Customer Loyalty Needs To Mean Something

Writing by Kate Dickman on Monday, 7 of July , 2008 at 12:06 pm

I converse frequently with several people in South Africa and these calls are important. With my being in the United States, it can be a bit costly. However last year I discovered a seemingly great site - www.SpeakPrePaid.com. I had bought a card roughly every week from them and was loyal to their site despite there being several other calling card sites that I could have purchased cards from. To date, I’ve spent over $800 with this company so I’d consider myself quite loyal to their company.

A few months ago I purchased a card and to my dismay the pin was expired. I wrote to them and they promptly wrote back giving me a new pin. Days later it happened again with two cards I purchased. I then wrote to them and received no response back. As someone who needs to call out with these cards, every day that passed without a response back was NOT good. These
calls were important and I felt that the money I had spent shouldn’t go to waste so I waited patiently again. One day out of desperation I bought one more card and there was an error on the page — this time the order went through only I received no card number! I wrote AGAIN - No answer. I wrote back roughly three times before I finally got a response. It wasn’t until I wrote that I may file something with the Better Business Bureau that someone responded.

They claimed that their customer service had been down (or something of the sort) for the past few weeks and that they would promptly issue a refund. I thanked them and looked at my Bank Account for the $30 that was owed to me. I waited, and waited and nothing. I wrote to them two times after that and still no response. On another note - from a business standpoint…what is a business like this doing without a customer service number? Granted if you are too small and cannot afford a 24 hour service
line, that is fine but at least have some sort of toll free number that is open a few hours a day. To have to contact this company via email and only email is utterly ridiculous.

To say you’re going to clear it up and not follow through with rectifying the situation makes matters even worse! I am disgusted that as a loyal customer to this company that they are this disorganized and careless in their response. I know it’s “just $30? but come on now. It’s more the principal than anything else. I have given up with contacting them and whether or not their customer service is going through some “issues”…having these “issues” for months on end is absolutely unacceptable. When you say you’re going to do something…follow through. With a recession teetering, customer satisfaction is more important than ever. If you can go the extra mile to please your customers, they will be more apt to spread the word about your services (which I have about this site in the past) and use you more frequently. People are reluctant to spend their money these days so
keeping your recurring customers is VITAL to the success of your business.

In terms of reputation management, a company must keep on top of the ball because bad reports mean bad business. One bad mark and it can stay on your search engine report card forever. It’s a blemish in what could have been a perfectly untarnished record. You must always be conversing with your customers keeping them pleased as they can use social media (such as
my blogging about it right now) or review sites and tear your company to shreds. I will say…I would never write a bad write up about a company unless they truly deserve it. In this case, they certainly do. Needless to say - I will be writing the report and never using them again.

BUYER BEWARE - www.SpeakPrepaid.com - you may not get your calling card OR your money back.

                      Category: Social Blogging                      

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