My Customer Service Nightmare With Capital One
By Michael Stelzner
It was just after Christmas. I thought I should go online and see what the damage was on my Capital One MasterCard.
That online visit sparked a customer service from hell experience. But more about that in a bit…
I saw a bunch of charges from Yahoo that surprised me. I decided to give Yahoo a call. After answering a bunch of questions, Yahoo informed me that they saw some fraudulent activity and it might be wise to change my card number.
Flashes of identity theft went through my mind. I decided the issue was urgent enough to give Capital One a call.
After going through a menu of options on their voice system, I finally selected “Report Fraudulent Activity.”
I was transfered to a lady somewhere overseas. She spoke very broken and slow English, but listened to my story.
She asked, “Would you like me to send you a new card.”
I said yes and asked if the card would have a new number on it.
She responded, “Your new card will arrive in 5 to 7 business days.”
I asked again, “Will it be a new account number.”
She said, “Would you like me to send you a new card.”
I said, “Yes, if it has a new account number.”
She paused a little longer and said, “Okay Mr. Stelzner, I will be sending your new card now.”
I explained I needed a new account number.
She said, “Would you like to cancel your account.”
I said no and she said, “Let me transfer you to someone who can assist.”
I was so frustrated I yelled, “Learn to speak English people!”
Turned out the gal was still on the line. She said, “Um.. Um..”
I asked to speak with a supervisor. After a while, a more articulate English speaking man came on the line.
I told him my story and asked if he understood. He said, “Of course sir.”
He checked what the other woman had done. Turned out she was sending me a new card with my old number on it! She did nothing to indicate any fraud took place on the account.
Had I not asked to speak to a supervisor, fraudulent activity would have continued on my account.
Turned out I was calling to the Philippines. The supervisor did take care of me, but about 40 minutes of my time were wasted.
Here’s my question: “Capital One, Who’s in Your Call Center!?!”
Tell me about your customer service hell story.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 5:40 am
There are plenty of customer service hell story from Apple Quality Complaints: http://applequalitycomplaints.blogspot.com/
Bad quality products.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 am
Sounds exactly like Bell Canada - they outsource all their calls to a call center in India. Considering most people in Quebec speak French, it certainly makes getting any help at all a challenge.
I had a friend who worked for Bell shortly before the call center in Ontario shut down and was outsourced (it was too expensive to pay Canadians.) She was instructed and trained to tell callers (if they asked) that the call center is located in Montreal (which is another province than the one the call center was located in). She got caught in that one day when someone asked what the weather was like.
“Beautiful and sunny!” she answered.
“Wow, that’s nice, you’re so lucky,” the caller answered. “Where are you located?”
“Montreal,” my friend replied, following protocol.
A pause. “Where in Montreal?” The caller sounded puzzled.
My friend named the street they’d been told to respond.
“Uh… That’s funny, because my office is one block away from that address,” the caller replied. “And it’s currently snowing like a bastard, we haven’t seen the sun since last night, and the weather sucks.”
Doh.
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:29 am
Hello Sir, I found your post through a google alert I have set-up and I can relate to your experience in a different perspective. You see I work as a customer service manager and formerly a customer service supervisor for a call center here in the Philippines. One of many I should say.
Reading your story is like reading a nightmare story. It downright sounds like the person you spoke with failed to comprehend a simple question. Which is often the case for new employees after the phone. But I’m also assuming the person who you spoke with understood the question as it is but failed to respond correctly. Both assumptions can be rooted to poor training.
I most definitely agree that your experience could have been a lot better and faster. On a different day, it might have been. Training the right people for the right job to correctly respond to customer queries is a challenge not only here in the call centers in the Philippines but also in other parts of the world. There is no excuse for the mishandling of your call. Rest assured we Filipinos are doing the best we can to improve the services we provide our client’s customers not only because we want to keep our jobs but also we believe pleasure of being provided good customer service as we all are customers in our own right. I sincerely hope you find your next dealings with a customer service person from the Philippines satisfactory.
Thanks for letting me post a comment on your blog. Happy New Year!
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:51 am
Reminds me of an experience we had with Dell and their center in India. Call time was almost 2 hours and we ended up doing an end-around and calling Dell sales, which was US call center and they helped us. Actual story is too long for this box!
Not blaming the folks who work in these centers. I’m sure they are great people - probably more intelligent than many in the US. But these companies who outsource need to do some QA monitoring and should consider offering a way to get to someone who can meet their needs.
I do appreciate the post above from the Call Center Vet - just surprised to see them on your blog.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Ha - reminds me of calling United and American airlines!
I lost my wallet while on vacation in New Mexico. The credit cards were easy to cancel and replace. What wasn’t easy was getting permission to return home by a major commercial airline without a driver’s license.
We booked our flight with a travel site. They told us to call American. Who told us to call United, because our American Airlines return ticket was actually on a United flight.
The United phone support people were nice enough, but kept telling me that I needed a passport to travel back home to Seattle from Sante Fe, New Mexico. Even the supervisor refused to believe that New Mexico was in the US. (Never mind the logic of driving several thousand miles to Seattle to get my passport and then driving back to Sante Fe to fly home to Seattle.)
One all to the TSA straightened it out. They asked me to get a police report, bring anything I had with my name and address on it, and go through the extra screening.
I believe most large US airlines and credit card companies would benefit from having a US-based group to handle the more sensitive time-sensitive calls - cancelling a credit card, losing your ID prior to boarding a flight, etc. The internationally-based call centers often do a great job, but no one can be an expert in everything.
TIP: The TSA may be able to help if you lose your ID. And always travel with a AMEX card. They will overnight a new card (with a new account #) to your hotel if you lose your card while traveling.
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Hi Everyone;
Glad to hear I am not along with this crazy service quality problem!
Mike
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:26 am
Hi, Mike!
Wow! A killer bad customer-service story!
In my book, outsourcing customer service to countries where English may be a “distant third” as a language choice indicates a company has a “de-marketing” strategy. The damage done to the company’s business and reputation by poor communication cannot possibly be offset by the “savings.”
Nicely done, Mike!
Regards,
George
Thanks for sharing
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 am
Mike,
It’s too bad there are so many stories like this out there. I’m sure we all have good stories, too, of someone whose gone out of their way for us. But they seem to fade quickly when you find yourself on the phone with someone who is much less than helpful.
The short version of my worst customer service story (my subsequent letter to their COO was 5 pages long). This snippet is only one call in a three week marathon of almost daily calls and botched service.
* Verizon Online
* 90 minutes on the phone
* transferred 17 times, each time to someone who couldn’t help (of course)
* final person spent less than 2 minutes on the line with me to say: we don’t support that and can’t help you. It must be your computer, so call that support line. (you won’t be surprised to learn that it wasn’t my computer and was, in fact, a problem with Verizon)
* somewhere after about the 10th transfer or about the 40th or 50th minute, I was crying. Not proud of that, but that’s how frustrated I was.
And I’m pretty sure the call center was here in the U.S. Or at least I got folks with very good American accents.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 am
Mike,
Get LifeLock. I just signed up for this service. The CEO is so confident that your identity will not be stolen that he posted his SSN on the Internet and in an ad in the WSJ.
Plus, they guarantee you against any fraudulent activity up to $1 million.
I signed up my son, too.
www.lifelock.com
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:13 am
Ah, Mike, you’ve discovered the joys of the customer service line! Let’s see, I too have had issues with my credit card customer service - after my purse was stolen last year, the card company TEMPORARILY credited my account of over $500 of fraudulent purchases, while the investigation ensued, i.e. while they decided if I was lying or not. In about five follow-up calls in over the course of two months that I initiated, I was NEVER able to find out the status of the investigation or why the fraudulent charges kept reappearing and disappearing on my account. Ultimately it was resolved, but eesh!
My second favorite customer service hell experience, also from last year, was when my pay-as-you-go mobile phone company changed its policy to not allow account passwords with special characters. Since my original password had an @ symbol, this meant I could no longer access my account — AND neither could anyone at the phone company. After two calls and no responses, I gave up and got a new phone.
I do appreciate the input from the customer service workers out there. In both my cases, lack of comprehension or a language barrier had nothing to do with the problems. More a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
Mike:
Could not resist sharing this story. Ten years ago, I had a giant company client (who was also a new bride). She unexpectedly left the US on a 3-month TDY to Guatemala with her Peace Corps husband. I was coordinating ALL her marcom programs (gulp!) and she begged me to find a way we could keep in touch via e-mail, to keep things going.
I was told that AOL had a Central American access phone number. So, I called AOL customer service (outside Washington). I will here render as exactly as I can, exactly how the woman answering my call sounded. She said: “Aol cuzomer service. Can ise help ya?”
I replied, “Yes, I need your access number in Guatemala.”
She pondered for a moment, then replied: “Guallamalla? Where’s dat?”
I answered: “Central America.”
She said: “Oh! Ya mean out dere near Kansas an’ Missouri an’ all dem ?”
I tried to explain, all the while feeling myself being sucked down into the swamp of her ignorance. Clearly, geography was not this lady’s forte. After two more tries, I slipped away like a coward and sat, stunned, for quite awhile.
Fortunately, I found another way to keep in touch with my client. But this definitely proved that the age of customer service by phone had come to an end. The moral is that you don’t have to go overseas to get lousy customer service! It’s available to you right here in the good ol’ USA!
All the best,
George
January 6th, 2008 at 7:57 am
mike, sad to hear about this. You still lucky. I call to Paypal UK mid of last year, a lady spoke to me, I ask her:”hi miss, my name is louiss. I would like to cancel my paypal account, can you help me to do it please? “. And she replied me,”pardon?” and I repeat,:”actually I just need to cancel my paypal, can I help me on this?” miss replied again:”pardon? I dont understand what you mean, what can I help you sir?”
Do I pronounce wrongly? Oh every lady in call center is like that?But I cut the phone on that day, sux.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I had a months long odyssey with Sprint. I move go new state and in my new location the reception was poor. Unfortunately I had them for Internet as well. Much too long a story but the highlights were Sprint admitting the tower was malfunctioning and doing nothing about it, a malfunctioning wi-fi card they refused to take off my bill, many hours speaking to ESL customer service people, finally winding up with a call to the telecommunications governing agency in my state that got months of crap taken care of in one phone call. Needless to say I’m no longer a Sprint customer.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I found out some corporate numbers to capital one if anyone wants them. The 1800-955-7070 number will get you no where. “Senior account managers” at that nu,ber will apologize profusely and say that there is no one else who can help you besides them. Of, course, they will offer no help. The corporate office numbers are are 804-284-5xxx. Capital One seems to own most of the exchanges above 284-5200. If you try enough of them, you may actually get someone who will help. Some of their faxes are 804-284-5200, 804-284-5201, 804-284-5203, 804-284-5204, 804-284-5202, and 804-284-5704. god Bless the consumer!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:40 am
i’m just pissed at the fact that NOBODY speaks effing ENGLISH, and when you get transferred to the “US Representative call ctr” they’re not in the office. i got transferred at 12pm on a monday and no one was there–MONDAY, of all days! this was AFTER arguing back and forth with some unsimpathetic indian guy who erred on HIS part with all these random charges on my acct. as soon as mine is paid off i am SOOOOO slicing my card up.