October 26th, 2007
Dish Network to SoCal couple: fire or no fire, we want $300 for our receiver NOW!!
Yup you read that right.
And you’ve heard about the Southern California wildfires, have you not?
Well, those extending the hand of mercy don’t seem to include the good folks at Echostar, d/b/a the Dish Network.
Karl at DSL Reports.com notes that Matt and Danelle Azola returned from a cruise to find their Ramona, California, home burned to the ground.
Now with their residence in ruins, they methodically called the services that came to their home, and cancelled them. Or at least tried to.
Natural because their home is no more, and presumably everything in and around the home was damaged or totalled. Like their Dish Network receiver.
Yet when they called Dish, they were told they owed $300 for the receiver. No matter the Azika’s are homeless, and the dish and tv were probably burned beyond recognition.
Customer service wouldn’t bend. Not even a little. They won’t even defer the bill up until the Azolas get their insurance check.
Main takeaways:
1. This is what happens when you either outsource your customer “support” to third-party call centers, or/and;
2. This is what happens when service providers don’t empower phone service agents to effect changes, or/and;
3. This is what happens when upper management is so far removed from the call center supervisory apparatus that necessary policy changes aren’t pushed down to the people in the trenches.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
