Nice Save

Today I arose to an interesting problem. My V-fax was not working. (email faxing program) So rather than stay on the phone for hours I decided to email Vonage customer service. They surprisingly did respond in a timely manner (last time I tried emailing they never responded).
Nonetheless even though they responded it wasn’t too helpful. It was basically a mass email that did not really address my problem whatsoever.

So braced myself for the automated answering machine and called into the 800 number. After I gave my account #, favorite food, last 5 addresses and middle name of my second cousin I was finally put through to a person. When I asked her about the problems with my V-Fax she told me that was because they had canceled the program. DUH... WHAAAAaaaaaaaaT!!!!!!!!!

How can you cancel a service and not let someone know? Her response was that V-Fax was only a "test market" and with so many competitors in the game they decided not to pursue that line of services.

Translation: We kept screwing up people's faxes and we don't know how to fix it so we stopped trying.

Although she did tell me not to worry my fax # will still work with a traditional fax machine. Well that's good cause I would assume the least it should do is work with an actual machine since it is supposed to be a fax#?!??!

Here's where the nice job comes in. She was shockingly understanding and apologetic. (Not the case when calling into customer service at most companies.) She then credited me the 5 months of service so that I would have $$ to go buy a fax machine.

I must say I was impressed. It's been awhile since I've seen a company take that much responsibility. Then came the clincher, she asked what time next week she should call me to get the fax connected.

It's really a small thing, to give me back $65.00, talk in a soothing voice and offer to help. That is what a customer service person is for right? Too bad most of them have no idea that this is their job.