"Crank" call

Got a call from the phone company.. it was to remind us to pay for our land-line bill that is going to be due 5 days LATER... A lady was "kind enough" to remind us to pay before the dateline so as not to have our line terminated on that VERY (due) date itself!! Wow, I didn't realize that the company has become THAT efficient..

To me, this is NOT good customer service, but yet another case of wastefulness that is so prevalent in this country. These companies have no clue whatsoever on what constitute good customer relationships. You don't piss your subscribers off by treating everyone of them as a potential debtor. And you definitely do NOT threaten your customers with service termination! Unless of course, you are a monopoly that is backed by the government..

Good customer services is one where complaints are attended to immediately and down-times are reduced to near-zero. If the services are good, consumers are more than willing to pay the bills promptly. Unfortunately, this company does not get it. It is a company where we even had to pay MYR$1 for every call we make to their service hotlines to tell them about THEIR service outages! We will be charged even if the call doesn't get through!! And don't even get me started on their service "reliability", which is a big joke! My internet connection drops EVERY TIME a storm approaches or when it rains! how's that for "service quality"!?!?

The point is that we have been paying our bills promptly.. and even if we did miss a payment or two (which we didn't), we should be given a grace period (of a month or so) to pay up.. The usual "three strikes and you are out"-rule should apply. Usually, customers are asked if they require any reminder service(s) and then sign-up for them. Service providers could either provide these reminder service(s) for free as a value-added service or charge a token amount just to cover their cost (if any were incurred).

Instead of having a big group of "reminder-callers" calling every single one of the subscribers, send an email and/or an sms instead. Then have a smaller group of "reminder-callers" call those who had not paid AFTER the due date. Use the money saved to train these "reminder-callers" the PROPER and RIGHT way of doing phone call services. The tone and language used should be neutral and not accusive.

Too bad there is (still) no worthy competitors in my area who could provide alternatives to the incumbent.. Looks like there is no way but to endure such "forced-down-your-throat"-type of customer service.. :x

This is yet another one of the many ludicrous idiosyncrasies of MY.