Car Door Handles...So Much Joy

Several years ago, I went to lunch with some friends from the FanX Planning Committee. I volunteered to drive. As we climbed inside the car, a friend opened the back door and, "pop"

Door handle broke.

It just snapped. 

I thought that strange. 

I don't know if I've ever had a door handle break. So, to "one-up" itself, a few months later, another door handle snapped off. Unbelievable...yet, believable. My daughter ended up inheriting the car and she drove it for a couple of years. Since it was her college commuter car, she didn't necessarily need all four door handles--as long as the drivers side handle worked.

Now, it's time for another driver to take the wheel. For kicks, I decided to do an internet search to see how much door handle replacements would be. Turns out, not as much as you'd think. I placed the order. It came last week.

I successfully installed one handle.

It made me so happy.

I can't testify to the quality of the new handles. I'm sure they're not up to the original standards and will most likely fail like those that went before. Then again, the original ones weren't too successful either. And, there's always the fact that since the car's almost twenty years old--it may expire before the new handles do.

I'm not thinking about that now. I'm thinking about how cool it is to be able to open the car door.

"Thank You For Holding...We'll Be With You Soon"

The term "customer service" is thrown around a lot nowadays, and for good reason. If a company doesn't provide good service, people will spend their time and money elsewhere. It's even one of the foundation principles of the company where I work--and it's a government agency.

Luckily, I haven't had many instances of poor customer service, at least, that I can recall. I'm sure there's times when service could have been better. Most times, I think people have provided me good customer service bordering on great. 

That's why what happened to me today was unusual. I had an issue with my cellphone provider so I gave them a call.

Several hours later, I hung up the phone.

And I was unable to speak with the right department after all that time.

I should say that I have been nothing but pleased with my provider. They've been great. And in the several years I've been with them, I've never had to call with an issue. Today, however, I needed to speak with someone in the prepay department. I was able to get through to the wrong department no problem at all. Then I was transferred and that's when I waited. 

My first call, I waited for one hour and seventeen minutes. That's when the call dropped. It wasn't that bad--I was working and had my call on speaker so I was able to keep working while waiting.

I called back after it disconnected and waited again. To their credit, they did warn me when I first called that wait times could be between an hour and then minutes and an hour and forty minutes. Since I still had a couple of hours of work left, I did the same thing--put it on speaker, set down the phone, and kept working.

Once I passed an hour, I thought it would be soon that I got to speak to the right person. At the hour and a half mark, I began to expect the call to go through. Nope. Then when I hit two hours, my work shift was over so I brought up the phone and kept waiting.

At the two and a half hour mark, I changed phones because I was worried the battery on my wireless phone would die. Since I switched phones, I don't have photo evidence of exactly how long I remained on hold--it was at least two and a half hours. Add that to the hour and seventeen minutes I was on hold before, and almost three hours of my day was spent waiting for someone on the other end to pick up, something that didn't happen. Finally, we decided to just drive down to the local store and have them help us out.

I'm lucky--my problem didn't require immediate attention, nor was it a big deal. I feel bad for others with more serious problems having to wait that long. Plus, I was able to do something productive why I waited. It wasn't wasted time. I think most people--even those working in tough customer service phone jobs--want to do a good job. It's the first time I've had problems with this particular company. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course, next time, I'll know better what I'm in for.