Finding the Ideal Phone Company – Virgin Mobile

I’ll cut to the quick. Unusual for me, I know.

The purchase experience – at Radio Shack left a lot to be desired, but that is, perhaps, the subject for another day. I bought a pay-as-you-go phone as a standby after loosing my Treo in London (way back in November for those following this thread – the fact that my ’standby’ phone is still not working two plus months late is the clue) I wanted something that I could use easily and simply.

I’ve long been a Virgin admirer, I love the brand and many of the fun and slightly irreverent attributes it portrays. So a Virgin Mobile phone fits the bill. Cheap – $50 – and I use it when I need it. The second phone – I’ll write about the first one soon, I promise – is registered (by me this time) on the web. Fairly well explained, fairly good user experience, no problem. I finish the process and sit back, waiting for the promised text message that will tell me the phone is live.

It doesn’t come. I try the phone. I get a service, ‘Virgin Mobile’ it says on the screen. I smile. I dial.

“ Soandso’s Roaming Network, Calls will be charged at $2.99 and $1.99 per minute. Please dial the number you require.” Not bloody likely! Where is my 18c per minute?

I email support. “Please call us.” The response I was dreading. I call. The first day I call EIGHT times (line dropped, voice response hell and dead ends in the voice response option chain) in order to speak to a human. The last call was 23 minutes before I was unceremoniously dropped. And the problem remained. Everyone – very politely, perkilly, and informally ‘Hi Graham, yes I understand your problem“, responded but no-one fixed the issue. They all knew what the problem was, the serial number of the phone wasn’t being properly recognized, but no-one could fix it.

After being finally dropped, I calmed down till the next day. Put on my best calm customer head and called again. The voicemail system is as bad as any I have met for complexity and befuddlement – it takes me on average five minutes to get to a human. Remember, I’m an independent, this is not fee earning time and this is my tenth or twelfth time of calling. I asked for a supervisor and got put through without question (excellent). Sean, it turns out from Spokane, is calm, professional, and helpful. He knows what the problem is. I smile. But he doesn’t fix it either.

”OK it looks like this is not going to work, please just refund my airtime payment to my credit card.“ I say.

”Oh, we don’t give refunds“, say Sean, ”It said so in the terms and conditions.“

”But you can’t make it work, it seems unreasonable to charge me when you can’t provide service.“

”We don’t give refunds, he says…….“ I’d got the drift by then. Virgin Mobile take your money – and they keep it, even when they admit they can’t provide service.

”I’ll take it up with American Express (the card I used to pay for service) if I have to.“ I say.

”Please do.“ says Sean. ”I can escalate the problem and it will be fixed in 48 hours.“

I’m all out of choices, so I quit.

Sean I can tell you that much beyond the 48 hours, the phone is still not working.

So I shall call Amex and I’m sure they will credit me. But why do I have to? The problem is Virgin’s and should not be given back to the customer. Why do I have to do battle with a company that presumably set out to want me as a customer?

Pretty shoddy set of terms and conditions – I paraphrase – ”Give us money on trust and even if we can’t provide what we promised to, we’ll keep your money“.

Richard, you need to get back to the straight dealing you are famous for. It’s your brand they are messing up.

{Brand, Bad Customer Service, Customer Service, Phone}

Technorati Tags: Bad Customer Service, Brand, Marketing, Product Management, User Experience, WOM

All Our Yesterdays – Trade Shows

One of my clients is planning on attending a couple of trade shows as part of their 2007 marketing plan. It was a case of recalling all my past learning and trying to formalize that so that we made the investment worthwhile.

In the middle of the planning, I attended MacWorld in San Francisco. I’d forgotten the sheer exhaustion of attending – let alone exhibiting at – one of these events. It all came pouring back!

So did the glaring shortfalls that seem so obvious as I walked around. Clearly organizations go to such events to generate business, awareness, or to reinforce a purchase decision. There were companies there who, it seemed to me, had not thought about any of these things. Many clearly had. I’ll focus on the sins I saw:

* I’m a big Tivo fan and TivoToGo has just been announced for the Mac. To use it you need a copy of Roxio Toast (a multimedia application and CD/DVD burner) and Roxio had a booth with the product for 1/3 off – way to go! Now the MacWorld folks are one of the many who believe that in order to register and pay them money, I must be forced to submit (i.e. it is mandatory on the form) all manner of information.

As an aside, this is one of the things that pushes my hot buttons (the fact that it is mandatory), so I, as a marketing professional I always doubt the efficacy of such data as I assume that there are many who do as I do and put in information that the recipient, presumably, takes as gospel but is in fact meaningless. So my occupation on this one was Coronation Programme Seller. For those of you not in the know, we haven’t had a Coronation in the UK since 1953. I have also been a chicken sexer and other dubious occupations. I have data for each of the other, in my judgement, intrusive or unnecessary questions. So when YOU, the customer buy this data, be very aware that I, and I believe many others like me, exist. You may not get what you think you are paying for…….

Back to MacWorld; so, I filled in this web form and the basic data (name address etc) are correct and encoded onto my badge. I’m at Roxio, you will recall. I want to buy their product, I really do. So I fight (really!) my way to the front, and ask one of the staff. I get a huge form. “Still using paper” I joke. I look at the form askance, this is like War and Peace.
“Why do you want a shipping address?”
“So we can ship the product to you.”
“I’ll just take it with me.”
“Oh, we don’t have any here.”

End of conversation! How can you go to a trade show to sell and not have product? They tell me I can order on the web, at the show price. Guess what? I can’t. Do you think I have bought their product?

* More booths than should be the case have NO information to attract an attendee to talk to them. Nothing about their product, nothing about what they do, or why I could/should be interested in them. Why be there?

* There were some booths (mercifully few at this show) that have obviously temp staff who have no idea about their products and services. They can’t answer questions, they don’t ask me for my information – what is the point of being there? It is arguably a negative brand touchpoint.

* How many booths have no product information or literature? More than a few. What was the objective in attending?

* Some get it right. I use (or rather used) a product that was in attendance so I went over. I am a happy mapping advocate with attached GPS on the PC. On the Mac it’s a poorly served segment. I was overjoyed when I saw a review of such a product, and bought it (expensive too). It’s a good looking program, it’s just that it is functionally poor (read unusable) for what I want to do. Put in a street address and find it. It doesn’t do that (you have to put ion a lat/long). Anyway, I removed it and vented – quietly – at one of the staff. I had no expectations beyond venting. I got an email from the CMO this week, thanking me for my feedback and asking me to stick with them. Impressive. Maybe I will give the new version another chance.

So all in all, I remain dubious about the ROI of trade shows. We shall see how my client does……

{Product, advertising, Apple, customer, customers, Marketing}

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Apple, Brand, customer, customers, Marketing, Product, User Experience