I saw your long explanation, but I will speak from the point of view of a customer. If company X puts a charge on my card, I should be able to call company X and have them tell me why I was charged. If the person who is the first to take my call can’t tell me why I was charged, then that person needs to connect me to someone who can tell me why I was charged. I really don’t care about the internal policies of company X, or which department has access to what, or the possible inadequacies of Company X’s computer system. All I care about is that someone at Company X should be able to tell me why they are billing me for something.
Honestly, that hits the nail on the head of my frustration with Dell. Ok, I get it, supposed customer service supervisor. Your system is not capable of getting me the information I need, but your refusal to go the extra mile and do the research is what I am asking you to do. Even if it’s “I don’t know the answer, but maybe my center manager does. I’ll ask and get back to you” is fine. At least twice I told this guy, “Ok, so I need you to be a problem solver and find out how to get this information.” He’d just ignore me and ask me for the phone number again. It’s like it didn’t ocurr to him that somewhere, somehow in the bowels of Dell there is the information I need. No problem solving skills, and he’s getting annoyed with ME that, “Huh, yeah, I dunno what to tell you” is not sufficient.
Generally the call goes something like this:
“I’m seeing these charges on my bill for $X each.”
“Okay, that is probably (thing), that’s the only thing we have costing that. Let me see if we have a recurring subscription for you on file… nope. Okay. Have you ever heard of Company X? We provide Product X. If that doesn’t sound familiar, then there are two possibilities: either this is a purchase made by someone in your family using your card or, if that seems impossible, this would appear to be a fraudulent charge.”
“No, nobody in my family uses anything like Product X.”
“Okay then, my recommendation is to declare these charges as fraudulent with your card provider. They can get in touch with our fraud department and work things out. Our fraud department’s email address is fraud@companyx.com.”
“But can’t you connect me to them?”
“I’m afraid not – they don’t have a phone line, they communicate specifically through email. They can advise you as to what specifically the charges were for. Your bank should be able to determine whether they were made by someone in your family; assuming they were unauthorized, we won’t contest their findings.”
Questions like “Who made the charge?” and “Where was the charge made from, exactly?” and “Whose name is on the account that made the charge?” and “Where was the item shipped?” I cannot answer, whether or not I know the information and was able to track down the charge. This is largely for liability, though I can confirm or deny questions like “Was it Archie Bunker?” or “Did the charge come from 123 Fake Street, Tampa FL?” In 99% of fraud cases that don’t involve some family misunderstanding/little Timmy filching his mom’s credit card, the card itself is one of those numbers leaked by a bank and sold to professional fraudsters. Is it going to help you to know that your card was used to purchase 5 months’ subscription to Product X by an IP address in Croatia? It’ll help the authorities, and we’ll give them what we can, but I’m always forthcoming with “The only product we have that matches the billing descriptor and my inability to find the charge is this product. If you didn’t buy that…” Etc.
I’ll happily agree, however, that anyone who’s selling fewer than about two dozen items and can’t at least give an idea of what might have gone on isn’t trying. And if you can give me a phone number, an email address, an order number, anything beyond “It was a charge for twenty bucks sometime last month!” I can find a lot.
And niblet – at final last resort, when I have explained that we have a department at fraud@companyx.com specifically tasked with finding the answer to your question if you could just contact them, and no they don’t have a phone, I email them at the same address, if you are still unsatisfied, I will do your task for you and request a credit card lookup. Because this is largely useless information to you (you knew the charge was fraudulent, currently I can’t refund even most fraudulent charges because we do that directly through banks) and information easier for you to get (you send an email to Mr. Fraud, where as I take down your info, send an email to Mr. Fraud, wait for him to reply, log off the phones, look up your info again, email you, and play a delightful game of three way email tag that could be spent helping people I am actually equipped to help. But I will do it, because I care about the answer you get).
…I should complete that sentence.
Because this is largely useless information to you and information easier for you to get, I kind of hate to waste both of our days, but you will hopefully be a little happier.