Remember the good old days when customer service actually meant serving the customers, preferably with a smile? I barely do. Now all customer service means is serving the customer a new butt hole or two. Yesterday, I called Chase and talked to a really nice woman about short sales. I wanted to know all I could possibly know about the subject before I decided whether I wanted to pursue the option. I thought that I had asked all the questions that I could possibly ask, but my real estate agent had a few more. She wanted me to ask Chase if we had to fill out any paperwork before lowering the price--apparently, all banks operate differently, so what Chase requires, Citi or some other company might not--and if they could send us the form that allowed her to talk to them on my behalf.Consequently, I called Chase back today. The first person I spoke to tried unsuccessfully to transfer me through to that department. A few seconds after she put me on hold, a loud siren sounded in my ear, followed by a dial tone. I called back and had to wait 15 minutes to talk to yet another person in customer service. This person quite gruffly told me that I was not allowed to talk to anyone in the Homeowner's Assistance Department because they weren't servicing my account. I told him that was pretty funny considering I talked to someone in that very department yesterday. He said he didn't care; he wasn't patching me through because he had access to the same information. I asked, "Really? You can tell me about short sales?" knowing from past experience that regular customer service agents could not. His answer was, of course, "No." "Well, that's what I need to talk to them about," I responded. He huffed and puffed, said, "Well, I'm not supposed to," but then claimed he was going to transfer me through anyway. He lied. He just put me through to yet another customer service rep.
The third customer service rep was halfway nice. She at least apologized for the first two reps' behavior and transferred me through to the Homeowner's Assistant Department without argument. However, I stayed on hold for another 20 minutes, waiting for someone to pick up. About five minutes after someone finally did, I silently wished that I was still on hold.
You see, I'm naturally an inquisitive person, especially when it comes to things that directly affect me, like my finances or my house. I like to make informed decisions about those things, not fly blindly or go eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Well, let's just say that the rep that picked up--let's call her Snarky Sally--didn't like inquisitive. Any time I asked her something off script--meaning something that wasn't right there on the computer in front of her--Snarky Sally chewed me a new one and told me she couldn't speak to me; she could only speak to my real estate agent. Of course, Snarky Sally couldn't do that until I faxed in the authorization sheet, but I couldn't fax in the sheet because I didn't have the sheet and I needed to talk to Snarky Sally to tell her that. Nice Catch 22, huh?
To say that I was royally pissed is putting it mildly. I mean, the last time I checked it's still my account. Are they seriously trying to tell me that I can't ask questions about my own account, my own house, and my own finances? Seriously? Not to mention, isn't the name of the department Homeowner's Assistance, not Realtor's Assistance?
Despite being pissed, I tried to be polite. I used a lot of "ma'ams" and "I understand, but," but those expressions only seemed to anger Snarky Sally more. She informed me that she was not going to answer my questions--which were basically, when does an analyst get assigned, before or after the offer, and do we need to send the information pack in ahead of time--no matter how many times I asked them. I told her that the lady yesterday had no problem talking to me. Snarky Sally responded, "Well, that's because we're all trained differently, and we all have different ways of doing things, and my way is I am not speaking to you. Now have a nice day." Needless to say, she was being facetious with the last part. Snarky Sally wanted me to have anything but a nice day. I think she just wanted me to fall off the nearest cliff or get hit by a bus so she could have a nice day.
After enduring 30 mintues of Snarky Sally's verbal attack, I gave up and said, "Thanks, I will" and hung up. I then called my real estate agent at home--I guess she got off early for Halloween--and apologized for not being able to find out the answers that she needed. I told her that I thought it would be okay to go ahead and lower the price, based on what the rep from the day before said, and that, if the package that Chase may or may not send me didn't answer the questions, I would call back and try again next week.
I'm not looking forward to that day. With my luck, I'll get Snarky Sally again, and we'll just have a repeat of today's conversation. I could understand her attitude if I was being mean or rude, but I wasn't. I was just asking questions that any homeowner with a lick of sense would have asked. Granted, I made the mistake of telling Snarky Sally that I was an unemployed lawyer when she asked me if I had a job, and that might have had something to do with the snarkiness. It has been my experience that the minute you tell someone that you're a lawyer--employed, unemployed, or otherwise--their attitude towards you automatically changes, usually for the worse. I've even seen people back up a few feet, like the word lawyer is synonymous with body odor or bad breath.
That being said, I still think the snarkiness was just in Snarky Sally's nature. Some people just enjoy being mean. That's why they choose jobs like customer service representative so they can capitalize on what comes naturally to them. After all, these days the customer is never right, while the representative always is.
So like I said in the title to this post, mean people suck, especially on Halloween.
