well, long story short, the floral company (let's not name any names here, but let's just say their initials could stand for "Failure To Deliver") finally made it up to me, but not after a number of nasty facebook posts, abrasive tweets, and countless emails to customer service. However through all this insanity and frustration, I found the inspiration for this week's post, as I decided to take a little lesson out of my dad's hand-book on dealing with large corporations and their customer service departments, and get creative in my approach.
For some thrill seeking people, blood sport involves hunting, bare-knuckle boxing, or some other form of primal combat: but for my dad, those things are pass-times for boys, and real sport involves going one-on-one with customer service departments. I actually dread having to call customer service help-lines, come on, it's a drag...but my dad...well, he not only enjoys it...he relishes in the challenge of dealing with countless layers of customer support, and seeing how far he can escalate his call. Some of you are probably thinking, "this man is crazy...who in their right mind enjoys calling customer service, and wasting their time?". Rightfully so. And you're not alone...I think the same thing on a regular basis when my dad tells me his latest plans for a renewed offensive against the satellite television provider. And that's the thing, most large companies figure that if they make their customer service departments big enough, with sufficient layers of escalation, they can discourage most callers into giving up...as the actual benefit vs time lost on the phone is so insignificant that nobody in their right mind would continue playing this little game (they say the average person begins to lose patience on the phone after 7 minutes, will hang up after 9 minutes, and most calls are answered after an average wait time of 12 minutes...pretty sneaky right?). Well, they did not count on going up against my dad, a man who once spent over three hours on the phone with the same customer service agent, and when questioned by said customer service agent as to why he had wasted so much of his time on the phone, my dad simply replied: "because I am semi-retired, and have all the time in the world...besides, I like talking to you." You see what we are dealing with here? This is a man who lives for this sort of crazy thing, and is not governed by the same rules of logic as you or I.
I suppose that is enough background information on my dad's favorite pass-time of tormenting customer service agents, so let's get on to the main event, how my dad dealt with the bank, and his views on the global financial crisis. This story goes back about three years, as the global economic crisis was in full effect, and financial institutions were shutting the flow of credit to their clients, and increasing interest rates on loans to try and cover their losses. One thing you should know about my dad: he is a very loyal guy. If he likes you, he'll give you all his business, and will stick with you through thick and thin. But if you try and cheat him, he'll make you pay for it tenfold, and will never forgive you. That's just the way he is...he's old-school like that. Well one day, as the global credit crunch was in full force, my dad got a kindly-worded letter from his bank telling him that due to the worsening global situation, the interest rate on his line of credit would be increasing by 2%. As you can imagine, and unwarranted increase on his line of credit interest rate was not the sort of thing that would put my dad in a good mood. To add insult to injury, the letter concluded by saying the following: "in these difficult times, we ask all of our valued clients to make sacrifices. Please be assured that we value your business". Well, if he wasn't mad before, he sure was now. And I can't blame him. I would be fuming at this point. Now this is where the story gets fun: after ranting for over two hours on how all banks were thieves and that they had no right to raise the interest rate on a "valued customer" such as himself (they did after all refer to him as one in their letter), I eventually found out that my dad did not even use his line of credit. Well, I tried to reason with him and tell him that it was not worth getting into a fight over, but true to his nature, he felt it was a matter of principle and that he was being unfairly treated (perhaps even being taken advantage of - according to him, people are more likely to try and take advantage of him because he is an immigrant and speaks with an accent...trust me, it's true...but that's a story for another time). There was no reasoning with him, and he was inconsolable: he wanted his old interest rate back, on his line of credit he never used...you try reasoning with that.
When you think about it, my dad was right to be angry, as big corporations pull this sort of thing all the time on unsuspecting clients...and most of time, people can't be bothered to do something about it. Well my dad did something about it, and believe me, this is the sort of thing that either borders on crazy, or innovative...you decide.
After an initial round of telephone calls to the bank's customer service department, and getting unsatisfactory answers, my dad really started to lose patience, and my mom suggested that perhaps he should simply give up. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. You see he was already in too deep, and it was now a matter of pride. In his mind, he was standing up for the little guy who gets pushed around...call it what you want, I just think he was bored that day. Anyways, after having vented his frustrations on a fourth level of customer service, and not getting anywhere, my dad decided to pull out his favorite weapon in the arsenal...a personal letter to the bank: "lovingly" dictated by my dad, and diligently transcribed and 'edited' by my mom (by edited, I mean removing all the profanities, and making the letter appropriate to read). Well my mom does not like writing these sorts of letters, but she had to bite the bullet on this one, because dad was on the war-path, and there was no changing his mind. Below are extracts from the letter he sent to the Canadian Vice-President of credit services from his bank.
Dear Mr. so and so,
I would like to thank you for your kind letter […] informing me of my status as a valued customer with your bank. It is so nice to receive this sort of validation after close to twenty years of loyal business. […] I was quite distressed to learn that you had unilaterally decided to raise the interest rate on my line of credit. I am all the more saddened by the fact that you did not contact me prior to this unwarranted increase, as I may have been amenable to a slight increase, after all I am a shareholder in your bank, and I too believe that we must all make sacrifices in these trying times. […] It is this point of sacrifice that I would like to stress to you: you try and rationalize this interest rate increase to me by saying that the economic crisis is worsening and that sacrifices must be made. I agree. Sacrifices must be made, and someone must pay. But I believe it is immoral, and frankly criminal to force everyday people, such as myself, who are suffering from this global crisis to pay for a problem that was created by the irresponsible practices of financial institutions such as yours. I do not believe that I should be made to pay for a problem that is not of my own making: seeing as how this is a problem of your creation, I suggest you put your brightest financial minds to work and try to repair this situation, instead of trying to gauge honest hard working people.
Please rest assured that I value being your customer.
Sure enough, guess what came in the mail a week later? That's right, a personal letter from the VP himself apologizing for the situation, with an adjustment and reduction in the interest rate. The VP was even kind enough to personally call my dad for a quick chat and reassure my dad that they really did value his business: my dad reassured him that he was satisfied and even offered up some advice on how to resolve the financial crisis.
Well, my dad still has that letter. I think he even framed it. He still uses that letter for inspiration whenever he feels like he's been cheated, and needs to pick another fight with a large corporation (that happens a lot).
I don't know if there is any real philosophical life lesson in all this...but it's one funny story, and just goes to show you, that if you don't ask, you don't get...no matter how ridiculously you ask.
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Don't forget to also check out some of my past blog posts for more great stories on my dad's ridiculous adventures.
Be sure to look out for next week's post, "Television Wars...Episode II...Escalation", as things start to get a little nuts in our family.
Stay tuned for more.
Daniel
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