Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

Now I can chuckle at it but back then, it wasn't nice. One of the big brouhahas yesterday was that Dreamhost, a popular web site hosting service, made a pretty stupid billing error that caused their customers to be erroneously billed millions of dollars. (It doesn't help that the apology post has a picture of Homer Simpson at the top, though they have been roundly lambased for this on the interwebs.

One of the things that struck me whilst skimming through the comments by some irate customers was how many people were upset about being billed around the $200 range. Luckily at this point in time a $200 mistaken charge would not be too bad (though I'd be very upset about it of course and seek to get it reversed). There was a time in my life when $200 was a very, very big deal since I was earning about $220 after taxes per week, and paying $550 for rent. So I can sympathize very much. (And I still had a $29.95 per month Compuserve account in those days...)

It also reminded me of an incident that happened just a couple of years ago. I had ordered some merchandise from a certain web site that I was a fairly regular customer of. The total including shipping came to $275. The store mistakenly imputted the whopping number of $27,500. Yep, two extra zeroes. Since this was on my Amex card, which has no spending limit on it, the charge went through.

The store reversed the charge immediately when they realized the error, but the damage was done. What made the situation worse probably was that they were in the UK and I was in the US. My Amex was stopped immediately, which I only realized when I couldn't use the card a couple of days after the charge had occured since I was on the road at the time. I called the customer service number, and explained the situation to them. The first person I spoke to basically spoke to me as if I were a criminal, reading off a list of questions about my income, my profession, my family makeup, and on and on and on. I make a big mistake in such a situation and lost my temper at his intrusive questions. That didn't help.

A few days later, I composed myself and called Amex again. I explained the situation calmly (I wrote down a list of points before making the call), and this time the customer service person actually listened. She took off the hold on my account, and explained what paperwork I had to send in. She looked at whatever had been noted on my account by the interrogator-mode rep and corrected it. In other words, she treated me like a human being and a customer. She restored my faith in Amex as a company. (What I did not do, which I should have, was to get the name of the dude who treated me like crap and let Amex know about it. I regret it still.)

In any case, the lessons I learned were:

• Don't forget to check your answering machine messages even if you're on the road (or, these days make sure you get account alerts and such to your cellphone or by email so you know immediately). Keep a vigilant eye on your credit card charges and bank account withdrawals.
• If you start to feel upset at how a customer service rep is speaking to you, take a deep breath and ask for a supervisor. Or, hang up and try for another rep.
• Be sure to give your gratitude to the really good and decent customer service people you encounter that smooth your way. They are angels who should get big raises and tons of positive karma.