9.17.2008

Wednesday? Feels like Monday!

Today has been a day. My van had to get some work done on it today and we were going to drop it off last night. Forgot that. It turned this morning into a wild scramble to get out the door, to the dealer and then back to my office so I could be at work on time. Missed it by about ten minutes. It is an incredibly wonderful blessing that Aaron & I both live so close to our jobs. He was still able to get back home, after dropping me off, finish getting Christopher ready for and to school on time, drop something off back at MY office before heading into the shop. At least he wasn't late...

At work, though, I walked into a problem with our alarm system. Seems the phone line is not testing properly because someone, somewhere disconnected our back-up line from the alarm system. Ever have one of those "not my problem" conversations? Phone company - it's not us, our lines are working just ducky. Alarm monitoring company - not us, it's been working flawlessly for two weeks now. So here I sit with a beeping that would make anyone cry after listening to it for four hours that no one will fix AND... we PAY these people. The alarm monitoring company could only worry about who was paying the bill when they sent someone out here to fix it. Repeating that he'd be sending us a bill almost got the guy fired today but I managed to keep cool - relatively - while we were on the phone. While I was waiting for him to return my original call (which he never did, I had to call another number after waiting an hour), I made an appointment with another alarm monitoring company to come out and give us a quote this afternoon.

Whatever has happened to customer service? I work for a company that just spent almost one million dollars, in cash, to buy our office building. My office has never financed a car and we own thirteen of them. We paid over $10,000 for our copier outright. My list could go on but... does that strike you as the kind of company that would struggle to pay a service call bill? What is even worse is that he insinuated on the phone that we would have a problem paying the bill - not because we didn't have the money mind you but because the problem with the alarm wasn't caused by them and we COULD figure out who caused it and get it fixed for free. What I have learned over the years is that's a nice theory but it only works if the person/company who CAUSED the problem actually steps up and takes responsibility.

That brings me to my next query. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I ended up wasting over an hour today between two companies who were pointing fingers at the other because "it's not my fault" was all they could think to say. Forget about putting their heads together to SOLVE the problem because... well... I'm the customer and I PAY them to make sure I don't have these headaches. Nope - it's a shoulder shrugging, "not my fault, it's their fault" tug-of-war instead.

And the alarm continues to beep. If only it weren't illegal to totally disconnect the thing. grrrr!!!!

Oh and since this is only the third day we've been occupying our new office space full-time, I think it's a shame this has to happen. It seems to be marring my "YAY! We're in our new offices" time and that's just sad.

I think I'm going to mess with the pictures I've taken over the last couple of days of the moon. The moon has been absolutely stunning - at 7:15 AM. It's full, it's bright and it's still high in the western sky when I'm leaving for work. I was just plain' lovin' the fact that as I drove into work yesterday morning I was driving with the sun rising behind me and the full moon hanging in front of me looking like it was so close I could reach out and touch it. I really hope the pictures turn out well, it has just been so gloriously beautiful.

Hopefully I'll get to them tomorrow.

1 comment:

eph2810 said...

You are right, Bonnie. No one, not even service companies, like to give you customer service anymore. It really got bad over the last couple of years. The only thing that I try to remind myself is that I need to stay calm (as much as possible), because otherwise it could get even worse and you will never get the problem fixed. I hope that you have it all fixed now.

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