After filing a complaint with the FCC and requesting assistance from the National Association of the Deaf, I decided to try and contact someone at Virgin Mobile to let them know what was going on.
I received a quick response:
Ms. Putz,
I have received your email and read your blog. First, I want to apologize for the experience you had last night. Virgin Mobile prides itself on our customer service, but it definitely failed you last night.
I would like to credit your account since you should have never been charged. It appears that good judgment and active listening skills were not used as I would have hoped.
Our Care agents should have helped you immediately and should have waived the fee given the fact your DSL was out of service. I will be working with our Customer Care Center Directors to ensure no one has a similar situation.
Can you please send me the Virgin Mobile cell number that was incorrectly charged?
Again, my apologies for this situation and thank you for bringing it to my attention so I can make the necessary process improvements.
I look forward to your response.
Thanks
Mary
Mary Glodis
Virgin Mobile USA
Customer Care
(908) 607-4841
Kudos to Virgin for taking this seriously and being willing to provide training to their employees about providing accommodations. In another email, Mary stated:
In addition, Virgin Mobile does place a heavy emphasis on ensuring our advisors handle all people – customers and non customers with the utmost respect. I have and will ensure continued training on how to serve customers with disabilities is held in each of our centers. The behavior demonstrated to you will not be tolerated.
Should you have any further issues, please don’t hesitate to contact myself directly.
After experiencing difficulty in activating the phone online (unbelievably, we received a message saying, contact a live advisor!), Mary took it in her own hands and helped to activate the phone this morning. She also issued a $20 credit to the account.
I have to admit that Virgin's prompt response and their willingness to provide training to employees is the reason I didn't drive back to Best Buy and return the phone.
12 comments:
Good job Karen! That is how we should handle situations like that. :)
you nailed it. i would do the same thing. :-)
Oh man, it is from my homestate!! :( Glad that you handled it very well!
I had a problem with Continental Airlines last Thurs night and I was able to solve the problem yesterday. I'll tell you guys about it when I am completely settled with the airline.
Way to go Karen! ;)
Fantastic! So glad to hear it! I hope the FCC still goes after them to really drill home the point though.
It's always nice when a solution is worked out and the hope that more understanding comes from it.
I'm surprised Virgin Mobile did you dirty like that.
I had NO problems with activating my son's phone over the phone. The ten dollar charge didn't even come up in the conversation!
But I'm glad this Mary chick did her job and made sure things went smoothly after she found out.
Tsk tsk.
I'm sorry you had to go through that! :( Handwaves to you for pursuing it and letting them know and to Virgin for resolving the situation so promptly and expressing a commitment not to allow that to happen again. Kudos, Karen. Thank you for sharing.
...moi...
Way to go Karen, you have done a great job educating business to become proactive towards their Deaf customer's needs.
As you may be aware there are a lot of turnovers within the telecommunications industry and training new staff tends to be problematic.
Nevertheless, someone at Virgin Mobile now knows there are Deaf customers who have needs just like everyone without penalizing Deaf people $10.00 to get service with non-hearing-loss people get free service.
Can you file a complaint with the IRS. Internal Revenue Service label is misleading and they should be Extortion Revenue Services. *evil snickers*
Excellent! I think it's great that someone was responsive enough to deal with this themselves... but I'm still bothered by the fact that they probably have thousands of customer service employees who haven't been any better trained than that. I'm glad you still filed with the FCC so they can keep atop making sure that there are changes made in the way they provide service.
Hey Girl...
I am glad you kicked butt and won,, yeaaaaaaaa for you :-D
I am sure that they will NOT make that mistake again,,
You go girl
JODI
Well done!!!
I'm a senior disabled woman in California who's been nailed by VM USA ($160 US charged to my debit card) in a month's time for $34.99 plan. Customer Care insists they can't back out charges because the computer cyle passed, yet they admit I have been improperly charged again and again. They don't seem to care.
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