The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

If you're like most people, at some point in your life you've had a miserable customer service job. You know, the kind of thankless retail, telephone sales, or hospitality gig which basically guarantees that someone is going to yell at you about scrapbooking paper costing $0.08 instead of $0.06, as was advertised in the weekly flyer (AC Moore, personal experience). Or the fact that there is no black tea at breakfast for the second morning in a row (Elderhostel trip leader, personal experience). Or any number of silly things.

Well guess what. You can do it too!

This is not to suggest that you should be a totally unreasonable b*tch. I hope you've learned some humility over the years in those crappy customer service jobs. This is simply to say, stick up for yourself. And if you feel like you've been legitimitely wronged over $0.02 of scrapbooking paper or something much bigger, let the company know. Any decent business will want to make their customer happy. A happy customer is a repeat customer. And an unhappy customer is often a very mean blogger.

Let me give you an example. I recently booked a flight through vayama.com under the impression that I was going to get $25 off the total upon check-out, thanks to a Memorial Day sale on international flights. When I looked at my credit card statement, it hadn't happened. I went through two telephone customer service reps who both gave me different answers (15 minutes on hold in one case), two emails to customer service where the respondant obviously hadn't read my original email and blew me off, and finally one triumphant email to feedback@vayama.com. And thank you to Jessica S! Success! I will be getting that $25 credited to my visa in 7 - 10 business days. No, it's not a lot of money, but it is the principal of the thing.

Whether your entree showed up cold at a restaurant or your credit card was charged the wrong amount, don't take it sitting down. Here are some tips to get the refund, or at least the apology, you deserve.

• Don't give up. If you don't like the answer you get from one person, call back and try someone else or ask for a manager. Try to find a person's direct e-mail addresses rather than info@company.com or customerservice@company.com
• Get people's names. It makes them accountable for what they tell you (I confess, in previous jobs I've lied to people on the phone to appease them). It also helps if you have to bring your problem to a manager.
• Leverage whatever you can. I was complaining to a travel company, so I used my work email address and mentioned that I could potentially send many future guests through vayama.com if they made me happy. It worked.

And after all that, even though dealing with their customer service was a pain, I want to give a shout out to Vayama anyway. This site may actually be better than kayak.com for finding international flights. They are hooked up to the same databases that travel agents use, which means that they can find you a flight on KLM one way, and on Kenya Airways on the return, all for a very reasonable round-trip price. Someday I'll do a full comparison of Vayama, Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and their various pros/cons. But not today. I'm going to AFRICA on a ticket I bought through Vayama and I need to pack!