That was an interesting experience. Frustrated that a giant, recently bought, Philips TV’s remote control is incapable of controlling the philips satellite box next to it, without much help from the user manual, I decided to ring them up.
Maybe Seth Godin is slipping a little, but Seth Godin’s simple missive: Make a customer happy when he calls. Otherwise, do not answer the phone! – is very much true.
Before I called, I was mildly annoyed that philips hardware can’t work with philips hardware. After I called, I was seething mad at their boundless idiocy.
After half an hour getting the runaround, the conclusion was that the Philips TV and the Philips satellite receiver aren’t compatible. It was my fault for not realizing it, according to Philips, because ‘STB’ stands for Set Top Box, and not Satellite Box. This was a fairly basic mistake so they wouldn’t try to fix it by e.g. sending me a Philips Universal Remote Control. When I pointed out that their own technical support staff are just as clueless as I am (given the runaround I’ll describe below the fold), and that their standards seemed to be set just slightly too high, the service rep got angry with me. Specifically, she was quite perturbed about me not accepting her apologies. That just bewilders me. I thought it was a tech support number, not a “We’ll listen to your whines and agree with you, for 10ct a minute” service number. Why would her personal apology that their hardware sucks help?
How come I, a techno geek, knows more about marketing than a supposed world leader in this sort of thing?
Well, congratulations, Philips. That’s the last time I’ll ever buy from you.
The runaround was even worse:
First guy I got wants to know my personal details (I told him to go screw himself, but nicely, considering that I had a simple question and I was paying to call them), then wants to know how the satellite box was connected to the TV. At this point I bit back a colourful statement regarding his brain size, and instead just said “I’m talking about the remote control!”. He put me on hold, it took too long, so I hung up instead and redialed in a hope to get a more clueful operator.
The next operator at least got the basic gist and gave me a different number for their universal remote control division. I told him it wasn’t a universal remote, but he was certain they’d fix it for me.
I then dialed the other number and got a very clueful person on the line. He actually insulted the other number’s staff, apologizing profusely for sending me on a wild goose chase. He double checked the TV’s model number and then assured me that my remote isn’t programmable and if it doesn’t work right away it never will. He then gave me a last hail mary and gave me the way their universal remotes are configured: Press the STB button continuously until your satellite box turns off. Let go right away – it’s now set. That didn’t work.
Armed with this knowledge, I dialed the main number again to ask for a reasonable solution. I then made the mistake of mentioning that the satellite box was bought slightly too long ago for me to return it, at which point the tone of the conversation turned icy and the above story was foisted on me.