The Perils of Punditry

When is the last time you heard someone crow about their mobile carrier? More often than not you’ll hear them complaining instead. They complain more often than not about how difficult it is to interact with these companies, rather than the cost of a mobile plan.

For example, in spite of the fact that I have a Verizon account, I don’t want to handle my interactions with them via my phone. The quality of call center personnel is always hit or miss, and frankly I’d rather just be able to look up my question on line and not waste time speaking with someone.

The other day I tried to find out my contract expiration date. I jumped through several hoops to get signed up with a My Verizon account, which they continually push customers to do. “Great,” I thought. “They’ll certainly have that basic piece of information available in My Verizon.”

Wrong.

I understand the reasoning. Why would they give me access to that information, when the odds are high that I’m only going to use that info to make a decision about whether to switch to another carrier now or at some point in the future? It’s 20th century business thinking at its worst.

Annoyed but determined, I used their email form to ask the question. Lo and behold, it’s actually a commonly asked question! So common, in fact, that it’s a menu selection in the email form. Who would have imagined? Gee, it’s almost like they want to make it more difficult for me to find out this important and rather rudimentary information. 

I’ve heard that other carriers do the same thing, and I’m not surprised. Contempt for customers seems to be a common theme in the telecom industry. Perhaps it is part of their conventional wisdom, which implicitly treats customers as rodents to be caught, caged, and placed in a Habitrail. I assume this approach has worked thus far. But it won’t work forever.

It reminds me of AOL in the 90s (and perhaps now, for all I know). They made you go through countless screens to get to a phone number they made you call in order to terminate your account. At one time AOL was a colossus. Now they’re a limping also-ran, run over by competitors who provided more for less, and listened to their customers.