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Your call is important

Abandon hope all ye who dare to dial here.

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published March 11, 2007

File this one under: Why globalization will give us all agita.

No, it's not because of job losses or the flight of capital. It's because of the consequent tear-your-hair-out customer service.

Here is the true-life adventure of my herculean efforts to do something admittedly radical: get a new cell phone after losing my old one. The following is not for the weak of heart or stomach. But I share it with you to put the lie to the general perception that outsourcing is always efficient or economical.

If we are looking for a culprit for our modern malaise and despair, look no further than the customer service line at TracFone Wireless Inc.

I lost my cell phone recently. I have no idea where, but after it didn't turn up for a few days I assumed it was gone for good. Using the online store at TracFone, I ordered a new phone.

TracFone, a subsidiary of America Movil, Latin America's largest wireless company, offers low-cost, prepaid cell phones. Since I don't need a cell phone at my ear constantly, I thought this was a perfect option.

The first problem arose when an automated e-mail message from TracFone informed me that a signature would be required upon delivery.

Yikes. The phone was being sent to my home and no one would be there. I called TracFone to change the shipping address to my place of work.

After waiting for the interminable recorded message on the customer service line to be over, I explained my situation to a representative and was told to call Federal Express to change the shipping address.

I did, but FedEx bounced me back, saying that only TracFone is authorized to make address changes. I called TracFone back - again wading through the recorded menu of customer service options.

Then I started taking notes. The representative at an overseas call center told me to contact FedEx to make the change. When I told her I had called there already, she said there was nothing she could do. The shipping address could not be changed.

I was flabbergasted. My office is 25 blocks from my home. FedEx comes to the newspaper's building every day. Rather than bring the package to my place of work, FedEx will now try to deliver it to my home three times and then send it back across the country to TracFone.

Not believing the idiocy of this, I asked to speak with a supervisor and was connected to "Hernan." After I repeated the story to Hernan, he assured me that the shipping address could be changed and spent about an hour (with me on hold for much of that time) working out the details. The next day there was a notice at my home from FedEx saying they tried to make a delivery but needed a signature.

I had cleverly (or so I thought) asked Hernan for his contact information. But I was outsmarted. When I tried to get him back I was told that because I didn't have Hernan's call center location there was no way they could put me back in touch.

Then, after nearly an hour on the line with "Rachael," a supervisor at the Cebu, Philippines, call center, I was promised that FedEx would be at my home the next day at 7 p.m., a time when I would be home.

FedEx didn't show. And when I tried to get Rachael back on the phone, having her contact number and call center location, I was told that the number I had for her was an employee ID number, not a phone extension, so, sorry.

During this call I spoke with "Carolina" from Colombia and "Damian" from Argentina and two others from who knows where. It was a two-hour ordeal because I had to order another phone and cancel the prior order, a virtual impossibility that had to be completed by different departments. My request for overnight delivery was also "impossible."

When I finally received the new phone, I had to call to activate it and transfer my old phone number.

Let's just say, after hours of interactions with representatives in Guatemala, Guyana and Colombia, I finally activated the phone. But they had neglected to transfer my prior number so I lost it.

As compensation, TracFone gave me gobs of free minutes. But I would return them all if I could erase this from my memory. I went through Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief.

If globalization is about explaining the situation to a sixth person in a sixth country, if it is about a package being moved across the country because it can't be moved down the street, then the flat world is just a modern form of torture. I'd surrender but I wouldn't know where to send the white flag.

[Last modified March 11, 2007, 01:31:07]