"Tracfone is fleecing the elderly!" or SJ's Encounters With Customer Service

Ok, so the title of blog might be a little stretched, but I did make this statement today. My Mother has been visiting over the last few days and has been telling me how unhappy she has been with her Tracfone service. It isn't necessarily the reception part that she has been unhappy with, but rather a service that she signed up that did not end up being followed through with. Long and short is since Tracfone is a pre-paid service she signed up for an automatic addition of minutes every month. Since signing up with the service she has not been credited for the additional minutes, but of course Tracfone has charged her debit card. So I told her that I would call Tracfone and cancel her service as well as get her a credit for her non-credited minutes.

After a lengthy conversation with several different Tracfone reps, I was able to get her the money credited back to her account, but they were not very happy to do this. The funniest part of my whole encounter with the Tracfone reps is that their phonelines were so poor it was hard to hear and understand them, do you see the irony there? Also, I informed them that I thought they were "fleecing the elderly, and not the sheep kind of fleece!". Ok, so maybe My Mother is not offically an elderly person, but she is retired doesn't that count for something? Moral of the story, don't get a Tracfone, nor should you try to talk with their customer reps.

After my Tracfone experience My Mother and I went to Eddie Bauer to return my backpack. It has torn along the seam and since Eddie Bauer has a 100% guarentee just like L.L.Bean I decided to take it back. Now, this is the second time that I have taken back this bag due to the same problem. The first time they took the bag back, no questions asked, and gave me a brand new one. Since this is the second time that the bag had torn along the seem I thought it was time to get more than just the same bag.

Once arriving at Eddie Bauer I went up to a sales person and expalined my situation. She poiletly asked me what I wanted them to do for this horrible inconcience. Long and short of it, she gave me all of my money back in the form of a gift card so that I can pick out another bag on their website. Now this is an example of a 5-Star business, the complete antithesis of the previously mentioned business.

Now onto my third encounter with customer service of the day. After Eddie Bauer My Mother and I met my Step-Father for dinner at Red Robbin. This was our first time visiting the "World Famous Gouermet Burger Makers". I was impressed with the variety of choices, but was able to narrow it down to just one. When our food arrived My Mother discovered one bite into her burger that it was cold. We polietly informed our waitress, and she wisked the cool burger away. Moments later the manager came rushing over offering a salad while she waited for a new burger as well as checking how the rest of our food was. Within minutes a new and hot burger arrived for My Mother. Again, very impressive compared to the first customer service encounter of the day.

Enjoy ~SJ