Sorry If I Miscommunicate This, But...

This column originally appeared on July 11, 2010.

When I tell you in advance that I am sorry for the subject of this column, it is not simply a matter of diffusing any negative reaction that you, as readers, may have when finished with it. I tell you that I am sorry at the outset because this column, a semi-diatribe against corporate customer service, is neither original nor inspiring – two attributes that I aspire to each time I sit down to compose my weekly thoughts on paper – and also because my apology serves as an ironic counterpoint to the column’s subject itself.

Last month I ordered telephone, Internet, and cable television service from a well known local provider of such technology, whose name will escape mention here but whose identity one could hazard a guess at with a passing glance at the Philadelphia skyline. The price was right, the Phillies still seemed interesting at the time, and change is always a good thing – or so I’m told.

Installation of my new services went swimmingly. The friendly fellow who trundled up the steps to my third floor garret got the task finished in good time, and even complimented me on having a very nice hassock fan that kept him cool while he installed things.

But problems developed soon after he left. For reasons I will not tire you with, my telephone service was incomplete. That is, I could make calls from my phone, but not receive them. Over the next two weeks, I would grapple with the company’s customer service representatives, both on line and over the phone, until all was successfully completed and I became one with the universe once again.

The facet of my mano-e-mano duel over my non-phone service that intrigued, and ultimately frustrated, me the most was the seeming overarching willingness of the customer service folks to apologize to me. In the many, many discussions I had over my non-service, I was told that the person I was speaking to was sorry more times than I can remember. In one discussion -- in which I merely wanted to know what a certain light on my new television box meant -- the on-line person opened the conversation by saying he was sorry for the inconvenience I had suffered. He was pleasantly surprised when I told him I had no problem, just a question. Seems he had been sorry for nothing.


It went on like this for days. One morning, while again recounting the saga of my phone service, the live telephone person said she was sorry for any "miscommunication" I had experienced five times before I stopped counting. A supervisor I discussed things with also opened our conversation by saying he was sorry. He didn’t even know what the problem was, but he wanted me to know that he felt my pain. It drove me a little batty, I admit. At one point I heatedly insisted that someone in my immediate family could die and I wouldn’t be told about it because the phone call couldn’t go through. The hyperbole brought forth a rather languid, “Yes, sir. I am sorry for that.”


Little by little, it dawned on me that they were not really personally sorry at all. They were, instead, corporately sorry. And there is a difference.


As an example, I point you to the tale of Peter Blok of Uwchlan and the 300 or so other passengers on the Virgin Atlantic flight he took from London to Newark, N.J., last month after a golfing vacation that had a unscheduled stopover in Hartford, Conn. After sitting on the un-airconditioned plane and being lied to by the air stewards for five hours, when they finally deplaned an announcement came over the loudspeakers saying that Virgin was “sorry for the inconvenience.” Blok didn’t believe them, and neither do I.

What I now believe is that large corporate institutions believe that if their minions say they are sorry for putting you out, whether they mean it or not, they are somehow off the hook. "Look, buddy, I said I was sorry! What else do you want?' is the common attitude.

Meanwhile, my mechanic, Andy of Downingtown, offered to cut my recent $2,000 repair bill by $500 because it had taken him longer to diagnose the problem that he originally led me to believe. I declined his offer because it wasn’t his fault, but his apology was genuine. I will never take my car anywhere else.

This also came about the time that Nancy Slome, my onetime class mate back at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio (Alma Mater: “High on the Hill”), asked rather straightforwardly whether I was the person who stole the mezuzah from the front door of her home when we were teenagers. I admitted it, and explained how awful I felt for doing something so juvenile and harmful. She accepted my apology, and I felt better for it. Not because it got me off the hook, but because, in a small way, I atoned for something I had done wrong.

Anyway, I am sorry if I bored y ou.