It sounds like a bad joke...

Apologies to those on my f-list who are members of customers_suck and therefore have already seen this. (BTW, it's an amazing community and I do recommend it). I'm borrowing deliriumdriver's Bold-o-Vision, with the addition of italics for snarky side-comments.

Woman decides to get her college-aged son a debit card, on the belief that this will teach him to 'manage his finances'. She feels that "when he [runs] out of money, the ATM [will] tell him 'No, you'll just have to wait until next month'." (Why an ATM would drive this lesson home harder than a plain old empty wallet is left unexplained.)

Woman does no research and gets her son a debit card that has 'overdraft protection'; overdrafts are honored, and the overdrafter is charged a fee for the service. Woman claims that this was not made clear to her. (I doubt it. Banks that offer this service generally ADVERTISE it; my bank has it and it actually gives me a feeling of security that if I am in an absolute emergency and don't have money, I can use my debit card and then pay the fee later.)

Woman's son pays no attention to his finances, takes money out of an ATM that he does not actually have in his account, and gets charged an overdraft fee.

Wait for it...woman gets angry AT THE BANK, goes and rants to the bank manager, and gets the fee reversed.

My feelings, on hearing the above scenario, was something along the lines of "If they really didn't notify her of the feature, then she's right to be upset, although I still hope she was polite about it....but if she was notified of this feature and just didn't pay enough attention, well, let's just say I feel bad for that manager."

The editors at Good Housekeeping magazine feel differently. Apparently their reaction was, "This woman is a genius! Let's write a whole article about how you can make a fuss and cause headaches for all the customer service people you deal with and how that will save you money!"

Another tactic recommended by Good Housekeeping is to act out public displays of emotion and argue [your] way out of fees by gradually rais[ing] your voice until you get what you want. I kid you not; read an excerpt here or see a scan of the whole thing here. In my world, such behavior is called acting like a two-year-old and is to be strongly discouraged, not recommended.

There are certainly times where a company is in the wrong, and in those situations I firmly believe that one should be determined and assertive in getting one's issue resolved. However, I also firmly believe that there is really NO situation in which it is appropriate to act like a spoiled child.

(And, as one insightful commenter on customers_suck pointed out, "These suggestions stem from a conviction that workers who interact with the public are simple extensions of their place of employment rather than real people. Nothing could be further from the truth.")

By the by, this got brought to the attention of customers_suck because one woman read it and decided to try the standing-there-and-yelling-until-you-get-your-way tactic on a customers_suck member to get out of paying STATE SALES TAX on a purchase. Strangely enough, it didn't work.



And now to cheer me up...MEME!

Based on the lj interests lists of those who share my more unusual interests, the interests suggestion meme thinks I might be interested in
1. shinshi doumei cross score: 9
2. subaru/kamui score: 8
3. seishirou/subaru score: 7
4. classical liberalism score: 7
5. kurogane score: 7
6. fai score: 6
7. godchild score: 6
8. lovely complex score: 6
9. victor davis hanson score: 6
10. dennis prager score: 6
11. syaoran/sakura score: 6
12. nero wolfe score: 6
13. kurogane/fai score: 5
14. florence king score: 5
15. sugar sugar rune score: 5
16. mount allison university score: 5
17. anime boston score: 5
18. pretty guardian sailor moon score: 5
19. maladicta score: 5
20. kobato score: 5

Type your username here to find out what interests it suggests for you.
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changed by ouwiyaru based on code by ixwin
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