Damn it, I said I’m sorry!!!

When did training people to robotically and insincerely apologize over and over (in monotone) become a substitute for “actual” customer service?

I called chase last week to get them to lower the interest rate on my credit card, its a card I have had a long time, it has a zero balance and like most of America I got screwed just before the new credit card laws got put in place, every company I had a credit card with raised it’s  interest rate (notice the key word in that phrase HAD).

I dont keep that many credit cards and I am lucky enough to have pretty much no, or a very low balance of them all, but the ones that went insane, I closed the accounts… I had a visa card that actually raised the interest rate to 29% and change.  Seriously, do you really think I would keep that card, or better yet not notice?

Anyway I called chase & after being on hold way too mane times, and transferred a few too many times (I am  a bit tenacious when it comes to this sort of thing, just because the first tier person says no, I dont generally stop there).  I have found most of the time with larger companies all you have to do it ask…. PERSISTENTLY.

Not the case with chase, I have my banking with them and can manage my card and accounts from the same on-line interface, so if I’m going to keep a card I would prefer it be with them, just for that reason.  Chase waited until the very last second to raise the interest rate on my card, all the other companies raised the rates and sucked up any additional cash they could extort as early as possible.

I had been watching the interest rates on my card statements closely knowing this was going down all over the US, and I had thought, maybe these people are going to be smart enough not to jump on the ” let’s screw our customers just a bit more” bandwagon and were going to be forward thinking enough to realize they could snap up alot more customers if they were one of the few that didnt.

Well….. not so much, they were not as bad as visa at trying to extort money, but the interest rate I had went from 8.99% to 16%, not quite double.. my, how fair of them! So, I called and I cant tell you how many times I was apologized to, its not be any stretch of the imagination the only company its happened with.. but they did take it to an all new high… literally every other phrase was, please let me apologize for that, or I’m so sorry…. all said in total monotone and with out even a small amount of sincerity, they might as well have just played a tape.

Even the logic “you can have 100% of a zero balance card to earn interest from”, or you can lower the interest rate and I will actually USE the card… got me no-where, they were trained to not see the logic in, “you want something, or NOTHING”… and, yes after the last person I was willing to deal with, I closed the account.

They got nothing, and I put another company on my list of, “think you are ever going to get a single dollar out of me again, FUCK YOU” companies.

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