Customer Service failures 2011

" Quality is when the customer returns, not the product". A key by-product of quality is good customer service. Unfortunately customer service seems to be perceived as "cost centre" rather than "customer retention", so it is often questionable. Here are my favourite 2011 failures:

• A Telco, that requires to call them when you lost your phone - but has all other transactions online and needs a week to reply to a cancel request eMail
• A device maker who sends eMails replies on service requests that bounce back when one replies and has no other means indicated how to continue a conversation
• A bank that uses easy to come by information to authenticate on their rewards website (but uses mandatory tokens for eBanking - so they actually know about security). On top the checkout process is all mangled up.
  Update: To add insult to injury they claimed in an email today: "We wish to assure you that it is safe to use {the easy to obtain data} for the redemption of DBS points." Someone confuses "secure" with "recoverable".
• A public utility that can't hold its water and goes into denial
• A Telco's mobile shop that requires flash and doesn't work in the latest Chrome release
• A money printer where published contact eMails don't work
• An airline who verschlimmbessert their web presence and jumped onto the bad habit to try to charge for "premium seat" when checking in online (their presence service, when you talk or interact with people on the other hand is pleasant and outstanding!)
• A Fibre Network provider, that has installed in December a fibre endpoint next to the lift on my flat's floor but tells me it will take until April or June before I can have fibre internet
• Another bank, that offers to upgrade a credit card and then cancels the old one before the new arrives, removes all electronic statements and can electronically only be contacted by eMail and not the eBanking site

Next stop: who got it right.