Human Element in Customer Service

OK, after going back and forth a few times, I think I am ready to get on the blogging band wagon. For those of you who were directed to this blog from the pholoblogs site, I am moving my photo blog to Taswir. I will be posting there soon.

Yesterday I completed the contract term with my current cell phone provider and decided to get a better deal on one of the deal websites on the internet. Some of these websites do offer good deals with free phones (along with some gadgets) which are free after the mail-in rebate. If you go to the cell phone provider directly you end up paying more and no gadgets and mail-in rebate. It is amazing how much margin the 'authorized resellers' have to be able to offer these deals.
Here's the interesting part. I went to one of the websites (lets call this website 'A') and didn't find the deal which I had seen a few days back (bluetooth head set was free along with the phone), so I got a phone number to call. I asked the lady who answered about the deals which apparently had expired and she asked me to check in a few days. I went to one of the other websites (lets call this website 'B')and found the deal I was looking for, when I called to book the order the lady who answered had the same name as the lady before (from site 'A'). I asked her if she was the one who I had talked to before but she said no. Anyway I went ahead and ordered confirming that I was going to get the bluetooth head set free. She even said that the car charger was free !. So I go to sleep dreaming about the new phone and the bluetooth head set. Next day I see a order confirmation mail and when I looked at it carefully I noticed that this mail was from website 'A' and not the website 'B' and of course the order was for the deal which I didn't want in the first place. So my guess was right it was the lady which I had talked to earlier and apparently the call center may be serving the orders for both the websites A and B and this lady screwed up the order.

Now I can't call the number where I placed the order because they only take new orders and I need to call the other customer service number which was in the confirmation mail. So I call and this time I heard a familiar ascent, the call was being answered by a call center in India :). After telling this guy the whole story he said that he had no clue why this might have happened and after talking to his supervisor and calling the same number where I had ordered I realized that the best option was to cancel the order. The cancellation went pretty smoothly. I then went to website 'B' and placed the order directly from the website (no calling), and right now the order is shipping and I should have the new phone and the headset tomorrow :). Too much for the "Human Element" in customer service ! The machines are doing a great job.

Will post about the new phone soon.