Saturday, January 11, 2014

bri-i-i-i-i-i-ng

Hello.

Hello, This is your prescription service, presently our lines are busy, please hold. Estimated waiting time...

Hello.

Yes. That was fast.

Hello, we have an important message for you but first we we must confirm

Yes, yes, all that.  *completes identification*

Sir, *exasperated* our computer is offline right now, we cannot access accounts. Please call back in two hours.

A girl. Apparently with no idea how impossibly unprofessional that is. They call me, instruct me to wait, then tell me they have something important to tell me but they don't know what it is, make me confirm I am me. And finally instructs me to call back, and when. I'm their employee, you see. Such a bother. My attitude is give my your paycheck and I will. This is the sort of thing that causes me to become quite cross. And now I must tell the people who hired these people on my behalf.

They'll email when they have things sorted. If not I'll talk around them. They're impossible. Cost cutting. Man, that place used to have the best customer service too. They assumed you were desperately ill and a complete mess incapable of doing anything right and they did everything possible to make things go without a hitch. You could call any time and reach a competent person completely aware of the gravity of your situation, they'd have an emergency thing sent FedEx and in your hands the next day.

Not now. The place has been bought. Along with so many others. That is one serious area that is flat not steady. Cost assessment, profit analysis cut customer service right out of the picture and replaced the entire unit with a girl who nearly has finished her GED. Best bet with them at this point is avoid human contact altogether and do everything possible online.

16 comments:

Third Coast said...

Just imagine the feelings of people with life threatening conditions that have had their "crappy" health insurance policy displaced by Obamacare. At least you got to talk to a human being, albeit someone that's not too bright.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Historians talk about the "Age of Faith" (which I think has something to do with fire-breathing dragons or grails or ladies with really long hair or something) but we live in the Age of Faith, right here and now.

Think about it. I get a white plasic bag in my mailbox. Inside there are a bunch of plastic bottles each containing itty bitty little pills of all sorts of mysterious chemicals.

I swallow a bunch of them every day in complete, trusting ignorance. Now that's faith.

Anyone care for a Tylenol®?

Michael Haz said...

I'm really, really fed up with Nigeria.

Nigeria keeps sending me emails about all this money they are holding for me, but every time I call Nigeria, no one there seems to know anything about it. Mining or something like that, I don't know all the deets, but the money is MINE, I am repeatedly assured.

And now Nigeria wants to take me to court. I'm getting emails from Nigeria telling me to download some attachment because I'm being sued and have to appear in the "Court of Atlanta" one day, then it's the "Court of Georgia" the next day and later on it's the "Court of New York."

Nigeria needs to get its act together.

Michael Haz said...

Look at India, for goodness sakes. India has it's act together. In fact, India's official national motto should be "We've Got Our Act Together!!"

I can call nearly any help line in America, and before America even picks up the phone to say "Yo, Dude?", India grabs the phone and in a very pleasant voice says "Hello! This is Gupta! How may I be of service?"

I complain about my miserable little problem and WHOOSH!!1! India has an answer. Just. Like. That. And it's not some stoner guy who can't get a better job giving me the answer, it's a Yooniversity graduate, trained in speaking the English, with ample knowledge of the product who gives me that answer.

Nigeria should take an example from India.

Calypso Facto said...

If Uncle Sam hadn't already erected a million pages of regulations as a barrier to entry, a new provider would be swooping in to provide better service, Chip. Alas, gov't control of medicine to getting to the corporatism or near-socialism stage and you'll have few (if any) options. Lines for services just like the former Soviet Union, but now they're virtual.

edutcher said...

Funny how you need ID to get meds under Choom, but voting doesn't require any in Obamamerica.

Mumpsimus said...

But if you had a choice between cheap-with-lousy-customer-service and expensive-with-great-customer-service, you'd go with cheap. Or I would, anyway. Because I might benefit from the great customer service one time in ten, or twenty, or maybe never; but I know I will benefit from the lower price every time.

deborah said...

It's funny you should mention this subject today, Chip, because just yesterday, for the first time, I decided to try the mail service. I'm the type that constantly procrastinates ordering meds from the pharmacy, etc.

So I call. First, so used to hearing it, I was surprised there was no 'nochay el dochay, el primo le dochay,' (not that there's anything wrong with that). Second, I did not get an automated menu; a young man picked up and asked how he could help. After concluding the med ordering, he told me they would take two weeks to arrive, and if I didn't have enough for those two weeks, I could call my doctor for a temporary refill in the meantime.

I mean wtf is going on here?

Lydia said...

But if you had a choice between cheap-with-lousy-customer-service and expensive-with-great-customer-service, you'd go with cheap."

Buying cheap is a vice.--St. Thomas Aquinas

(I'm doomed.)

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Mail-order pharmacies are an abomination.

It's just something that's been done to cut down on the costs of employing pharmacists, which wouldn't be so expensive if the retail abominations hadn't decided that they didn't care for adequate reimbursement from benefits managers and could just go with using the bizarre front-end retail operation as their primary business.

Go to an independent, if you have any left. They're likely to put more thought into your actual care. But the retailers knew that and had to therefore drive them out not through better service, but by placing stores ten times as big as theirs kitty-corner to the old town druggist, making it easier to either force him out or make him a deal he couldn't refuse.

rhhardin said...

Yesterday's motivational poster.

rhhardin said...

Abomination would be under internal medicine.

rhhardin said...

My favorite Pakistan moment on Imus. June 2 2007

rhhardin said...

real audio, I should have added

rhhardin said...

June 2, 2002

deborah said...

I recall from the days I used to order dog vaccines through the mail, that a potential problem was the vaccines could become over-heated during delivery. I wonder about that re my mail-delivered meds.