Customer service woes

This post, in which James Lileks mentions en passant a call to DirectTV "just to let them know that my grim struggle with satisfaction continued," had me crying bitter tears. Lileks goes on: "I explained that I just wanted them to enter in my interminable record this instance of low-grade misery, in case I should want to cancel my contract some day, ‘k?" Mr. Lileks is under the mistaken impression that someone over in customer serviceland keeps a running list of his complaints.

That has not been my experience.

I remember a series of incidents with Dell in which my son's new computer was acting in rather a dodgy manner. In the first call we established that yes, the computer was plugged in and turned on. Then we were instructed to reboot and call back. Fifteen minutes later we did, only to have to retell the story from the beginning. Again we were told to perform some function and call back. We did so. Again a tabula rasa. This went on for a number of days until finally someone allowed as to how Dell would replace the computer and the incident was closed.

Another instance, this time with Dish TV, concerned a long weekend of calls back and forth running tests on the satellite, repositioning it, etc. Each time we had to recount how when we pivoted to the left we got the country music station, while a walk over to the laundry room produced the Lifetime Movie Channel and sitting on the couch gave us nothing but snow. Each time we were instructed, in the same order, to perform test A, B and C, only to have to plead that we had performed A, B and C at the behest of customer service rep A, B and C and didn't you folks take this down the first, second or third time we called? It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. After all we hear them furiously typing away as we dutifully give them our account number, our model number and our blood type.

Much has been made recently of customer service jobs being outsourced overseas. I must say this issue fails to grip. I don't care if the person to whom I'm speaking in in Mumbai, or Kansas, or the apartment next door. But would it be too much to ask that Mr. Patel, or Ms. Schnable hit the save button after we have laid out our tale of woe?

Or are they just playing solitaire?