August 09, 2005

Quick Note To Terminix

Sunday, 13 Sweltring (Wedmath), 2005

To the folks at Terminix: generally speaking, when you ask someone to stay at home during the day and let you in to their house, you should make an effort to get there when you say you are going to do so. Some of us (cough) don't have the ability to stay at home and go to work at the same time. We need to take time off of our day job in order to have someone at the house.

It is particularly galling to have your company act as if they had never heard of us, especially when we find out that the lady at the service center (who set up the appointment booked by the customer service representative) screwed up the appointment time and had an attitude because she sent the people there in the morning while we were being a busy bee at work, instead of in the afternoon while we were home impatiently awaiting their arrival. And especially after we spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone with one of your service representatives in order to arrange for your business service to perform their tasks for a paying customer. Which we, surprisingly enough (cough), will not be, as far as you're concerned, any longer.

This could be one of the problems involved in a business model that consolidates the customer service in one call center, with feeder service centers (who could quite possibly have customer service issues of their own with the call center) providing the end service for the corporate customer - who, not incidentally (unless he's One Of The Three MillionTM*) would be the one paying for the whole shebang. Which, of course, once again will most emphatically not be Your Humble (cough) Narrator. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have just enough time to get a few things taken care of back at work before the nightly backups. Perhaps you can improve your communication skills slightly in future dealings with other customers.

* - being conservative in our figures**, the one percent of the approximately three hundred million Americans out there living in the lap of luxury these days comes out to about three million or so. Maybe that's the top one and a half percent - most would be surprised to find how quickly the amounts drop off. Still, being One Of The Three Million who average close to a million in income does have a few other mega-perks besides not having to worry about trifles like coming up with extra cash for frelling exterminator type service at their humble abodes.

** - yes, it's true. We actually possess quite a few of what might be termed the more conservative (cough) opinions about things like lawyers, guns, and money, to quote a late great soul we were listening to the other day...

Posted by (: Tom :) at August 9, 2005 04:09 PM