For some reason, though, Disney didn’t tell Paul that they’d remedied his concerns. I’m not sure why they would choose to let that opportunity pass them by. In my opinion, it’d turn an unsatisfactory customer experience into a much better one. Who wouldn’t want that? Instead, it just makes them look as though they don’t want to admit to their small error in judgment.

You're telling me THIS is a plus-sized model?!

I’m following @LaneBryant on Twitter. I’m not sure they’re following me, but that’s hardly the point since they should be monitoring their name on Twitter anyway; they should notice when I mention them, right? Well, they didn’t. But that’s okay, because I know it’s a busy world out there and businesses don’t have time to respond to every single complaint. Even if I complain about the same thing a second time. Really, it’s okay.

Before I get started on the rant, though, I did want to give Lane Bryant the props they deserve. They hire GREAT people. I’ve never walked into a Lane Bryant store and not been greeted with a friendly smile and offer of help. Even better, they are not the type to hover! And when you do have a question, they’re knowledgeable and un-intimidating. Also, they’re always sure to let me know the current deals and promotions to help me get the most for my money.

Now. The rant.

The other day, I found a tweet from Lane Bryant asking for my opinion on ads. Well, I have a lot to say about Lane Bryant and their catalog and ads, and I’m going to say it here (and I’ll post my direct answers to their questions as a comment on their web site, as they asked – even though it’s highly irritating that I have to become a member and give them my home address before I can leave a comment). Here are the 10 questions they asked in their survey along with my answers:

1. When you receive ads in the mail, which ones do you pay attention to?

Most ads end up in the recycle bin. I’ll look at the grocery store ads, but don’t get much use out of them. The only retail ads I get (if I recall correctly) are for Fashion Bug and Lane Bryant. If I have time to kill, I sometimes quickly scan through those catalogs to look at the clothes.

2. Which retailer’s advertisements grab your eye and why?

I guess the Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug ones, as they’re colorful . . . and the only ones I get.

3. Who sends you the best advertising or catalog?

The best? I guess I’ll say Fashion Bug.

4. When you get the Lane Bryant magalog – what are your first thoughts?

“Hrm. Lane Bryant pisses me off because they have too many skinny chicks in here.”

5. What is Lane Bryant doing right in its advertising?

Are the coupons and “Real Women Dollars” part of the advertising? If they are, you’re doing that right.

6. What is Lane Bryant doing wrong in its advertising?

Check out the panties section of your web site, where the pictures show the belly and hips. I see maybe three women who might qualify as “slightly overweight”. Where are the Real Women you tout? Oh, right. They’re hidden in your blog/community/whatchamacalit.

7. Does the Lane Bryant magalog look expensive, not expensive, or inexpensive?

Not expensive.

8. What are your favorite things about the Lane Bryant magalog?

Not much. I guess that there are coupons. But they’re rarely useful – to me, personally – since I don’t shop for clothing that often. It’s good to know they’re there, though, for when I do need to go shopping.

9. What don’t you like about the Lane Bryant magalog?

Hello. Page 26 of the current catalog. You’re kidding me, right? I would really like to know what size this woman is wearing because I wear size 18/20, which as you know, is the next size up from the smallest you offer – 14/16. I am nowhere NEAR looking like this woman. Check out the panties section of your web site, where the pictures show the belly and hips. Seriously?

You know those Real Women of Lane Bryant I mentioned earlier? These are the women I want to see a lot more of in the catalog and on the web site. This woman, she makes me want to buy her clothes. Why? Because she’s REAL. And she looks happy and confident, regardless of her weight! Does anyone really relate to the fashion show model posing? I don’t. Maybe that’s because I’ve been jaded by so many years of looking at bizarre clothing on waif-like women in bizarre poses – you know, the ones running rampant in most magazines.

10. And last but not least – what store do you buy most of your clothes?

Fashion Bug and Wal-Mart. I don’t have the money to buy everything I’d want from Lane Bryant. Also, Fashion Bug tends to have “younger” styles than Lane Bryant.

Obviously, there are tons of customer service stories out there. And I’m not the only blogger blogging about them on a regular basis. So now, every Thursday, you can find my personal roundup of rants and raves from around the blogosphere. This week is a bit of a special edition to highlight a major fail and major win recoup for the airline we all love to pick on because they’re so good at putting themselves out there: United Airlines.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned United in a social media post and embedded the world-famous United Breaks Guitars video by Dave Carroll. United’s latest snafu has to do with Step Davis, a professional climber and BASE jumper (among many other talents). On a trip back from Switzerland, United managed to lose her jumping gear – worth over $12k! She tells of the full experience in her blog (plus you get to see some pictures of some of the awesome – in the true sense of the word – stuff that she does).

Steph, of course, did her best in contacting United and trying to impress upon them the importance and value of this gear. They didn’t get it at first. And in the meantime, the Twitterverse sure let @UnitedAirlines know about it!

Whether it was due to the publicity and Tweep-support or to Steph’s relentless dedication in communicating with United to get her gear back, she is now going to be fully compensated for her lost gear! She writes another blog post explaining the details. Now, I don’t know if United managed to recover Steph as a customer, but they did manage to do the right thing and resolve the situation. As one of Steph’s Tweeps said, it’s important to Tweet the good and the bad – it’s only fair to the company, especially after a “slip-up” such as this.

I’d love to hear others’ opinions (rants and/or raves!) about United Airlines.  I’ll admit I have a huge chip on my shoulder when it comes to United*, so I really would like to hear if someone thinks differently about them!

*Gotta love their “give us more money and we’ll give you lots of luxurious leg room” upgrade option. Did ya think we wouldn’t notice where that extra legroom came from? The plane sure as heck didn’t get longer, and I’m fairly sure that you didn’t take any rows of seats out. I did notice, however, that my “cattle-class” seat had even less legroom than before. Thanks, United, for making people with long legs, overweight people (You get to pay twice! Even if we have extra seats!), and people who like to bring luggage with them feel extra-special! Way to enhance the user experience for some of your customers!

Learn how JetBlue made Blake Sunshine at the Brazen Careerist a loyal customer after just one trip with the airline! Jet Blue Reminded Me to Be Human.

Christina Bentley guest posts on Customer Service Stories about her bad experience with AAA (California) and her great experience with the Nissan dealership. Good customer service makes a difference when you’re stranded on a California highway!

Heidi Miller of Spoken Communications writes about the “revenue fail” of the airline industry and their baggage fees.

Chris Pugh says, “Bank of America needs to learn that If you can’t take care of your customers, someone else will.” Read about the Bank of America Customer Service Fail.

Bonus links:

Also, I found this blog that is filled with only raves. What a great idea! Not exactly a direct contrast, but Not Always Right is a blog filled with “funny and stupid customer quotes”. (It’s even funnier if you’re ever worked in the service industry!)

Do you have a rant or rave to share? Let me know in the comments or by emailing me at sara@customerserviceftw.com.

• An Open Letter to American Express (from Cracked.com) – This falls into the category of “you can’t be serious!” Read about the atrocious customer service this guy got from American Express.
• Now Hear This: Happy Customers = Evangelists (from promodiva.com) – I personally love hearing about this when it happens. Heck, I love it when it happens to me (like with CarMax)! Have you ever become a fan for life because you were just wowed by the customer service you received. Learn how SiriusXM made some already loyal customers into brand evangelists.
• How many times can you alienate a customer in one interaction? (from Customer Service Stories) – Stories of lost baggage and airline customer service (usually the lack thereof) are a dime a dozen nowadays.  But there are definitely some that still stand out as outrageous. Find out how many times Barry Dalton gets alienated by USAirways when trying to track down his luggage.
• Twitter: the killer app for customer service (from Church of the Customer Blog) – How did AT&T manage to impress this blogger with customer service? I think the first line of the post says it best: “Hello, this is Sam Kaufman from the AT&T Internet Executive Office, and I am calling about your tweets.”

Do you have a rant or rave to share? Let me know in the comments or by emailing me at sara@customerserviceftw.com.

(*I’m making this up, so my apologies if there is actually a web site out there that claims to be the happiest place online and it’s not Disney.)

And without further ado . . .

A while ago, I went online to buy a gift for a friend from the The Disney Store. Everything went smoothly at first. I found the item I was looking for, started the checkout procedure, put in the shipping address… no problems. Then I put in the billing information, and got a strange error:

“Oops! We cannot continue the updating process with the text you have entered.”

Text filters change "Wiener" to "****" without any clear reason why.

I tried everything I could think of. Reentered all the information. Put my street, town, and phone number in different formats. Same error. I tried editing the delivery address (which had been accepted) with my billing address, and… same error.

Finally, it hit me. My last name is Wiener. I’ve been fortunate enough to have reached adulthood without being picked on because of that, but I’m aware that it’s sometimes considered a bad word. I put it in as “Wiene r,” and, sure enough, it went through. At least, the address did. I had to do the same thing with the name on my credit card before it would accept that, too.

I immediately wrote to customer service. In part because I was worried that mangling my name would cause issues with the credit card transaction, but also because I found the idea of my name being a banned word to be offensive.

I received a reply that evening. The representative assured me that the order had gone through and offered repeated apologies about the text filter. So far so good. I was less happy about his proposed solution – if it really bothered me, I could place my order by phone.

I wrote back the following morning:

Thank you for your understanding and apologies. I’m glad to know that the order went through.

I do, however, find myself with something of an unresolved issue. As I understand it, you still have a text filter which is blocking out my name as a naughty word. It’s not that uncommon a name. And it’s not really that naughty. You can find it boldly printed on many packages in your local grocery store. Even advertised in a popular TV jingle.

Frankly, I don’t see what reason you could possibly have for putting in a text filter in the names field of the billing information form. Or, for that matter, any field on that form. We can’t help our family names, and you have no place judging them. Will you also block out everyone who happens to be named “Wang”? Or anyone who lives on a street with a name you don’t approve of?

What good does that filter do? What are you trying to block? Pranksters? I doubt there are many who would bother going through the whole order process just to put in a juvenile fake name. Even if they do, the charges wouldn’t go through.

I got through grade school and summer camp without being picked on because of my name. My father was in the army and never saw a sign of disrespect from anyone who had to address Major Wiener. Now I come to your store, where everyone is supposed to feel magically welcome, and there, of all places, I have to change my name because it’s been blocked out for no good reason?

I realize that you’re a customer service representative, and not personally responsible for the policy, but it’s nonetheless a policy that has to change.

Early that afternoon, I received a reply from a different customer service representative. Without addressing the actual issue at hand, she thanked me for my “candid feedback,” told me that she had forwarded the message to management, and once again offered the suggestion that if I’m having trouble with their online ordering system, they’d be more than happy to take my order by phone.

In the ten days since then, I’ve heard nothing more. The website continues to reject my name on the billing form and replace it with “****” as if it was an obscenity (something I’d originally taken to be a glitch or some kind of security measure).

Disney’s customer service representatives were prompt and courteous in their replies. The order went through in good time and the gift was received with gratitude and excitement. I couldn’t be happier, as far as that goes. And yet I still find myself a less than satisfied customer. Not so long as I find the store itself rejecting me, my name being coldly and needlessly censored.

Disney, I am not feeling the magic. Clearly, your computers aren’t, either. You need to fix this.

UPDATE: Disney seems to have taken the naughty word filter off their order form. But they didn’t tell anyone.

But it’s not the only thing companies need to focus on! What about all the complaints lodged by consumers on YouTube? Just check out the search results I got for “horrible customer service”. There’s quite a few, and “horrible” is only one possible adjective you could search with! The old maxim that a happy customer will tell one person and an unhappy customer will tell ten friends . . . well, the internet just multiplies things. Unhappy customers aren’t just telling ten friends, they’re telling anyone who will listen. And the offending company had better be listening so they can do some damage control!

Here are a few examples of how YouTube has been used by consumers to express their unhappiness about the customer service – or lack thereof – they received:

United Airlines Breaks Guitars

Dave Carroll, the musician whose guitar was broken, explains the whole story on his website. He also includes United’s response. And to be fair to United, he’s made a statement video on YouTube as well:

Hilton Hell

This one’s a personal contribution from a lovely business trip I took with Cia Romano.

I think we still have yet to get a response to the video, but that’s up to the Hilton. However, Cia and I would both like to thank the staff of the Hilton Arlington, especially Henry the bellman, who did their best in trying to make do with the hotel they work in.

Before I get too far into this, let me give the rest of you a little background information. TEP stands for Tucson Electric Power, a UniSource Energy Company. Now, there are a few things to complain about as far as TEP is concerned, but I’m just going to focus on the lovely TEP e-bill feature. (So I won’t mention that they give you very few convenient ways to pay your electric bill.) TEP e-bill utilizes MyCheckFree.com, though you’d be hard-pressed to find this information anywhere on TEP’s website.

Now that everyone’s caught up, I shall begin my Open Letter to TEP/UniSource.

Dear TEP,

We’re not going to talk about all the reasons why your website sucks, but we are going to talk about why TEP e-bill sucks. If you fix nothing else, I beg you, please fix this!

Now, I understand that MyCheckFree is a third-party application. And I’m sure it comes with certain limitations as far as implementation goes. (Not to mention I have my own issues with MyCheckFree.com as it is.) But you’ve got to be kidding me!

I’m an experienced web user. I work for a usability firm. And I still was somehow unable to pay my bill by the due date several times this year because of how jacked up this process is. I thought I’d paid the bill, went through what I thought was the whole process. Next thing I know, I’m getting a shut off notice. What the hell?

Well, I think I have it figured out now, but it still trips me up every damn time. Did I mention it pisses me off, too, every damn time? Let me take you through my user experience:

TEP's e-bill "feature" is at first deceptively easy.

1. I’ve just logged into the Account Manager (which is surprisingly a fairly painless process). I want to view and pay my bill online. Oh, yay! There’s a button that says I can do just that. I’m a happy user.

2. Except… when I click on it, the link doesn’t take me straight to my current bill with an option to pay. Was it so wrong of me to expect that to happen? What did I get instead? I get this:

I can't even find my current bill!

I can’t even be sure I’m on the same site anymore, really. Everything’s changed, and TEP isn’t even in the URL any more. Disruptive user interface changes aside, this page is certainly not what I was asking for when I clicked on “View/Pay Bill”. I see a list of bills… and I’m not exactly sure where my current month’s bill is; this only goes through February 2009. (To be quite honest, this listing of bills is different EVERY time I try to “View/Pay” my bill.) Now… how do I get to my bill to pay it?

3. Luckily, my husband has been through this torture enough times before to let me know the next step, saving me who knows how much time in trial and error. So, I click on “e-bills”. I get a similar, but slightly different looking list of bills. Indeed, my current bill is there now.

4. Now I want to view my bill, just to be sure. Oops, I’m using Safari. Guess I’ll have to switch over to FireFox start the whole process over again. (My husband had the great privilege of figuring this one out. Must have been trial and error to figure out he needed to use a different browser.)

Button order is more important than you think!

5. At this point, I’m more than ready to pay and get out of here. So I click on the link to pay my bill. This screen seems straight-forward enough. The trick here, though, is that the buttons at the bottom, they’re kinda in the wrong order. The most likely action should be right-most. Is this a usability nit-pick? Sure. But it’s not a little point. Like I said, I work in the usability industry; I know these sorts of things. I know that most sites do them wrong. But what do I always, instinctively click on? Yeah, “cancel”. Oy.

6. Once I’m passed that hurdle, there’s another. But this looks like an I’m done screen. If I wasn’t done, there’d be a button or something telling me to “Confirm”. That’s what other sites do. Yes, this is the point at which I failed to pay my bill on at least three separate occasions. I thought I was done. I closed my browser. Oops. Here comes the late notice!

Whatever you do, don’t press the big red button!

7. I think I’ve finally learned that there’s one more step. I don’t think you people at TEP (or maybe this is CheckFree’s fault) realize just how invisible that big red button is. Seriously. I was looking for a confirm, continue, or something similar button. I’m expecting buttons to look the same throughout my process so I don’t get confused. Why the hell would I think to click on a big red one that says “CheckFree” – you know, if I even saw it?

8. Once I found the button and clicked it, I think I’m finally done. Now, if only there were a way to get back to the TEP home page…

TEP, please fix e-bill. Please.

Sincerely,

Sara Onstine

If you’re a “fan” of TEP in anyway, please comment below in the hopes that TEP will actually listen to their customers.

Edited to add: Here’s TEP’s friendly and helpful response!