Before I EVEN pressed the first key to write this, it occurred to me that the last thing people may care to read is yet another rant about how dissatisfied someone is with some service. Yet the sheer fact that I had that thought underscores a major problem that we have paticularly in American society: Customer service is crazy dead.

I recently purchased a home as many people do. You know, the American Dream. The home is old — about 100 years old to be exact. It came with a home warranty from American Home Shield (AHS). Shortly after moving in, we discovered that the upstairs A/C unit had stopped working. We called AHS who dispatched a service technician from another state(??). He showed up, diagnosed the problem and said he would order some parts. That was over a month ago.

I could go on and on with the details. I could talk about how nobody from AHS ever returns my phone calls. Nobody from the contractor does either. I could talk about how they can’t locate the parts because they don’t have a tracking number. They do claim to have emailed me a tracking number, although I never got that email. How can I have the number if you yourself don’t have it? How the contractor just called me this morning to tell me that the part was indeed never ordered, or the fact that the wait time when you call in to talk to someone is somewhere between 20 minutes and an hour.

It’s 90 degrees outside today. I have children and a wife and we are all living on window units and open windows. I realize this comes off as “I DESERVE to be comfortable”, which is an asshole assertion to be sure. However, I’m of the opinion that if you pay for something, you should receive what you paid for. That’s kind of how the economy works. Otherwise its just grand theft.

I finally called another company to come out and look at the unit. The estimated cost of repair is roughly $500 less than the cost of a new unit, but the unit needs to be replaced. The unit is older and requires Freon; that fantastic creation of the DuPont company — which you may recall was deemed not terribly environmentally friendly. That means parts for these older units are VERY hard to find. AHS should have replaced the unit, but in the interest of saving $500, they are going to just let me sit for as long as it takes them to get parts. Customer be damned. It’s all about that $500.

If you do a quick Google search, you can see that AHS has left its mark on its unsuspecting customers.

Keep in mind that this is a company with an A+ BBB rating. What’s even worse is that you have nowhere to contact them outside of their standard call line. You can’t speak with a supervisor. According to AHS, they have to “submit a request in writing to have a supervisor call you back”. I may have mentioned that they do not call you back.

AHS itself itself owned by Service Master, which owns a lot of other service based companies. There is no way to contact Service Master. I had to do a LOT of searching to find the number for the corporate office. A rather elderly woman answered the phone. She had a very hard time hearing me and eventually transfered me back to AHS while I was still talking.

The internet is littered with customer service nightmare stories. One of the best write-ups is by DHH on American Airlines. It’s epic and far better than this one.

What Are We Going To Do?

This is problem folks. If we are going to take people’s money and then not render the agreed upon service, we are teetering on the brink of robbery. Yes, buyer beware, but what do you do when the agency is accredited by our best business tracking organizations?

It’s hot outside and hotter inside and I’m sweaty and pissed. I could pay for a legit company to come out and replace the unit, but then AHS just gets away with taking $300 from yet another customer on which they never have to deliver anything. If I give in now, I’m only giving them what I’m assuming they eventually want.

BTW — I looked up who the CEO for AHS is. His name is John Krenicki and all I learned about him is that he’s making 89K a month from GE to do nothing. But BURKE- how much this guy makes has nothing to do with your Air Conditioning! I know, but it still really pisses me off.

Banner image: “aafad 167/365 call centre-kun” by lamont_cranston