Jananas

This is an exerpt from an e-mail I sent to a bunch of Vice President’s at the company I used to work for. One of my biggest pet peeves is the short term, bottom line focused approach that many corporations take. I believe that by accepting lower profits in the short term to build a customer focused experience, you will create an environment for long term profitability and customer satisfaction. I can control this by working for companies that have strategies that are in line with this (and who put their money where their mouth is!!) and by giving my business to companies who live this.

To the VP’s, I thought that you might be interested in my experience thus far.

On Friday March 7th my MasterCard was compromised. It was eventually blocked sometime in the middle of the night between Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th. I was not aware of this until I attempted to make a purchase late afternoon on Sunday the 9th and had my card declined. I immediately called in and was told that my card had been blocked. I had to inquire further to determine that there had been fraudulent activity. I was surprised that the fraud went on for over a day and that I hadn’t been called when my card was blocked (admittedly this was done in the middle of the night, however I didn’t call in until 6pm on Sunday. There was opportunity for a call to be placed.). Also it isn’t reassuring to know that fraudulent transactions were allowed to continue for more than 24 hours before anything was noticed.

I received my replacement card yesterday and activated it last night (Monday March 17th). I went to log into the website this evening, as I’m an e-Statement customer and wanted to check my balance so that I can make my payment on time. I received an error message and was told to call into the call centre. I called back in. The call centre rep began the process to update my information with the website service provider – a process that I was told would take two days to complete. I can understand being unable to login when my card is blocked and my new one has yet to be assigned/activated, but as a customer who has experienced fraud I would like to be able to check my statement myself to be able to see what the fraud transactions are.

Question – given that the website login was recently changed to use a personalized login (i.e. not the card number), why is this information not updated automatically? Especially given that a personalized login breaks the direct tie between login/password and account information. This connection could be made on the backend as soon as my new account/card number has been assigned. It also would have saved a call into the call centre!

While on the phone I also asked when I could be receiving an affidavit from the fraud department so that I can begin the process of having these charges removed. I was told that I should receive my letter by Friday March 28th, which is three weeks after the fraud originally started and 13 business days after my account was blocked. When I questioned this time frame, the CSR told me that it should take 7-10 days.

As a customer, I feel let down by the entire experience. There were so many missed opportunities to make things better!

Sincerely,

Jana

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