Customer Service For Dummies*

* And by this, I don’t mean in the widely popular Stuff For Dummies Book Series sense but how to do customer service with dummies like me.

In case anyone had any doubts I cannot adult. This is the latest proof of it.

When I moved to Windsor, many scary things happened.

The scariest of all was that utilities were not included in the rent anymore.

All of a sudden, I had to take care of an electricity bill, a phone bill and an internet bill. Plus rent. Plus now I own a credit card. That’s five  freaking payments I have to make every month. FIVE. Of course, it was only a matter of time until I was going to fuck it up.

I tried to make things easier for myself and get everything to be automatically deducted from my bank account or my shiny brand new credit card.

No dice.

The most I could do for rent is an electronic payment via email. But that is still a win in book. At least I don’t have to write a stupid cheque every month.

If there is a way to sign up for automatic payments for the electricity bill, haven’t figured it out yet.

I was, however, able to set up automatic payments via credit card for my phone bill.

I thought I had done the same for my internet bill.

Why can’t my phone carrier and my internet carrier be one and the same?

Yes, yes. I know the big carriers provide that. Thank you, but no thank you. By switching to a small carrier, I chopped my phone bill to exactly half, while going from 1GB of data/ month to unlimited data every month. So I am sticking with them

Right. Payments. I managed to do O.K. for the months of January, February and March.

Come April and all hell brakes lose. On April 3rd, I realized I had still not payed rent. UGH. I rushed to my phone to make the electronic payment. I am supposed to get late fee charges starting the 2nd, I think. Late, schlate. In the big scheme of things, not a biggie, right? Right.

Wait, it gets better.

While on my way to Lansing, I got a bunch of text messages and emails from Wind letting me know I was late with my phone bill.

Say whaaaaaat?

Good Ole Customer Service

I met with my new friend Pam for coffee this morning. We each had a lovely caramel mocha coffee. No cake, though. That is sad.

But! we have a great time, nonetheless.

Yesterday, we had talked of walking there from my place. The day started wet and cold so we decided to drive instead. Since we did that, I imposed on Pam’s kindness to take me to the pet store in order  to get food for J & K, since they had none at home and breakfast had been meager. They wouldn’t be happy if I showed up empty-handed.

She took me to PetValu on Huron Church Road. They didn’t have the brand I used to get in Ottawa so I asked the lady there for some advice. She was super helpful as I was getting lost looking all the different brands they carry there. Like, bend over backwards super helpful. She even went online and checked my preferred brand to learn the ingredients of it and then she together we chose one that was similar to it and wouldn’t break my wallet (is that how the expression goes?).

Then I remembered I still needed the tags for the kitty collars so I chose them and waited while she engraved them (thank you Pam, you’re an angel). She made Jay’s first and gave it to me to check it for spelling and such. It was all good so she went ahead and made miss Kaylee’s which I didn’t bother checking because I figured it’d be as fine as the first one.

I got home, fed the kitties – first things first, right?- and when they were done having their treat, I got their collars to put the tags in them. When I got to K’s collar, I realized that her name was missing a letter and my phone number was missing a digit.

Not a biggie.

I called the store and told them my plight. The lady asked me if I could go pick a new one up after apologizing for it. I said yes but just didn’t know when because I usually rely on friends to give a ride since I don’t own a car. She asked if there was a PetValu that was closer to me than the Heron Church one. I said I wasn’t sure cause I still didn’t know my way around Windsor very well, after moving here from Ottawa.

THEN she asked me where I lived and when I told her, she proceeded to tell me she’d make a new tag and then she’d drop it off this evening after work.

Now, THAT’S customer service.

Thank you, PetValu lady for making my life that much easier today, when you didn’t have to.

Replacing the tag was expected, of course. Being so nice about it was definitely lovely. Going the extra mile to help a person with obvious mobility issues is just above and beyond anyone’s job so I am very thankful for it.

So nice to know there are still people that care about what they do!

By the way, Geekboy and I went to the same petValu on Christmas Eve to get Jay a christmas treat (miss Kaylee was still at the Humane Society, being unbeknownst to all of us she’d become part of our family). There was a different employee that evening but they were still super nice and cheerful. Guess which pet store has become OUR pet store.

That’s my feel good story for today.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Form Letter

Brilliant!

If I ever find myself in one of those situations again, I’ll be SO happy to use it