"You can expect a call back within 24 to 48 hours." Just Don't Count On It.
Our "free trade" policies are partly to blame for frustrating service. We need to return to the trade policy Alexander Hamilton created in 1789 that we upheld until the "Reagan revolution".
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash
For the past two weeks, my second job has been waiting on hold for usually over an hour while two mobile phone companies hash it out for possession of my wife’s cell number.
Since my wife was 19, her aunt has been paying for cell phone service. Now in her forties, married over sixteen years, a mother of two, my wife agreed it was about time she graciously decline another month of her aunt’s generosity.
So around the 19th or 20th of last month, I contacted my cell carrier (we’ll call it “Redco”) about adding a line.
No problem.
Phone companies do this all the time.
My wife was even able to order a new iPhone 14.
Things were going swimmingly.
Until the phone arrived.
Apparently, the new iPhone — perhaps others as well now — does not carry an insertable sim card as previous models have. The latest thing is an “e-sim” the carrier has to activate.
One would assume this is a fairly efficient process.
But one would be wrong.
At least one whose cell carrier is Redco Mobile.
If we had no problem abandoning the number my wife has had for over twenty years, everything would have been just peachy.
But we had the unmitigated temerity to want to keep her existing number.
Obtaining a new phone every couple of years does not present this problem.
But that was before the “e-sim” technology made things more “efficient”.
Day after day I would come home from work and call Redco Mobile, and speak with yet another “customer care team member,” who thanked me for my “seven years as a customer,” yet couldn’t seem to figure out what the hold up was.
Once I got past the dark, lugubrious hold music, no matter whom I was talking to would always promise to “escalate the matter,” which, according to some unwritten technological fiat, has to take between 24 and 48 hours.
Never mind it had been longer than that already.
It was like every day I called, as soon as I hung up, someone pressed reset, turning each encounter into Groundhog Day.
There was another issue, though.
The number was coming from “Novizer Wireless” (not its real name), which meant it had to be transferred, or “ported” — as I’ve come to understand the jargon — over to Redco.
Novizer was efficient.
It ported the number over successfully as any functional cell phone carrier operating in 2022 should be able to do.
Apparently, however, we had discovered Redco’s Achilles’ heel.
Trying to activate an e-sim and port over a number?
You’ve got to be kidding me.
This was just too much for Redco customer service to handle.
It wasn’t on the script.
What was on the script were apologies.
Lots of apologies.
And promises.
Lots of promises the matter would be resolved in “24 to 48 hours.”
You see where this is going, don’t you?
After nearly a week of daily calling, waiting, composing lyrics in my head to Redco’s now-too familiar depressing music, I went into a Novizer store and was given a number for the porting center, which I promptly called from the car on my drive home.
I never would have guessed two communication companies would have so much trouble doing what their business exists to do, communicate, but that is exactly what happened.
The Novizer porting agent called Redco while I was on the line so we could participate in a conference call during which the Novizer representative, in professional, measured euphemistic fashion, accused the Redco rep of not having the slightest idea what she was doing.
This took over an hour, most of which I sat muted listening impotently to the two techies fumble for the number like chimps trying to climb a greased pole.
All the Redco rep could repeat was, “I will have to escalate this matter. You can expect a call back within 24 to 48 hours.”
At this point I had to unmute.
“Excuse me,” I interjected. “But that is what I have been told for almost a week now, and I have never received a call back. Every time I talk to someone, I am told to wait another 48 hours.”
“I’m sorry,” the Redco rep — err, customer care team member — replied. “I will have to escalate this matter. You can expect a call back within 24 to 48 hours.”
48 hours — to the hour —later, I called Redco again.
This time I spoke to a lovely “customer care drone “— I mean “team member” — who promised to call me back within half an hour when she promised the problem would be resolved.
She never did and it never was.
“Just give the number back to Novizer!” my wife exclaimed after two more tries at this.
So, like a dutiful husband without the slightest pull in the telecommunication industry, I reached out to Novizer porting department again to ask for the number back.
Since my wife’s aunt was the account owner, I didn’t really get too far. It took several calls from Novizer to finally obtain the Rosetta Stone typically referred to in telecom world as “authorization,” but once I had gotten that, I thought we were off to the races.
Enter Redco again.
It had the number now.
It just didn’t know it.
Even since the conference call with Novizer days before, the number still wasn’t showing up in Redco’s system, which, I was told, meant no one had the foggiest idea what I was talking about.
Novizer had ported it out, so it didn’t have it.
Redco didn’t have it in the database either.
The number was in limbo (like my marriage was on the verge of as soon as I informed my wife she would have to wait another 24 to 48 hours).
I realized I needed to do something I have never done.
It’s one of those tactics reserved for extreme circumstances, when all else fails.
It’s something no customer care team member (or whatever sobriquet they’re told to use) wants to hear.
It’s the retail equivalent of an atomic bomb.
I DEMANDED TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER.
BAM!
There it was.
My father would have been proud.
The Redco rep wasn’t flinching; she was ready for it.
“I will see if a manager is available,” and — CLICK! — on hold again with more of the creepy music that had begun to haunt me in my sleep.
A few minutes later: “I’m sorry. No managers are available now. You will have to wait…”
Guess how long?
One guess.
“24 to 48 hours!”
Did I ever get that call?
Not on your life.
So, every afternoon after work, sometimes in the car on my drive home, I continued my daily dialog with a Novizer porting agent and a Redco customer “care” team member.
Finally I was able to connect with a Novizer rep who not only knew what she was doing. She even was able to get a Redco manager on the line despite being initially informed “none were available.”
She called me every day until my wife finally had her number back from captivity.
In case you’re wondering, Novizer’s hold music is funky and upbeat.
This is, unfortunately, not an unusual experience.
The other day, just out of curiosity, I checked Redco’s Twitter page, and read several angry tweets from customers who underwent the same revolting experience I did.
I even checked the company’s embarrassing standing with the Better Business Bureau and filed a complaint.
While it made me feel a little better this experience wasn’t just happening to me, I started to think about all the times we have had to rely on customer service that is anything but.
Dial any company’s 800 or 888 number, and we’re connected to a recording that presents us a menu of options. Once one of those options is selected, we’re likely handed off to another recording, all of which it seems is designed to do two things: eliminate human interaction and get us off the line as quickly as possible.
Should one press the pound key (that’s the hashtag for all the under 40s out there), or “zero,” or whatever is programmed to connect someone to another sentient being, he or she must be prepared to contend with someone in a remote call center reading from a script.
This is not unique to Redco, nor Novizer.
It’s a casualty of globalization, the “free trade” deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China that have decimated the American manufacturing base republicans and Democrats alike own.
It seemed like a good idea after Ronald Reagan eviscerated unionization and assured us if we just hand corporations fewer regulations and tax breaks, the world would become more economically balanced.
His successor, George H.W. Bush, negotiated it, and Bill Clinton signed it into law even after the late Ross Perot debated them both on it during the 1991–2 presidential debates in which Perot referred to the “giant sucking sound” we would hear as our jobs got hoovered away to low-wage countries.
Many of those jobs were call center positions that used to belong domestically to Americans working for American corporations required to pay competitive wages. Many were unionized.
With the 40-year decline of unionization and more tax-dodging companies fleeing to other countries while still being able to claim their “citizenship” status, we no longer hear “the customer is always right”.
Why would we?
When multi-national corporations are the beneficiaries of massive tax breaks and record profits, why be beholden to simple ordinary consumers like my wife and me?
Moreover, as these trans-national juggernauts gobble up their competitors, our options become slimmer. We can’t threaten to take our business elsewhere when the company we’re trying to switch from already owns elsewhere.
We’re stuck.
We need to bring manufacturing back to the United States, and with that manufacturing will come more jobs.
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 President Biden signed in August is a major move in the right direction.
But we need a major overhaul of our trade system that includes imposing import tariffs.
We need to return to the trade policy Alexander Hamilton created in 1789 that we upheld until the “Reagan revolution”.
If that starts a trade war with China, so be it.
Is it a panacea?
No way.
But at least we will be on our way to returning to a fairer, more prosperous future.
And maybe we won’t have to be told to wait “24 to 48 hours” for dubious service.