Large companies in this country are pretty infamous for
leaving their customers feeling trapped and frustrated. For every company like
Logitech or Amazon who manage to treat their customers well and earn their
business, we as consumers are forced to interact with the likes of Verizon,
Comcast, or Microsoft where we are treated like cattle by a company that is
seemingly of the opinion that they are entitled to our wallets regardless of
their behavior. Cable companies in particular are guilty of this. In a recent
survey, Verizon managed to edge out their competition to garner the highest
customer satisfaction rating among their peers at a lofty 70%. That is, by the
very slimmest of margins, a C- grade. Comcast for comparison earned a 62% and
Time Warner Cable a surreal 59% (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-most-hated-company-in-america-2016-06-01).
Customers are not alone in bearing the brunt of this complete disregard for
anything other than profit margins – I’m sure many of us reading this article
recall the recent debacle over the mass strikes Verizon struggled with as their
own employees were simply fed up with being nickled and dimed and treated like
property – just like us, their customers. A quick internet search reveals
hundreds of photos of Verizon employees marching in the streets bandying signs
contrasting stagnant wages and declining work conditions with soaring executive
payouts. Right up there in the annals of experiments with callous disregard
with Verizon is the perennial champion of arrogance, Microsoft.
Just recently, I was speaking with Microsoft Live Chat
Support - something I have been finding myself doing quite often ever since
Office 2013 came out. Long story short - the activation of the recent Microsoft
Office products can be quite the pain and it seems as though Microsoft is
attempting to steer clients away from the tried and true Product Key method of
activation. With that, I have needed Microsoft's assistance on several
occasions to help in activating products where either the program claims the key
is "already in use", or the key is used with a different Microsoft
account, or the user has innocently completely forgotten both the username and
password to the appropriate Microsoft account.
Microsoft's Live Chat was a very convenient and helpful service offered by
Microsoft. They were always able to find some kind of solution each time and
could even remote in and take care of the problem for me. However, I have just
learned that Microsoft is now charging for this service. When I learned of this
from the Microsoft rep, I left the individual with the following link before
disconnecting:
On top of that, I have noticed a significant decline in the quality of their chat support. Aside from their representatives typing in broken English with numerous spelling errors, their responses are programmed with little to no thought. Chatting with Microsoft Support is now slightly better than chatting with an AI program created by the world's smartest chimpanzee. It is quite clear that Microsoft has made some cutbacks to this department. This, along with their recent removal of the 15GB Camera
Roll Bonus from OneDrive, is yet another example of the ubiquitous corporate
greed that we customers have very sadly become accustomed to in the tech
sector. Indeed, this very behavior is why www.MooreITHelp.com will never
change. I have never had any desire to see my small business grow into some
massive tentacled monstrosity probing for any and all ways into your bank
account. I am sure I am not alone in noticing a trend in the relationship
between the size of a corporation and its lack of customer service and human
compassion.
Just recently, I had completed a personal project of scanning
in all of my vintage family photos and uploading them to OneDrive in an attempt
to allow family members from across the globe to add, edit, and make personal
copies for their own collection. Apparently for a company that is worth just
under 70 BILLION dollars (as of my writing this) this service represents a life
or death threat to their bottom line and had to be monetized for the good of
the shareholder. Now, unless I want to add an additional expense to the
ridiculous list of charges for using Microsoft software on a Microsoft OS, I'm
either going to have to confuse everyone with a whole new link or cut everyone
off.
My wife and I are really growing tired of the noticeable
increase in costs and decrease in quality with seemingly every service we
purchase from virtually any corporation. Yelp, for example, grew so prominent
and popular so quickly that they simply implemented an ad-hoc program intended
to take care of fraudulent reviews, rather than hiring specialists for a fraud
department - something companies like Thumbtack.com and TripAdvisor.com did.
This results in many honest reviews being silenced with pretty much no meaningful
recourse for the reviewer or the business being reviewed. Without considering
their product or their clients, Yelp figured it easier to just contract out a
lowest bidder to slap together a gaggle of half-assed algorithms and consider
the case closed. I managed to obtain over 100 Yelp email addresses with which
to voice my concerns only to repeatedly be recited programmed responses
basically boiling down to the reviewer needing to write more reviews and be
more active on Yelp in order to not be filtered out.
I just recently had a client whose computer became infected
only a week after I had cleaned up his machine. Though no fault of mine, I
decided not to charge him for the second service to ensure his satisfaction.
For me this was not just a business decision to keep a valued customer, but a
statement about myself and my small business. At the heart of the matter, I
started this business to help people enjoy and safely use their own property on
what can be, at times, a deceptive and hostile internet. Our tech devices allow
us to share meaningful parts of our lives with one another, to conduct business
at lightning speeds across the world, and to explore places and ideas we may
never have encountered without them. I want my customers to be able to take
advantage of these possibilities to the fullest – not to be duped and bled dry
by the thousand cuts of a cash hungry conglomerate.
This was not a lone incident to be used as self-advertising
either. Recently, a non-profit agency contacted me for assistance with data
they had lost. Their previous technician had not bothered to properly install a
data backup system and after a technical problem the agency found themselves
having lost large swathes of integral information for their operations.
Naturally ,the agency representatives were distraught and desperate. Instead of
taking advantage of their precarious situation with “priority fees” or
“emergency response charges”, I charged them half of my usual pricing due to
the circumstances as they had already spent a good deal of money to accomplish
nothing. This non-profit agency has since sent me enough work to keep me busy
for a month.
These scenarios are why I started this business in the first
place. I am not in this industry to gouge people and pad my coffers with
ill-gotten gains. I am here to help people. This is what makes me different
from my larger competitors. We have all seen prices keep climbing as services
remain stagnant or are even repackaged and charged for (yes I am still shocked
at Microsoft’s OneDrive policy changes). Hold times on the phone or online keep
growing, the technical assistance remains the same quality it has been for ages
(lackluster to put it mildly), and the employees themselves don’t seem to be
the benefactors of these increasing revenues and decreasing expenditures. That
money, our money, is quite simply funneled to shareholders while we are treated
like sheep penned in and waiting to be shorn. If you are as tired as I am of
companies acting like they own you and a chunk of your paycheck simply due to
the virtue of being the biggest fish in the pond, then give me a chance to show
you the power of customer service and a passion for technology.
