I read the next name from the list.
“Maxine.”
“Yes, I need you to call customer service for me.”
“Okay, you can use our phone right here at the end of the desk.”
“No, you talk to them.”
“Ohh-kay. What is it that you need help with today, Maxine?”
“I don’t know, it should be in the notes.”
Sensing the frustration, and empathizing, I grab the receiver and dial the same 800 number that everyone has to dial. There is no express route. We spin the same Customer Service roulette wheel of ignorance when we have to call in. I’m now at the point where I can discern inside of two sentences how new the employee on the other end is.
"Thank you for calling the Phone Company, home of Digital Dazzle and Family Finder and..um...how can I make your day a little b..."
I hang up mid sentence so it appears we’ve been cut off and take another look at the phone.
I am, somewhat miraculously, able to squeeze some information out of dear Maxine. Enough, anyway, to discover that her blackberry keyboard has stopped functioning correctly and that she has come in to the store so that we could help her troubleshoot the phone. More accurately, she needs help taking off the back of the phone. How did you DO that??? Without removing the back and checking the liquid indicator and serial number, customer service can not go through the appropriate steps required in order to send her a replacement.
It’s been over five years since I’ve been able to replace a phone in store. Five years ago, The Company decided that too much was being wasted in the flippant in-store exchange of phones. An exchange-by-mail program was established to “more precisely diagnose any problems and determine the appropriate course of action.” It was then that I began assuring my clientele that they could, in fact, live without their phone for the 2-3 days it would take them to receive their replacement. They continue to assure me I am wrong.
Maxine is pressing the Green call key on her Blackberry and the screen says “JKJKJKJKJK”. She is pressing the Red button and the screen says “NMNMNMNM”. She is not pleased with this recent development. She is also not pleased with my suggestion that her phone is “Just Kidding, Just Kidding, Just Kidding” but then, “Never Mind, Never Mind, Never Mind.”
Displeased doesn’t even begin to describe what Maxine is when I ask if her blackberry has been anywhere near any type of moisture.
“Of course not! That’s ridiculous!”
Of course it is. Totally ridiculous. What am I thinking?
I pull off the back, remove the battery, check the liquid indicator for signs of change and see none. I wasn’t really expecting too. By the time liquid has made far enough to turn the white sticker to pick or red, the phone is usually shot. Maxine's phone has only a keypad problem. Which means Maxine probably tucks her phone into her Jogbra while working out and has therefore, inadvertently attempts to kill her phone by osmosis.
Since there is no evidence of liquid damage, she technically could get away with sending the phone in for a warranty exchange. I could send her away to do it herself, but I see Cock Bombay escaping for oxygen and I pick up the receiver again. I get through the prompts and I get to a person who sounds somewhat rational and competent. Here we go:
“Yes, my name is Jason and I’m calling from Retail Sales Location T102. I have a Maxine Lubitsch here with a defective blackberry.”
“Okay, Jason, I’m very sorry to hear about the trouble you and the customer are having today. Can I get your sales ID?”
“LP187.”
“And your password.”
“Goat Milk.”
“Thank you very much Jason, please bear with me while I pull up that number in our system. What seems to be the problem today?”
I begin, knowing what must be done to get through to someone who is following the customer-service-choose-your-own-adventure script. “Not too much, it looks like it’s just a faulty keypad. I’ve pulled the battery out, tried a different battery, tried my battery, tried putting my sim card in the phone, tried the application loader, tried backing up the phone, tried updating the software, tried removing the software, tried reloading the software, tried it while it was plugged into the computer, tried it while it wasn’t, tried it downstairs, down the street, outside and up the block. Still, after all that and an hour of trying, the keypad still won’t work. It looks like we just need a new one sent out.”
I wink at Maxine.
“Okay, Jason, it certainly sounds like you’ve tried quite a bit. Please bear with me as we do need to go through some of those trouble shooting steps on our own.”
Everything I say to this representative I have painfully learned to say from previous phone calls. My own fellow Phone Company Coworkers on the phone have been given strict directives: No one gets a new phone sent to them until the old one has practically been rebuilt. We will waste man hours, but not equipment. We will err on the side of denying claims first like a corrupt health insurance provider.
After putting me on a brief four minute hold to consult with his computer, this one keeps going, sticking to his guns:
“Okay, so I need for Maxine to download the latest software on her computer before giving us a call back, okay?”
Wow, this one is tough. Maybe I sounded a little too slick in reciting my lines. He might be on to me. But I’m not letting him off that easy. I improvise.
“She doesn’t have a computer,” I lie, shrugging at Maxine. She’s now on my side.
“Does she have any friends with computers?”
“Sadly, no.”
“Nobody she knows has a computer?”
“Well, I didn’t want it to get to this point but since you seem to be forcing the issue, I feel obligated to tell you that Maxine doesn’t really have any friends.”
Silence on the line. Then, stumbling, “um, well is there any sort of public computer...”
“C’mon, man. You know as well as I do that public computers don’t let you download software from the internet.”
“She HAS to be able to get it somehow!” He insists.
“Why? It’s a physical problem with the keypad! There’s nothing any amount of software updates will possibly fix. We already tried reloading the entire phone!”
Not true.
Finally, and snidely, “you know we check them when they come in to make sure they have the latest software.”
Bullshit.
“Yes, I know. But you can’t do that until after you’ve sent out the replacement. So let’s get on to that part now.”
All told, about 40 minutes of work. Two hourly employees costing the company double labor because one has been given the directive to, more or less, give the other a hard time. The other, God help him, is earnestly trying to help the customer who, at worst, may have accidentally gotten a little boob sweat on her phone.
