Customer Service Scorecard

I've made a bunch of customer service calls in the recent past and thought it would be good to report on them. I had read in a tweet not too long ago from @comcastcares that he thought our current economic troubles would result in improved customer service (I'm paraphrasing), and wondered how my experiences measured up.

HP - I called them because the computer I got from them was cheaper at a local store. It took three people (two calls and one chat), but I got someone who was helpful and offered me $100 credit (close enough to the $130 price difference to call it a wash). A- (it did take three attempts after all, though the final guy I talk to gets an A+ of his own)

American Express - This is a bit embarassing. I inadvertently paid the wrong Amex bill (yeah, I have two cards). One phone call was all it took - the guy who answered the phone understood what had happened and happily moved the money from one account to the other, and assured me there won't be any finance charges. A+

Cisco Small Business Support - Yes, I'm a small business. Or, rather, I buy the same networking hardware that a small business owner would buy. In this case, I had a Linksys SD2008 Gigabit switch that died (computers connected at 10Mb/s rather than 1Gb/s). I called the small business support number, and in less than 5 minutes, the RMA process was kicked off and I had received the emailed instructions. A+ -- but I'm going to have to knock you down a grade just because you sold me this switch which one out of every two reviewers on Amazon has had problems with. B+

Cisco Consumer Support (aka Linksys) - I buy consumer hardware too. In this case, it was an EG008W Gigabit switch. This one died a few months ago, but I didn't think to call to get it replaced. The Small Business Support guy couldn't help me, but he transfered me to a guy who should have been able to. I say "should have" because the conversation didn't go so well. There were communication issues, I said something about my computer connecting at 10Mb/s instead of 1Gb/s, he asked how I knew my computer was connecting at 11Mb/s (yes, he said "11"). The call ended when he put me on hold to "look something up" and then came back and started saying "can you here me? I can't hear you. Are you still there?" and so on until he hung up. I'm sure he heard me fine and was just covering his ass - "yes boss, something happened to the connection." F -- this isn't a surprise, is it?

Frys - everyone's favorite consumer electronics store. I stopped by this evening to get a Netgear switch (GS608) to replace one of the Linksys switches. I happened to see the Norton Internet 2009/Ghost package that I bought for $99 a few weeks ago on sale for $69. With no receipt, I walked up to the return counter, explained things, and was given a store credit of $30 (which I proceeded to spend on the Netgear switch :) A+ -- that's a first for Frys, huh?

Sadly, that only averages out to a C, but that's Linksys bringing the score down. Without them, the average is an A, so I'd say things are looking up. I'm looking to you, Linksys, to get your act together - quality products, competent support. Work on it. It's really not that hard to do.