Bite my butt, IDT

First off, it appears I wont be able to get back to Macon for new years. Sadly, I have school work and I can't come out and play. Stupid homework! School is dumb! Oh wait. Forget I said that last part! The following is my letter to IDT. If you've been following my recent adventures in Long Distance, this is likely my last mention of IDT. I wrote this letter yesterday afternoon. I proofread it twice to remove the cuss words and the blatant threats. I then began to feel that perhaps this letter wasn't in the spirit of the season so I set it aside. Read the prolog for the reason this letter hits the post off in the morning. And yes it is 4 pages long, but in my defense, I was extremely angry at having been jerked around for 6 months. IDT Corporate Office 520 Broad St. Newark, NJ 07102 December 29, 2007 To whom it may concern, Let me first start by saying I used to be a loyal customer of IDT. I became a customer at least five and perhaps as many as ten years ago during the "long distance provider wars." I chose IDT because it was the easiest to deal with and the cheapest at 5¢ per minute. Over the years I remained with IDT even when they were no longer the cheapest because I am a very loyal customer and I had never had any problems with my service. That all changed in July. To me, customer satisfaction is more important than price. It appears that IDT sat down, as a company, and made a list of the many ways you could turn me into an unsatisfied customer, and have been working your way down that list for the past six months. I will try and review some of the issues I have had with IDT over the past few months. Hopefully you can correct these errors to better serve your other customers, but more importantly, I hope you see that your commitment to the Customer Service that you tout repeatedly on your website has failed, miserably. I am choosing to send you this as a letter rather than a phone call or an email because I have lost all confidence that you would actually receive and read my comments. Since you are a Telecommunications company, let me first start with the telecommunications problems: I have spoken to technical support and customer service many times over the past few months. Only once did I speak to someone that I am confident is from the United States. Every other time the person on the phone has had an accent, and often to the point I had difficulty understanding them. While I understand your desire to be a "global" company, you seem to have approached it in the wrong direction. You should have people from the United States dealing with sales and technical support calls from the United States. Let the people from Bangladesh handle the sales and support calls from Bangladesh. This is not an issue of illegal immigration or selling US jobs overseas. This is simply using common sense and deploying your assets where they are most effective. Why bother asking me if I speak Spanish or English at the beginning of the call if you are going to connect me to someone from India anyway? Lastly, having the phone support personnel use "Americanized" names does not "put me at ease" as it is intended. It insults me that you believe I cannot tell the person I am talking to is from another country. When they tell me "My name is John" in an Indian accent then the phone call has just started off with a lie. Trust is essential in any business relationship. In this area, you have faltered quite a bit as well. When I call the phone number for IDT I am presented with various "Phone Tree" options. I fully expect this with any real telecommunications company. However, when I choose option 3 that I was just told would give me my "current rate information" and I am then told that the system does not understand my response, I feel quite certain there is a problem with your phone software. It tells me to press 3, I press 3 and it does not understand. What is there to be confused about? When I am told I can speak to someone by pressing 0 or waiting on the line, I expect if I wait I will eventually speak to a person. Your system just keeps looping thru the options forever. Unless I physically push 0 I will never get anywhere. Your website has so many problems I am not sure where to begin. It repeatedly tells me I can click in certain places to email someone for help. I have yet to have anything actually open an email. Many of the links on your website are broken or take me to places I never intended to go. It is not user friendly at all and only serves to waste my time, and further frustrate me. Lastly, the letter I received dated December 25th, 2007 welcoming me to IDT has many errors in it. I’ll get back to the reason I am getting a "Welcome" letter after having been a customer for years in a moment. To start with, the letter proudly tells me I will be getting 10¢ per minute. I have never gotten 10¢ per minute and frankly would have never joined IDT if I did. Calling cards from the local Quick Mart are cheaper than that. I have always had 5¢ per minute. I signed up for 5¢ per minute. Your web site does not show anywhere that you even have a 10¢ per minute rate. I can only assume this is a typo. The next two lines tell me that I have "Options Available" for In-State Long Distance as well as Regional Toll Calls. I know I had options available and I chose my options when I signed up for IDT. Have you already forgotten the selections I made when I signed up for your service? The end of the first paragraph of the letter tells me of the benefits of IDT Long Distance Calling Cards. The paragraph ends as follows: "If you have requested your Calling Cards, they will be arriving shortly. Your Calling Card PIN number will follow in a separate mailing. This only applies to local." The last sentence left me confused. What only applies to local? What does it mean when something only applies to local? I suspect your sentence is missing a lot of words and since this letter serves as my description of IDT policies and services I would love to know what other portions of this letter are missing. In the third paragraph of the letter, describing the IDT Account Center we find the following sentence: "We encourage your to enroll in the Online Account Center." It appears to me that the writer was torn between the sentences "We encourage your enrollment..." and "We encourage you to enroll..." Unable to decide which sounded best they chose to combine the two. In the second paragraph of fine print at the bottom describing how IDT will not accept checks from a Credit Union, we find the sentence "If this applies, us your Credit Union debit card..." Obviously you meant to use the word "use" instead of "us." Oddly enough my word processor picked up both of these errors immediately. Perhaps it would be worthwhile for your company to review your software arrangement. I can only assume that in addition to sending your telephone support jobs overseas to be handled by people who barely speak English that you have also sent your letter writing jobs overseas as well. Since these letters serve as a representation of IDT, which is essentially a "faceless company," I suggest you invest in better proofreaders before sending out letters to new customers. Now that we are past the general problems I have found with your company, let me address the problems that personally led me to decide to take my business elsewhere. While a customer of IDT in Macon, Georgia, I moved 2 or 3 times while keeping the same phone number. This was never an issue as changing my address with IDT was painless. However in July of this year I moved to Wilmington, NC and changed phone numbers. This is when it became clear to me that IDT has unresolved customer support issues. I knew months in advance that I would be moving on July 15th. In an effort to make a smooth transition, I started arranging for my utilities to be transferred, turned off, and/or turned on. I also started submitting changes of addresses to all my billers. Out of all of these only IDT proved to be a problem. I am still not 100% sure that IDT has my current address. In late June, once I knew what my phone number would be I attempted to get IDT set up on my new phone in Wilmington by July 15th and turned off on my phone in Macon after July 14th. I tried to handle this transaction over the phone as the web site provided nothing remotely similar to what I was trying to do. The "help" section of the web site was of no help. Sadly, the person dealing with my call (who did not speak clear English) was of no help either. It was obvious from the accents and shouting in the background that he was sitting in a telemarketing sweatshop in another country. After explaining several times what I was trying to do, I was told that it was basically "impossible" to do what I was asking. There was no way to set up long distance on a phone more than 2 weeks in advance (it was roughly 16 days in advance). I was told to call back. While playing telephone run around I found time to fill out several customer service surveys on the web site. Thankfully that is one of the few things I found that DID work on the website at the time. Though there were several questions that did not apply to me yet I was forced to give an answer anyway. My responses got me 2 or 3 emails from various people apologizing for my trouble, offering suggestions, and giving me free months of IDT. Offering to "buy me off" with free service insults me and makes your company look cheap. Rather than trying to buy me for what amounts to $3.95, why not invest that money in customer service representatives who can actually help your customers? Rather than spending time typing up emails to apologize for incompetence and try and pay me to forget it, why not instead fix the problem? You cannot BUY customer satisfaction, at least not from customers who have any self respect. You must EARN customer satisfaction, and that seems to be where IDT has fallen apart. When I arrived in Wilmington, my phone service was already working, along with all of my other utilities. This was because I had arranged for all my of utilities to transition smoothly. Much to my surprise, I had long distance as well. Since I had heard nothing from IDT, I assumed they had somehow worked out the kinks in their system and figured out how to do "the impossible" and get me long distance service. I did not get a bill from IDT for July or August despite my making long distance calls. I figured perhaps they were still being delivered to my old address. When I still did not get a bill in September, October, or November I figured IDT was still quite screwed up and would eventually find me when they were ready to do business with me again. From what I have been able to reconstruct, IDT turned off my long distance on December 7th. I can only assume it is a coincidence that this surprise attack on me coincides with the date of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, dragging the US into WWII. Since my long distance was disconnected, I have spoken to many people at IDT, only one of which spoke clear English, Mr. Chuck Stanley. The finger pointing and blaming that I have gotten from IDT is downright shameful. IDT has blamed my current local provider, my old local provider, as well as me. I fail to see how it can be anyone’s fault but IDT when I call your phone support and it clearly tells me that you disconnected me on December 7th. Prior to that, I had long distance. Everything "worked" prior to December 7th. It was IDT that disconnected me, so the blame for my current situation falls completely on IDT. Had you or my local provider ever bothered to contact me by phone, letter, or email about any problems or concerns, then perhaps this could have been avoided. Again, it seems your customer service lacks initiative, competence, and tact. For a "communications" company you seem to have a great deal of trouble communicating. During one call on December 13th I felt I had made progress when I finally got passed along to a "3rd party verifier." After sitting on the phone at work listening to dead silence for 5 or 10 minutes, I hung up and got back to my job. When I arrived home I had calls from IDT asking me to call back. On December 14th I called back and finally got through the 3rd party verification. I was told I would have long distance set up in 2 or 3 business days. I then went out of town for roughly 11 days for the holidays. Upon my return, I discovered that I still did not have long distance. On December 23rd or 24th I was again on the phone with Chuck Stanley who again put me through to "3rd party verification." I was again told it would be 2 or 3 business days. It is now December 29th. It has been 6 months since I started trying to move my long distance. It has been 5 months since I moved. It has been over 3 weeks since you disconnected my long distance. It has been 2 weeks since the first time I was told I would have service in 2 to 3 business days. It has been 5 days since the second time I was told it would be 2 or 3 business days. I still do not have long distance service. In my most recent contact with "Jackie" (probably not her real name) from customer service I was told that I must now call my local provider and give them an "access code" to set IDT as my long distance provider. I will do no such thing. I have made enough calls and done entirely too much work to try and move the process along. What should have been the simplest of transaction has turned into a 6 month long comedy of incompetence on your part. If YOU cannot fix the problem that YOU created, then YOU are no longer of any use to me. I have been trying for months to pay you money to provide me with long distance service. That is not an unreasonable request since you are, supposedly, a Long Distance Service Provider. However, it appears you are either unwilling or unable to make that happen, so I will now go find a company who does want to do business with me. --Signed-- P.S. Please do not insult me with any further offers to "buy" me back. I have more self respect than to continue to do business with a misfit organization like IDT. After lunch yesterday, I decided to try a long distance call just for fun and was shocked that it went through. So apparently "Jackie" lied to me. I did not have to call anyone or give any "access code" to get long distance set up. That's at least strike 5 or 6 for IDT. Then to make this into an even more hilarious turn of events, I chose my new long distance provider and got my long distance service up and running in 23 minutes, on a Saturday. I did it all online and never had to speak to a human one time.