• Rogers made me lose my shit and I started talking smack about retarded three year olds. Also: I blew up their website
• And then I was like “I’m gonna tell Twitter on you” and they were all like “I’m not allowed to play with Twitter” and I said “Ya well, you suck”
• So then Rogers said “I’m not listening LALALALALALALA” and I was like “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK”
• Then Rogers said “Ya well, you OWE ME MONEY, pay up or else” and I said “No YOU owe ME money” and they were all “I know you are but what am I?”
• @RogersHelps stepped in and said “Hey, hey, what’s going on here, kids?” and that night the principal’s office, I mean the president’s office, called and promised to give me back my lunch iPhone money

Yes, that’s about where I left off.

So. I spoke to someone in the president’s office on Tuesday night and he said he was actively looking into the matter and would call me back the next night. I (very calmly, I may add), reiterated my concerns with their customer service:

• I was given misinformation about the best way to place an order
• Their e-care system allowed me to order a back-ordered item without any indication (or follow up) that there would be a delay
• They screwed up canceling the port request on the e-care order
• I had to speak to multiple people to find someone who could correct the port request issue
• I was given misinformation about when I could expect to receive my refund
• Their phone system assumed I was a Pay As You Go customer, making it hard to reach the right department
• Their phone system repeatedly cut me off
• They passed me around to multiple customer service reps, none of whom could help
• No one could find any evidence of the e-care order or its cancellation
• The fact that I had an e-care order prior to being a customer Blew.Their.Damn.Minds
• It took over 45 minutes to ultimately be told “umm, can’t help you. sorry.”
• Their customer contact page bombed out when I tried to contact them through their site
• The responses I received in reply to my emails were devoid of any useful information
• Their customer service staff had a complete lack of understanding regarding the implications of me taking my complaints to Facebook and Twitter
• Their own staff is unaware of the @RogersHelps Twitter account
• Their system failed to keep a complete record of their dealings with me, which led to their accounts receivable department demanding payment from me while the credit owing to me was still in dispute

He agreed that the things I experienced were neither appropriate nor in line with the kind of customer service Rogers wants to provide its customers.  He acknowledged there is a need for work to be done on some of their “back-end” processes, especially surrounding e-care, and he told me he’d call back the next day.

Early Wednesday morning , Miranda at @RogersHelps sent me a message on Twitter, asking if the matter had been resolved.  I let her know I was expecting to hear back sometime during the day, and I did – that evening I received a voicemail leting me know that they would know the “timeline” for when I could expect my refund by Friday.  Not super impressive, but a step in the right direction.

Miranda continued to follow up with me on Twitter and on Thursday afternoon, I received a final call from the president’s office – he said the refund had been processed the night before, (on Wednesday, September 23) and I should expect to see it on my credit card statement within a few business days (it showed up on Saturday – only two or three days after it was eventually processed). He apologized for the experiences I had with Rogers, especially given that I am a brand new customer.

Additionally, in order to somewhat compensate me for the significant amount of time I spent trying to resolve this matter, and for the frustration and roadblocks I faced along the way, my first month’s bill has been written off. That and the acknowledgment they had, indeed, dorked me around was enough to satisfy me and bring this matter to a close.

Am I terrified I may have to contact customer service in the future? Yeah, a bit. But I’m hopeful Rogers is trying to reach out to their customers in new ways, including Twitter, and I know they have at least one awesome customer service rep, Miranda at @RogersHelps.  I am positive that without Miranda’s help I would still be trying to storm Rogers’ customer service brick wall with email and phone calls and swear words.

Finally, I need to emphasize that this matterwas ultimately resolved using Twitter, and I’m delighted it was – but I have another post brewing in my head about that.

@purplelara Hi, I’m with the RogersHelps team. We try to assist customers online.  Is there something I can help with? ^mm

Obviously, given the length of my posts below, being succinct isn’t one of my strong suits, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to reply in under 140 characters, so I directed her back to my blog.  In the meantime, she (^mm is apparently their rep, Miranda) followed me on Twitter so we could DM each other and sent this message:

@purplelara Can you DM the # associated with your account? I’d like to try and help. ^mm

I DM’d my account number and e-care order number and received another message:

@purplelara Thanks for the info. I’m looking into this for you. ^mm

Now this is very interesting. In all the (lengthy) email correspondence I had with Rogers, they repeatedly told me  Twitter was not an acceptable means of communicating with them – and I tried to make clear to them how misguided I thought that was.

And yet, the quickest, most helpful communication I’ve had from Rogers in the last month or so was via Twitter.

It appears that Rogers does in fact monitor their Twitter activity and has a team in place to follow up on tweets from frustrated customers – a quick look at the @RogersHelps Twitter page shows the majority of their tweets are directed to other Twitter users who mention Rogers.

Encouraging.  Somewhat.  I had been tweeting about Rogers for a few days before I heard from them, but in their defense (I’m not trying to be unfair here), I mentioned the @RogersWireless account and not @RogersHelps. In my defense, I had no idea the @RogersHelps account existed.  I searched for RogersWireless in Twitter and assumed @RogersWireless was a main Rogers Twitter presence, but it seems I was wrong.

So, while I applaud Rogers for having a team monitoring Twitter and addressing customers through that medium, I’ll remain critical of their commitment to new ways to connect with their customers until they actually make  their Twitter presence known to their customers AND their own customer service reps.

Nowhere on Rogers.com (that I could find, and again, if it’s not accessible, it’s not effective) is there any mention that “RogersHelps” customers on Twitter. Searching “Rogers Twitter” on Google won’t find it for you, and their very own customer service reps not only are unaware of it, they actively discouraged me from using Twitter as a means to communicate with them, telling me “we are not allowed to visit Face book [sic] and Twitter while we are at work.”

So, is Twitter an effective way to communicate with businesses?  Miranda forwarded my concerns (whether she tracked down my emails or simply forwarded the contents of my tweets and blog link, I’m not sure) to someone in the office of the President of Rogers Wireless, who called me tonight.

The story is not over yet, but I have now spoken to a live human being who had all my information at hand, who promised to call me back and (get this) GAVE ME HIS DIRECT LINE.

Hopefully I’ll be able to write the end of this story tomorrow. In the meantime, thank you Miranda.

This is in relation to e-care order #XXXXXXXXX.

Since your system won’t let me post a long comment, please see this blog post, which I have also posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks!

www.purplelara.com/2009/09/17/iphone-love-rogers-loathe/

Today I received the following email from Rogers:

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of online customer service. In your recent email, you have informed us that you have left comments on Face book [sic] and Twitter.

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to visit Face book [sic] and Twitter while we are at work. We would kindly advise you to reply to this email if you are having problems with our company.

This is my reply:

Thank you for your email. Yesterday when I used your Contact Us system I found it did not allow me to post a lengthy comment, and I had a lengthy tale to tell about the problems (plural) I have had with Rogers Wireless’ customer service.

I provided you a link to my blog, which is neither Facebook nor Twitter, and noted that I had ALSO posted the information to Facebook and Twitter.

Unsurprisingly, you seem to have missed the link entirely and missed a crucial word in my original message. That word is “also”. Here is the non-Facebook non-Twitter link again:

www.purplelara.com

At that link you will find a post called “iPhone = Love / Rogers = Loathe” which fully details my experience with your company.

The reference to Facebook and Twitter were simply to alert you to the fact that I am letting my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter know about my experience with Rogers Wireless. I’ll be updating my site now with this further example of the wonderful customer service experience Rogers offers.

By the way, you may wish to let your web team know that it is extremely un-user friendly (and an example of bad design, bad coding and bad testing) to have your system completely bomb when a user submits a comment over the allowable length. The end result for your users (clients) is a complete loss of their (obviously long) comment, which is likely to frustrate them further. Some other options you may wish to consider are limiting the user from imputing characters over the limit in the first place, or providing a message which reads something along the lines of “Field is limited to XXX characters. Please edit your comments and re-submit” rather than allowing the overflow input and then bombing when the user attempts to submit the comment. Some routine testing could have found this defect.

Thanks for your time.

Keep up the good work guys.