Listen, Discover, I NEVER signed up for your fucking $45 "account protection"

The BBQ Pit
1

Discover Card, we have had a long and friendly relationship, but today, you did something that really pissed me off.

When I accidentally left my card at the local pizza place after picking up a pie, I had to call you and get my card reactivated after I went back to claim it. While you were reactivating my card, you claimed that it was taking “just a moment for the account to reactivate,” during which time you tried to sell me $45 a year “account protection.” Of course, we know that this is pure bullshit–it probably only takes a tenth of a second to reactivate my account, and you just claim it takes a minute so you can pitch me your worthless account protection. Do you know of any credit card that, after it has been stolen, holds the cardholder responsible for the charged merchandise? Yeah, me neither. That is why I don’t need your fucking ripoff account protection.

Perhaps you were confused when I said “no thank you.” I can clearly see now much that must have sounded like “yeehaw, sign me the fuck up!” You made no mention of me having agreed to the service, quickly thanked me for my business and then told me to have a good day.

Then the letter showed up in my mailbox today.

“Dear slice, Thank you for enrolling in The Register card protection service.” Whaaaa? :confused:

So I called you on it. The conversation with one of your oh-so-perky Discover drones went like this:

Me: (Explains situation.)
Perky: Our records indicate that you signed up for the service on May 1, 2003 when you cancelled your account.
Me: As I explained before, I did not cancel my account. I had to reactivate it because the owner of the pizza place called you so that you could let me know they had my card. It is your policy that I had to call and reactivate the account. And why would I sign up for the account protection if I cancelled my account?!
Perky: (Stunned silence.) The Register card protection is only $45!
Me: :rolleyes: I can see that. I do not want it.
Perky: Are you sure?
Me: Yes. And I was sure the first time, when I said no thank you.
Perky: The Register card protection covers all of your credit cards, not just your Discover card.
Me: I do not want the card protection.
Perky: Ok. Do you need anything else?
Me: No, I just need the card protection cancelled because I never requested it. You may review the tapes if you like.
Perky: Thank you for calling Discover Card!

Why do I think that this is definitely not the end of this? I’m gonna go ahead and put it in writing and mail that out on Monday.

Until then, Discover Card, you are a bunch of fucking moronic opportunistic lying twits with IQs lower than the average ejaculate. It pays to Discover, huh? No. It does not. It pays to drive to Wilmington, Delaware and beat your collective heads in with a fucking bat.

2

You can almost feel sorry for the perky operator who has to try to cram it down your throat, even though you obviously don’t want it. Almost, but not quite.

3

It’s not just DC, but they are among the bad ones. When my father was hospitalized a year ago, my sister and I had to go through his bills to see that they were paid. He was signed up for plans on all his credit cards that would pay his balances if he lost his income due to disability. He had been RETIRED for over ten years! There was no way for him to lose his social security or pension, and he had no other income. On one card – and it may have been Discover – he had somehow been sold TWO of these “protection” plans. He didn’t remember having agreed to any such thing, but then based on your experience it was probably not necessary. We managed cancel these plans, but have no idea for how many months he had been paying for this lunacy.

But that’s not all. He passed away in July. In AUGUST, another bill arrived with another “credit protection” plan. The company tried to tell us he must have agreed to in 6 months previously with an automatic renewal. Of course at the time in question he had been in the intensive care ward. They were not sure what to do about this, and I told them that since he could not possibly have authorized it the previous winter, and since we were pretty sure that whereever he was now, he no longer needed to protect his credit, it must have been charged because of theft. The charges were removed with no further problem.

4

The worst part of this is of course

Yet again, a customer “service” rep would rather piss off a customer than go off script. I had to cancel one of those “bonus plans” off one of my credit cards the other day. They sent me a $10 check for trying it which was my money to keep if I canceled within 30 days. When I called to cancel, the CS drone tried four times to convince me to keep it, even after I said to her after the second time “I understand you have a script to read. Please skip to the end of the script.” and after the third time “If you try to sell me this again I will ask for a supervisor.” Her part of the call ended with me yelling “I want a supervisor NOW, I want a supervisor NOW, I want a supervisor NOW” at her while she finished her script. She did put a supervisor on the line and I complained bitterly. I’m sure the supervisor gave her a nice pat on the back for staying on script.

Same credit card company sent me another of those “bonus club” offers the other day but the check was only $2.50 and dealing with a CS Drone ain’t worth it for only $2.50.

5

No, after hanging up, he made a snide remark and laughed at you.

:stuck_out_tongue:

I know the scripts are irritating, but if she had “skipped to the end”, that’s considered a “job performance” issue and she would gotten her ass busted over it. Yes, even though you requested it. Yes, even though you still weren’t going to buy it. I know. It’s stupid, and trust me, she probably hated doing it as much as you hated hearing it. CS and tele-fundraising are soul sucking jobs. I’ve done them both, and trust me, I got fired from the tele-fundraising because I refused to strongarm old ladies into giving a donation to the FPO and the like. We weren’t allowed to take no for an answer, no matter how nice the person said it. I hated it. With a passion.

Anyway, all I’m saying is that I know it’s frustrating, but try not to take it out on someone who’s just attempting to make a living.

:slight_smile:

6

You had a temper tantrum because she was doing her job? I agree with QueerGeekGirl. The rep probably did not want to annoy you but also did not want to lose her job.

7

They call them “reps” because they represent the company, and the company is behaving in a manner that seems calculated to piss people off. It must suck and I do feel sorry for anyone having to take a job like that, but if the company feels the need to instruct its representatives to act in an annoying manner, it should be no surprise that every now and then people get annoyed.

It makes no difference whether the rep wanted to annoy or not - she did behave in an annoying manner. Not by her own volition, sure, but she’s there and being the vector of annoyance, so to speak. I’m not sure I buy into the idea of stoically accepting that because the rep can’t deviate from the script.

I might be more inclined to do so if I knew I’d be given a chance afterwards to talk to someone who could actually modify the policy. Of course, we both know that won’t happen. And so the company gets to behave like a jerk with immunity - the customers can’t make a complaint to anyone who gives a f*ck.

It’s a bloody broken system where a “customer service representative” isn’t allowed to actually perform customer service and can’t be treated like a company representative.

8

Precisely.

It’s very hard to be a good CS rep when you have managers screaming “Just get them off the phone!” and “Do NOT take no as an answer” and “Do NOT deviate from this script, I don’t CARE what they say. If this script didn’t work, we wouldn’t USE it!”

It’s a very fucked system.

9

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked sucky CS jobs on and off for the last 10 years. Seven different call centers, each one sworn to be my last until the next one comes along, and I know all about being on scripts and being required to offer certain information and making sure upon pain of supervisory scowling that the customer is offered the product x times including hearing y benefits of the purchase. I even have been on the supervisory/trainer side of it and taught other CS drones how to sell, sell, sell. I have absolutely no problem with the concept of customer retention, in fact in my current job that’s mostly what I do. But in none of these jobs if there was any selling involved was I expected to continue on script once the customer told me “no” and I certainly wasn’t expected to continue on script once the customer told me “stop selling things to me or I’ll talk to your manager” and I absolutely wasn’t expected to stay on script with a customer screaming “no no no no no” in my ear. It’s only been in the last year or so that companies with which I’ve dealt have started refusing to take no for an answer and I’m fucking sick of it. Pissing off customers is a shitty way to do business.

10

I sort of expected the whole “are you sure you don’t want it?” speech, but what gets me is that there is just no way that the previous rep could have possibly construed my “no thank you” to indicate that I wanted to be signed up for their damn plan.

I bet they get a decent amount of money from people they sign up without their consent and either don’t notice or don’t care. In the same vein of the story MLS told, I’m pretty sure they could get away with something like this fairly easy as far as my grandparents are concerned. That makes me mad. :mad:

11

Amen. I’ll never understand the method behind that particular madness. I always enjoyed doing CS, and always busted ass to do the very best for my customers. During my time with Dell, I fought managers and even coroporate too many times to count. Usually, I lost, but I did try my damn best.

Disgustingly enough, slice, that’s what these corporations, and especially tele-fundraising, count on. People who are either passive, elderly, easily confused or rushed for time. It’s really fucking vomitous, and like Otto said, a sickening way to do business.

12

Have you guys ever read or seen hardcore sales stuff? We (the customers) really, really do want it, we just don’t know it. They have to do whatever it takes to get us to buy it, because we want and need it. No is not an answer.

13

I worked in catalog sales for a couple of years and found out quickly that if you wanted to keep your job, you didn’t go off script. Ever. Even if it meant pissing off customers who you KNEW had NO desire to buy what I was ordered to sell them.

My supervisor actually told me that my job was to act as a buffer between the customers and upper management. I found out a few years ago that their brand-new call center where I had worked had been sold. This football-sized call center had been built from scratch and was only about 5 years old. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear about it.

14

:smack: That’s “football field sized” call center.
Clearly you can’t fit an entire call center into the size of a football. And even if you could, you would end up looking very silly. :slight_smile:

15

I have been getting lots of phone calls lately that show up as “Unknown Caller” on the caller ID. A couple of times I have answered and it has been Discover Card, trying to sell me that rip-off card protection crap. I have a feeling that many of the “Unknown Caller” calls that I have not answered are also them. Every time I have answered, I have told them that I do not want the protection plan and to STOP CALLING ME ABOUT IT!

There have not been quite as many of the Unknown Caller calls lately, so maybe Discover has stopped.

16

Frankly, it’s no way to do business, AFAIAC. I have worked in retail for three years and my Customer Service mantra is as follows:
Priority one: Satisfy your customers. This means listening to them, not shoving stuff at them until they cave. Sometimes this means that you can offer them something they didn’t know they wanted, but you’re just presenting a new option to them, not convincing them that they need something that they don’t in reality.

Priority two: Do what is best for business. Scaring away customers is not good for business. Getting bad word-of-mouth is not good for business.

Priority three: Make your supervisor’s job easier/better. Even if you go against procedure, if you are successful, your sales will speak for themselves. No good super argues with the bottom line. If I have to choose between violating priorities one or two, and violating priority three, I choose three every time, because the results prove me right.

Telemarketing gimmicks employed by call centres and CC companies are only effective because they prey on vulnerable people. Informed consumers aren’t the target.