How to deal with customer "service"

[seamusTX]

This is off-topic but I hope it will prove helpful to someone.

I bought a coffee maker last year. The brand name is irrelevant (because they are all junk). It lasted exactly 367 days from the day I bought it, then went dead as a brick.

This annoyed me. I called the company's toll-free number. The first guy I talked to essentially said "too bad," (though politely, reading from a script) and gave me the golden opportunity to buy another piece of junk at 50% off.

At this point the standard advice is to ask to talk to the person's supervisor. That has never worked for me. At best I get cringing excuses followed by adhering to company policy.

Instead I hung up and called back as if I had not called before. Customer service rep #2 said I was entitled to a free replacement, which they shipped the same day.

BTW, this approach has taken hold in computer programming (which is the field I work in). People write code and test it. If it doesn't work exactly right the first time (which it almost never does) they tweak it a little. If it still doesn't work, they delete it and start over. This approach has turned out to be more productive than debugging the same code interminably.

- Jim

[WildBill]

Instead I hung up and called back as if I had not called before. Customer service rep #2 said I was entitled to a free replacement, which they shipped the same day.

My post is not a joke. I have a friend who is a professional tax preparer. He does exactly the same thing when he calls the IRS to get information or help and gets an IRS agent who is not cooperative or is being unreasonable. He did this while I was sitting in his office and was successful with the other agent. He did not argue or plead - he just hung up the phone, without saying goodbye.

[seamusTX]

Some underemployed journalist a while back took a few typical income tax returns and called the IRS several times with the same questions. The answers were all over the place. Sometimes the IRS personnel said things were taxable or deductible, sometimes not. They gave different answers on percentages and rates.

That said, if you don't get an opinion from the IRS in writing, you might as well have dreamed it.

BTW, I got the replacement coffee maker today, at zero cost.

-Jim