This morning I got a call of desperation from a friend whose mother is in her 60s but is still very smitten with the Internet for multiple reasons. This morning while trying to log on she kept getting “Invalid Password” messages. Now this was news to her as she has had the same password for the entire two years she has had Netscape as her ISP. Now, I am a bit skeptical anyway of Netscape through Wal-Mart as an ISP…but I digress. The point is that my friend’s mom contacted Netscape and was immediately put through to a customer service agent who barely spoke English, mispronounced her name each time she said it, and offered no real help.

Netscape is, of course, owned by AOL who is infamous for their lack of customer support. Their are forums and chatboards loaded with complaints.

So in the process of this conversation my friends mother was asked for her account number. She was not sure what account and accidentally gave the operator her bank account number which her monthly payment is directly withdrawn from. The customer support agent looked frantically for the account but could find nothing. She never once asked for any other information that might help locate the account in an effort to get the password issue taken care of. So, after about nine minutes of “conversation” the tech support person ended the call……..WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE.

My friend’s mother was left emotionally upset and feeling guilty that she had done something wrong and her account had been cancelled. My friend suggested calling me and we made a 3-way call to get the issue solved. I was appalled at the customer support I heard on the other end of the phone and I asked to speak to management. No better. So, you ask, why does it matter? It matters because these are real people we work with with real feelings and real issues.

This all makes me so much more proud of MinuteFix. We have an awesome team of really solid customer support technicians. Thank you.