Recently in Business Category
I've been on the phone with Orbitz customer services for almost an hour now. This isn't the largest amount of my time that has ever been wasted by a big company but it is without a doubt one of the most unpleasant.
Anticipating that I might need to cancel my ticket, I took advantage of the Orbitz Airline Ticket Protector. This is a service that they promote heavily as a benefit of shopping with Orbitz, as a way that they are different from the competition.
But today, when I called to cancel my ticket, I was directed to call an insurance company that I'd never heard of. I was a little confused but did what they said. I then learned that the Airline Ticket Protector is only good if there is a disaster, death, etc.
I called Orbitz back to complain that they don't make this very clear on their web site.
A quick note about calling Orbitz. Like many automated customer services systems, getting to talk to a real person is a little game. My first strategy is to repeatedly press 0. Sometimes this works. In this case it doesn't. The Orbitz system is voice activated and interprets 0 as needing help with your password. I tried saying "Help" but that didn't work. I tried "Operator." No luck. Then I tried "Customer Service" and that did the trick.
As soon as someone got on the line I asked to speak to a supervisor and from there the call degenerated. I explained that I understood that I failed to read the terms and conditions but that I felt that Orbitz promotes their fare protector in such a way that gave me the false impression that it could be used to cancel the ticket without a catastrophic emergency. I simply asked for some understanding and to talk to someone who could weigh my position and possibly grant a slight reduction in the cancellation fee.
Instead, I was condescended to repeatedly. After half an hour of being put on hold with interruptions of rudeness, each worse than the last, I asked to speak to a supervisor, not to seek the discount I originally hoped for but to complain about my treatment. Even this is not within the agent's power.
The man I spoke with from the other side of the world is not at fault here. He is a cog in a machine bent on squeezing every penny. A business structure that has lost site of why they exist: to give value to customers, to make great travel experiences possible.
It's at times like these that I wonder what possesses a service company like Orbitz to make decisions that makes me, the customer, feel small, stupid, and un-cared for. I don't call customer service very often but when I do it is with a problem. At those moments I am not in the best mood. This is normal and it isn't my fault. By not training their customer service representatives to deal effectively with me in this state they make me feel like it is my fault. This isn't nice. I don't like it when people aren't nice to me and thus I don't like Orbitz.
All this talk of emotion might seem odd first. I am, after all, talking about a big company. Why should they care about how I feel when I deal them? I'm just a small nothing, one of a hoard of customer. That attitude, the reluctance to treat me as an emotional creature and instead as a mere wallet carrier, is what makes people hate companies. When I feel hated I will hate back. I hate Orbitz right now. I hate them so much that I'm lashing out in a blog post. This is normal human behavior. These are predictable preventable reactions.
I would have thought that the least a company could do is apologize that I misunderstood the terms and offer a small token in sympathy. Apparently, that isn't the least they could do.
Like the rest of the country, my last six months have been spent reading every bit of tattle that snuck out from Apple HQ about the iPhone. My biggest concern was that, as a Cingular customer the iPhone would be off limits to me until my contract was due for a new device. That I wasn't kept from buying this amazing new phone is the least heralded but one of the most significant impacts of Apple's entrance into the mobile phone market.
Before last Friday, if you wanted the latest cell phone you either needed to pay retail, know an importer from South Korea, or be eligible for the discounted price. The cell phone retail market is based on the idea of device price competition and price competition means discounts. Free. $29.95 with a two year contract. Get the phone and we'll throw in a pretty case. These gimmicks enable the authorized retailer to unload his or her inventory of devices and take their cut of your contact with the big cell provider.
In this market, the manufacturers are largely cut out of the process and their hard-fought brands are undermined. The Motorola RAZR is a perfect example of this cannibalistic process. Three years ago, the RAZR was hot. It was a new sexy product that everyone wanted. More importantly, an increasing number of people were willing to pay a premium for a slim sexy device that didn't do more than the average phone.
As quickly as it came on the scene, the glamorous RAZR fell from its perch. It became available on almost every network and they began competing with each-other to see who could offer it for less. In no time at all the RAZR was being given away for free. Its cachet was gone.
The RAZR came out of nowhere for Motorola and they have since failed to understand what happened to them. Subsequent devices have lacked that special something. The "Q" fell flat. The KRZR, and its unpronounceable brethren, barely registered. Now Motorola is planning a RAZR 2 in a desperate attempt to resuscitate their brand.
My point is that Motorola's predicament is not entirely their fault. It is that they cannot exert enough influence on sellers in the marketplace to hold a price point that will keep people coming back for more. They design for glamour and end of in the discount bin.
Apple realized this and forced At&t to play nice. Instead of presenting the customer with two prices, full retail and the discounted contract price, Apple brought the iPhone to market at one price: retail.
This move prevents the kind of death spiral that killed Motorola's brands. But it also does one more thing: It let's people like me buy iPhones.
Because retail is the only price offered to everyone, anyone is able to purchase the device. This matters because it allowed not only me, but literally everyone I know to either buy or try to buy an iPhone. That's why they sold out all over America last weekend. No matter how good the iPhone is, and it is amazing, it wouldn't have sold half as well if all the early adopters were penalized for buying one.
Who is this guy?
