Don’t get me wrong, all is not forgiven but at least someone is finally paying attention. The face I had to bad mouth the company in a public forum to finally get a response hasn’t escaped my notice either.

I discovered Zipcar when I first moved to SF. For those not in the know, the concept is simple. Instead of having to rent a car by the day or week, you rent by the hour. Your hourly rate includes the cost of the car, insurance, and gas. The process is also very simple. With registration, you get a card with a digital chip in it. You log online via the web or various mobile apps, sign up for an available car of your choice, show up, slide your card over the scanner, start the car and drive away.  Great idea right? It used to be.

Zipcar started out as a bright, fun, spunky little company with a novel approach to renting cars. A niche market for sure, but in a city as dense as SF one would think there is virtually no way to fail.

Where do I start with my frustration? I don’t know if its because they’ve grown too big or just plain greedy. Either way, this fun little company is ranking one step below AT&T for all time worst customer service right now in my mind. Oh yeah, you begin to feel my pain.

It all started about 2 years ago with a car that had a flat tire. I didn’t notice the flat until I hopped in the car to drive away. I made it less than a block, turned around, drove back to the spot and notified the company. Imagine my surprise when 2 weeks later I got a bill for the repair. I called, got a credit, and went on my merry way. A month later I find a suspicious charge on my bank statement. Turns out I got re-billed for the flat. Even though I went out of my way to help, because I physically drove the car before noticing the flat I got tagged with the bill. As disappointing it was, I accepted my part in the process and ate the cost. I figured one hiccup along the way was acceptable.

Sadly, things have gone from bad to worse. I’ve experienced so much frustration since then I’ve lost all faith in the company. Granted, no business model is perfect and one that depends as much on its customers as it does its employees is bound to have problems. I totally understand that. But when I do have problems, the outright lack of concern and open disdain from the employees is not acceptable. More often than not, the line employees seem more intent on putting me in my place and citing policy vs actually listening. Out of the last 10 reservations, 4 have gone smoothly.

Today, I show up to pick up my car and its not their.¹ My time slot arrives, still no car. I call in to find out what’s going on. I’m already feeling annoying expecting the worst. The rep couldn’t find the car or a previous reservation. After some digging he discovers the car was taken out of service for repair and returned. Apparently not as the car is missing. After some more searching with no luck, he offers to move my reservation. Keep in mind my start time has already come and gone. He ends up moving me to another car 4 blocks away. To be fair, he did adjust my slot and gave me an hour credit. However, at this point neither of which was any consolation. I’m just plain tired of crappy to non-existent service.

I show up at the new location to find my 2nd car parked and ready. While I’m picking it up, I notice the car I was supposed to have is parked 2 slots away. Stupid me, I was considerate enough to call back and let them know where the first car was. The 2nd rep didn’t seem to comprehend. Mind you, I am pretty angry at this point and I’m being none too polite. Her stupidity only made it worse. I finally got her to understand what I was saying or at least I thought I did. As I’m preparing to end the call, she says, “ok sir, I have changed her reservation and your new drop off time is all set.”

Excuse me? No ma’am. One, I was already in my new reservation so she was flat out lying to me. Two, my slot was already adjusted so double whammy. I finally lose my temper, let loose a string of obscenities about her stupidity and hung up. I’d had it.

I’m at the point now where I’d dump them all together if there was a easier alternative.² City Car share has a footprint here but they are much smaller and don’t anywhere near the number of cars or pickup spots.

Customer service is a dying art in most companies these days and to see a company with so much potential fall so far in such a short period of time is extremely disappointing.

1. If the car isn’t in use you can pick it up up to 14 minutes early with no extra charge.
2. Of course, if they keep this up, someone better will eventually replace them.

I sent the Apple guy flowers yesterday. Besides the obvious, he got some very sad news and I wanted to put a smile on his face. It might be old-fashioned but I think sending flowers is a very sweet and meaningful gesture.¹ Anyway, I had never used 1800flowers.com before, they were top of the search list for online ordering so I decided to give’em a whirl.

My choice was a small medley of simple but pretty flowers along with a small teddy bear and chocolates; totally the right choice in my mind. They arrived no problem and he seemed to enjoy them.

However, he happened to post a pic online and I was irritated to all hell. Not only was it NOT what I sent, the flowers were already wilting and droopy. No no no, no ma’am, no siree bob, uh-uh, no-no . . .  I fired off a short but direct and honest email to the company.² Being in a customer service oriented industry, I did try to balance my disappointment with constructive feedback. Just being nasty and making threats rarely works. I don’t think it is unreasonable to have an expectation of services promised and feel it is important for consumers to hold companies accountable for shitty service.

To my surprise, they sent him a 2nd round of flowers totally free of charge before they responded to my complaint. I actually had no idea until he texted me at work about the 2nd delivery. I logged into my email³ and sure enough there was an email apology, the notice of the 2nd delivery, and a $20 gift certificate!  Sure enough, the 2nd pic posted was much more in line with what I had originally ordered. Not only that, they were fresh!

You could have sold me for a quarter and got change back I was so surprised! A corporate entity actually went out of its way to make their customer happy! What a ducky idea! lol Seriously though, I was very pleased, as was the Apple guy to get 2 deliveries of flowers! And yes, I will give them another try in the future.

1. As my luck would have it, so did he.
2. I honestly didn’t expect them to do anything but I wanted them to know how displeased I was.
3. I don’t load my junk email account on my PDA

Knowing I love t-shirts, one of my twitter buddies referred me to a site that specializes in cheap but unique shirts. Sounds good right? I hopped over to 6dollarshirts.com and true enough they offered a great selection of not so common t-shirts at a great price.¹

I found a shirt I liked and placed my order. Got a confirmation the very next day that my ‘order had been processed’. I’m like, ‘damn skippy, that was fast’.  I then proceed to wait, wait, and then wait some more. After 2 weeks I sent a short request for an update and got this vague reply.

Hello,

6DollarShirts customer service is extremely backed up right now due to staffing issues. We are working our hardest to answer emails as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we ask for your patience until we get this resolved. We are printing shirts overtime right now and orders are shipping a few days behind schedule . If the matter is extremely urgent, please call us at 352.371.6536.

Thank You,

6DollarShirts.com

My first annoyance, this was clearly a canned response which had no real connection to my order/request. Then I remembered my order was supposed to have already been processed. Now, not only am I feeling annoyed but lied to as well. Needless to say, I was not pleased. Needing to vent, I made a quick bitchy-blurb on twitter. To my surprise, I got a follow up comment thru twitter from the company. I’m thinking, ‘ok, maybe they really are trying’. Lo and behold I find an email in my inbox the very next morning with confirmation of shipment (again).

At this point, I’m somewhat mollified thinking my order is on the way. Sadly, I go on to wait, wait, and wait some more, yet again. I send a 2nd follow up email, to which I got no reply at all. Finally today, a full month to the day, I got my order in the mail. To be fair, the shirt (left) was designed as promised and was overall the product I ordered.

Any excitement I had over getting the item was completely overshadowed by the underhanded business practice used to get a quick sale on a product. Not only that, they made no real attempt to help me as a customer, no apology, no expedited shipping, nothing. No surprise, I doubt I’ll ever spend money on said company again, regardless of how cheap their shirts are.

On a related note, it seems this practice is becoming more and more common every day. There is virtually no concern for real customer service anymore at all. Basically, greed has taken over and everything else is secondary to most companies.

Here’s a clue to all you up and coming ‘entrepreneurs’ out there. People actually don’t mind paying a reasonable price for quality AND service. I’d even argue most people would be willing to pay a little more for exceptional levels of both.

Lesson learned. I guess you really do get what you pay for.

/rant

1. Actually, the shirts were so cheap, the shipping was more than the shirt.