Customer Service? A Misnomer?

Customer service?  Has anyone gotten any decent customer service lately or do we all have to try to talk with “Alice?”  I know I do.

These days to even get to a human at any customer service, you have to press dozens of buttons on your phone and even then you rarely get your questions answered.

If you are a gadget freak or even a cell phone owner, and I am, you will need customer service, a misnomer if I ever heard one.  There is no service in customer service.

In my cellphone lifetime I have had most every brand of cellphone there is.  As far back as when they came in two pieces and you had to carry a huge battery on your back and almost needed a shopping cart for the phone part. You would think that customer service back then would have been a piece of cake, but no, it wasn't. Alice’s first incarnation was then and she survives today and her numbers are legion. 

I  recently had occasion to try to straighten out a bill with Sprint.  That it was their error was obvious. It took a year and some of my spiciest vocabulary to finally get it fixed.  Month after month I had to take at least one hour out of the day to try to find a person at Sprint who then promised me the problem was over, only too have it resurface the following month.

I thought AT&T would be better. Hah! Not a chance. They have a difficult time even staying connected to the customer assuming you even get through to a person at all after punching your way through the phone tree for at least 15 minutes, talking to a human is a crapshoot. And finding one who understands what you’re calling about even more so.

Donna owns a PC.  Customer service is non existent. And because she is old and has gray hair, Best Buy says  things like, "It will cost you $299.00 for us to see what is wrong with your computer."  When her computer goes awry and it often does because it is not a Mac, it's easier just to give it to a grandchild and get a new one. Phone customer service is non existent.  In person techs are hustlers.

Need to talk to the cable company, electric company or water company?  Be ready to hear heavily accented English spoken by someone named Jack or Alice. Who do they think they are kidding?

Ah, Apple. I have owned Mac computers since 1984 and love them. If I have a question or problem, I get a pleasant youngster who takes all the time I need and doesn't not leave me until the problem is totally solved. One problem:  The first tech you speak with tells you what you already know and have done to solve your problem.  Ask for a senior tech immediately or you will be telling your story several times.  I love Apple.  They know customer service. They could teach the world customer service.  And they all speak unaccented English.

Is profit so important that customers with questions can routinely be ignored?  Or are we just used to settling for bad treatment?