When I was living in Los Angeles back in the 1980's I had one local phone service provider (GTE) and an AT&T long-distance/international plan. I noticed that the phone bill from GTE had the AT&T total added in on it, then added sales tax. -Problem is that the AT&T bill already had sales tax added in on it.
So it was double taxation.
I called GTE to ask about it.
GTE said it was AT&T's problem, that they shouldn't be adding tax to it.
I called AT&T to ask about it.
AT&T said they HAVE to charge tax and are required to do so by law, and that GTE shouldn't be charging tax a second time on that portion of the bill, so it's their fault.
This went back and forth for three of four months. To me it was a total of maybe a hundred dollars in excess paid taxes (I made a lot of international calls), but there must have been thousands of people in California getting charged double-tax every month... for years. Perhaps HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars every month; almost certainly millions every year.
Eventually we ended up with a three-way phone conference, with the heads of customer service for both AT&T and GTE on the phone. -Every party on the call agreed that I should not have to pay the amount which I was being billed, everybody agreed that there WAS a problem, and yet there was apparently no way to resolve it: -Both phone companies insisted that the OTHER company was causing the problem, and neither could correct or adjust my bill, since this was taxation, and there was no provision for ANY kind of "discretionary adjustment" where taxation is concerned... -such an idea was horrifyingly close to fraud, apparently.
The laughable thing was that every service representative answered the phone with the same speech: "Hello, my name is [insert name here] and it's my goal to give you excellent service today, how may I help you?". They also ended every call with "Thank you for calling, and was I able to provide you with excellent service today?". -When the answer was "no", they then had to ask why, and fill out a report on why the customer wasn't satisfied. -Of course, my story was that I can't really describe the inability to resolve a billing error which nobody disputes as "excellent". It doesn't "excel" in any manner whatsoever. It doesn't even make me happy. It is therefore not "excellent". After taking the details, the irritating thing was that they then had to wind up the call once again, with the speech: "Thank you for calling, and was I able to provide you with excellent service today?". -Of course, I'd say "not really" again, and on more than one occasion, the process began a second time...
Finally I left California.
I couldn't stand the "excellent service" any more.
And this was probably before Pucho was born! -I doubt that bad customer service is a particularly new invention. :wink:
Keith