I'm free!

Freedom!

    I'm free of the shackles of ****, free from their horrible customer service, free from their policies, procedures and bull that make it a pain to be their customer. I can finally take my business elsewhere! Recently I called **** to cancel my contract. I wasn't the original account holder, but my wife had added me on to the account. The agent who tried to "help" me out couldn't because **** has a whole second level of account authorization that they had not done when my wife added me. Why? Why make it hard for your customers?
    I noticed something odd while waiting for the customer support agent. I had to wait. And wait. What tool could this agent be possibly using that would take minutes to do simple database query? Why was I on hold so long while they checked things? Can't a telecommunications giant afford decent computers and inter/intranet connections for its customer service support staff?
   I visited a **** store one day a while back to cancel my account, and at the store they could not help me, pointed me to a nearby phone to call customer support. What kind of slack witted morons decided that that was a good policy? Why the hell would you do that to a customer who has walked through your doors? Let your employees actually help the customers.
    The day I actually managed to cancel my contract with **** (my fourth attempt at cancelling) the agent I spoke to had to put me through to a different department to do the cancellation. WHY? What goat brained fool thought that was a good plan? Again: Let your employees actually help the customers. The second agent I spoke to that day got my call dumped on their lap without an introduction or the proper warm transfer that should happen if for some reason one phone agent needs to transfer you to a different department. This second agent had the horrible job of trying to keep me as a customer ... and the first agent hadn't even introduced me. I had to do that, and explain what I wanted all over again which wasted even more of my time and made me more upset. *HEADDESK*

WTF eh?

Suppose you are a company that sells widgets. Now suppose you make it a huge hassle and pain in the ass for customers trying to buy those widgets. Do you think that you will retain those customers if there is a competing widget seller? Do you really??