Whats the best way to complain about rotten customer service and is it worth it?
1. Customer service isn’t going to solve your problem. They just take your call and then pass the buck. So when they say they’ll call you back, they don’t mean themselves and have no idea when it will get done or what will be done. 2. Unless it’s a major screw-up, nothing will be done, even if you write to the president of the company. A lot of times, letters to the president or CEO end up in the hands of a customer service rep. However, ask for a supervisor if your issue is not being resolved. They might not be able to fix it either, but they’ll give you the straight poop at least. 3. Calling any number just to be able to talk to someone is not cool. I work in customer service and get people who call me all upset and scream at me just because this was the only number they can get through on. Well, I usually can’t help them (I’m an order desk: no tech support) and they’ve wasted their time. Granted you can often get a number to call, but you probably already have it. 9 times out of 10,
I’m not sure how much asking for a supervisor helps. When I worked customer service for a cell phone company (not Verizon) I was part of a group of about six people, still considered first level, and we took escalated calls from the rest of the first level reps. We were all authorized to say we were supervisors or managers. If someone asked to talk to my manager when I was pretending to be one, I just transferred them to another rep in my group (to be fair, we were supposed to try to solve the problem and not just give people the runaround.) And it wasn’t even so much that the first level reps couldn’t solve the problem, it’s just that sometimes people would call in and insist to talk to someone else right off the bat. What I can tell you is one time a customer worked his way through all six people in my group, four actual managers, the customer service manager, and eventually ended up talking to the president. Persistence pays.
If yelling at a manager is not your thing you could write letters to Apex execs outlining your problem (with the product, and customer service) and see if you can get a response that way. Apex Digital Inc. 2919 E. Philadelphia St. Ontario, CA 91761 Chairman – David Ji President – Stephen (Steve) Brothers SVP Sales and Marketing – Gary Bennett I have a couple of Apex products myself (although, never had to deal with customer service *knocks on wood*), cheap and and fairly decent quality. But I guess the old adage applies to their customer service, you get what you pay for.
Update/closure: still got nowhere with the manufacturer, they were amazingly awful. Eventually some lady at Best Buy who I was calling to ask about buying the service plan told me she couldn’t sell me one (as it was 30 days past the purchase date), but to drag my TV back into the store and that they’d deal with shipping it off to Apex if it’s still under manufacturer’s warranty. I went to Best Buy and the general manager (who happened to be at the door when I came in) was friendly and polite and nice to deal with. He told me there’d be a $40 shipping fee for Best Buy to ship the TV to the manufacturer for service, but for $69 he’d sell me the extended service plan even though the TV was over two months old. I went for that and walked out of there minus $69, but with a new TV and three years of coverage. At least it’s over. Thanks for everyone’s suggestions.
