This One Went SOUR - Sorry, But Anti-Freebie Friday
...or is it?
This week, I intended to tell you about the voice mail / fax service that I use. I actually use their Pro version, but there is a free trial and even a free version that allows you to send and receive faxes at no charge.
(By the way, sorry this Freebie Friday is so late...I was debating whether or not to share it at all. Well, I decided to and as I write this sentence, it's still 11:08 PM PST, so I've still got time!)
I’ve been a client of eFax.com for about a year and a half. It's been a great option for a voicemail/fax service that runs completely online...until I ran into a snag.Before I mention the snag, I'll tell you a bit about how I use the service and you can make your own decisions:
- When I receive a voicemail, my VA (virtual assistant) receives a downloadable file to listen. No need to pick up a phone to listen to message, just CLICK. She tells me what I need to act on or takes care of the rest.
- I received faxes and can send them out (well, I started to once I figured out that mysterious scanner that was in my office for several years).
- If want my VA to send faxes, it's so simple to ask her to do it...right from my very own fax number even though she lives in Tennesse and I'm in British Columbia, Canada.
Until this week.
And the problem is two-fold.
Problem #1: Script-Reading Support
This week, I tried to send a few faxes that just wouldn't go through. While all my faxes to regular numbers always went out with no problem, I seemed to be having an issue with a couple of toll-free numbers. No matter how often I tried, these two faxes wouldn't go through.
Obviously, I needed to seek some support help. Perhaps, I was messing something up or there may have been a flaw in the system somewhere. Who knew. I was happy to accept the blame, but I wanted a SOLUTION.
Unfortunately, eFax clearly outsources ALL of their support (from what I can see) to a non-English speaking country that is instructed to read scripts. Period. Anything that happens beyond the script is just too bad for me.
This is outsourcing gone all wrong and probably a good reason why I have some anonymous posters come to by blog and tell me outsourcing is bad. When I say outsourcing, that is NOT what I mean.
I call and tell them what happened. They ask me how I sent the fax (you can send it in your account, via software and even via email) and I tell them I've tried all the options, but didn't know about sending by email. The guy tells me how to send by email, but surprise, surprise, if it didn't work the other ways, it didn't work by email.
I call again. The lady asks who I'm faxing. I tell her. She asks me to hold and tells me the line is busy, so it's probably busy when I'm faxing.
(And nobody EVEN bothers to look at the faxes I sent to see if I actually made an error somewhere, which is quite possible!)
First, I mention that most regular faxes redial (at least a few times!) to try to get around a busy signal. Apparently, eFax.com does not. She says it tries once and that's it. So, I'm annoyed after this call, but accept that perhaps the line was busy.
So, I try again a few times in the evening and no luck. I call the numbers. They are not busy. I call them a few times. They are not busy, but I get that annoying ERRRRR-EEEEEER of fax noise in my ear.
Annoyed and finding it frustrating to communicate, I decide to send an email support ticket. As you may know, I used to be an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher and I pride myself in being able to communicate with people for whom English is not their native tongue. But I'm sorry, I kept having to say, "pardon me," and whenever I apparently veered from the script they expected, they had to ask me to clarify...over and over again, so I was forced to stop talking about things that might have widened their support horizons.
So email support it was. I wrote to them and said I was having trouble that is going way beyond the scripts they set up for their support people. I told them I had contact support a few times, had followed all their instructions and the main thrust was that I wanted my problem escalated to a manager or the actual technical people to see if there was an issue. No joke, this is what I got back:
"Dear Alice,
Thank you for contacting eFax Customer Support.
We apologize for the inconvenience caused.
If your fax has failed due to unexpected busy signals, please ensure that the fax number is entered correctly:
- When sending a fax from your personal email:
Enter the number in the "To:" section as faxnumber@efaxsend.com, where "faxnumber" is the complete destination number including the country code and city/area code.
For Example:
If dialing to a US number 1 (310) 555-1234, enter 13105551234@efaxsend.com, where "1" is the country code and "310" is the area code.
If dialing to a UK number +44 (020) 7555-1234, enter 442075551234@efaxsend.com, where "44" is the country code and "20" is the city code (it is not necessary to include the “0” in front of the city code).
- When faxing via eFax Messenger Fax Compose options:
Enter the fax number in the same format as above but omit the @efaxsend.com part and the country code, since the latter is selected from the dropdown.
If you have confirmed that the number is correct, try calling it to confirm that it is indeed not busy. Keep in mind that our servers make several attempts to send a fax before reporting that the number is busy.
Sincerely,
- Pete M.
eFax Customer Support"
Well, "Pete"...if that's your real name (sorry, not trying to be insensitive, but I'm really not stupid), we already went through this and I asked this to be escalated.
I called once more and sent a reply to this instruction, but I got nowhere.
Problem #2: Ignore Your Customers Who Want to Promote
As I mentioned, it was not too long, I was happy with this service and I'd probably still be happy if they had people who were even remotely prepared to deal with REAL issues.
In preparation of my Freebie Friday post, last I looked to see if eFax might have an affiliate program...and they did. It was in Commission Junction and I thought, hey I'll apply to the program. I heard nothing for a few days and then on Monday, I logged in to check I didn't miss an email. Nope, my application was still pending.
(Hey, I hope you don't mind me trying to get a little cut of the action if you decided to sign up for the service...we're all Internet marketers here, right?)
So, I shot the affiliate manager an email saying I've been a happy (at the time I was) customer for a while and I'd love to spread the word. I asked if they'd be so kind as to approve me for their program.
Nothing.
Then another nothing.
And nothing again.
As nothing went on, my support issues with the actual services blew up and I wasn't sure if I should talk about this at all.
Anyway, today I decided that I would definitely mention what happened and out of curiosity, logged into CJ to see the status. Guess what?
Oh yeah, you know it...I've got the big Scarlet A in my account and it says "Declined Application".
Screw it. I don't know what else to say. I think the service is cool and when it works, it's fine...but if you want any support from these people, forget about it.
So make your own decision. I wash my hands of it.
5 Comments:
Alice,
I swear we've been talking to the same people! I was on the same merry-go-round with the folks at HP (or not at HP as the case may be.)
I called the 800 number and gave my info to 3 different people, only to have me to a different support person. Finally, I reached the "correct" department only to find that he could not help me because I was unwilling to take my laptop apart and his department manager wasn't there. He sent me on my way saying I should call back later. I DON'T think so!
For crying out loud! All I needed was someone to send me a box to send my laptop for repairs.Then I found a customer service area where I could type my problems to the support person. I stayed online with him for at least 45 minutes. I gave him my info and I thought all was good.
Three days later, I was still waiting for a box, packing, and return label. Brave soul that I am, I called back. This time I waded through the quagmire of "script reading" support people, all the while thinking that I could fix the dang thing faster myself and I know nothing about building computers.
As I waited on the phone to hear what the fourth person had to say, I prepared myself to listen intently so I could decipher the words. Lo and behold, I was surprised to hear an accent I didn't have to strain to understand!
I came to find out that the box and label were never even scheduled to be sent out. And if that isn't bad enough, NONE of my information was correct, even after I wrote it all down in the "live chat" area. 'Scuse me, if you can't copy and paste, you don't need to be in a "live chat" customer service position.
The last guy I talked to, Terrance, was very nice and my return box arrived one day after it was (finally) ordered. Good customer service makes all the difference!
Hey Alice, I'd give you Terrance's number if I had it and thought it would help. ;)
Kit
Yikes Kit. I don't know about you, but my Toshiba laptop has all these stickers on it telling me that if they are tampered with, my warranty is void. Scary!
thanks for sharing Alice. I think the value of a company- particularly one I might promote is how they handle things when something goes wrong. i mean, its great when services work well, but in our lightning speed internet world, something WILL go wrong eventually (even if its customer-error). So good customer-service vs. bad is what seperates the great from the okay.
oh, also thanks for sharing that even You get declined from CJ affiliate programs occasionally. sometimes its puzzling since they don't give reasons.
I had a three hour nightmare with Tracfone, my wife and I only have cell phones for emergencies so we use our phones very little but do want them to work, and when my wifes phone stopped working I called their customer service to request a new phone, and they tell me that it stopped working because it was an old phone and they would replace it free of charge with a newer model.
Well, if they were going to stop servicing their old phones you would have thought an email or call would have been nice, but no, one day it just stopped working.
The new phone they sent was a refurbished phone that crapped out after about two weeks, so after another phone call to them they sent yet another new phone, but had taken my wifes phone number and given it away, thus necessitating her to have a new phone number now.
To add insult to injury, to get the minutes transferred over to her new phone that she already had on her old one was a three hour phone call with three different reps and a supervisor who had no business being a customer service supervisor, as he never bothered to see in the notes the problems we had or even to talk to the previous reps I had spoken too, and then made it seem like he was doing me a favor by transferring over the minutes I had already paid for.
Tracfone is on our list of things to get rid of next year once the minutes on our phones run out or they die again, whichever comes first.
I got a chuckle from this story, not only because of the global outsourcing language comprehension problem but because I also went through a ridiculous merry-go-round with e-Fax that took more than 6 months to resolve. I took a free trial, which turned into a paid account, and called to cancel the account after several months of not using it. Went through a "live chat" with someone, who convinced me to use the service for free for another 30 days, with free voice mail - and that was my second mistake. After 30 days I canceled the e-Fax - said absolutely no to the persistent live chat person, and then months later took a close look at my cc bill and realized I was being billed for the voice mail every month! It took another lengthy phone session with a person I could not communicate with to straighen out--what a mess. Took 6 months to get rid of it and I never sent even One Fax!
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