I think I talked about this before here, back before Christmas, when my dad's present got stolen from outside my sister's apartment, and she wanted to call customer service at Amazon and had a hell of time getting a phone number. You know, I found it for her with a simple web search, and no harm done; the Amazon people were incredibly nice. You just have to get a phone number to do that.
Well, today, the astonishing invisibility of the customer service number for Netflix pissed me off. I didn't want to complain; I wanted to call and ask about how Netflix might be used within a library setting (seeing as the director of my library thinks it might be an option for us). There was literally nothing on the website about any sort of academic membership, so it seemed as if a phone call would be the way to go. Of course, there was no phone number on the website; just like with Amazon, I had to do a web search. It was found easily enough, but I simply HATE HATE HATE the fact that you have to go outside of the organization to find the phone number.
(And frankly, the girl I talked to was a little bit of an idiot, and only directed me to email a certain address in the organization, which was on the Netflix page. Although, if I thought that emailing that address would have helped, I would have done it instead of calling. Poor customer service, Netflix. And now with the throttling/shipping issues brought about by the increase in postage, I'm even less happy with Netflix. Boo hiss.)
I'm not a demanding customer that's never worked in customer service; I've worked in retail, and I know how hard it can be dealing with a touchy, grouchy, holier-than-thou customer. However, I really believe that you can't escape those people, ever, so not publishing your phone number ain't gonna help. In fact, it's just going to enrage people, who might have been easily calmed before they had to go to so much trouble to find the damn customer service people.
And, in fact, I've rarely heard of a case where email customer service was as satisfying as actual person to person contact. I get that it's all about cutting costs, and making more money, but you'd think that somewhere in all of this we could find someone who wants to actually satisfy the customer. (As it is, I'd consider stopping Netflix and moving to a competitor if things get worse for S and I.)
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