Service Snafu: Viking River Cruises
I’ve booked a two-week cruise with Viking this fall - starts in Budapest and ends in Amsterdam. I’m going with a friend who has done such river trips before and loved them. The itinerary is a nice balance of guided tours and free time, with a floating hotel waiting for us all along the way - none of that packing, unpacking, running for trains, etc. that have marked my past European jaunts. So, I think the actual trip will be a great experience. However, working with Viking customer service is not so great.
Snafu 1: I have a question about airport choices and airlines. (Getting from Albuquerque to Budapest is no small feat - not if I want to be semi-alive when I get there.) I call the fella who so cheerfully took my money at the time of booking who ended with, “If there’s anything else I can help you with, please call me. Here’s my direct line.”
Me: “Hi, John. Listen I’ve got some questions about air travel. Can I change the departure city? If so, what are my choices? And, what’s the best way to get from Albuquerque to the east coast?”
John: “I don’t know.”
Me: “What do you mean? Didn’t you say to call you with any questions?”
John: (exasperated sigh) “But I’m just the reservations agent.”
Moving right along…
Snafu 2: Getting a credit processed.
Me: “Hi, I’ve decided to book the air travel on my own. Can you credit my account the $1247.00?”
Response: (After much back and forth about confirmation numbers, tippy-typing in the background, long periods of silence while the young service rep is - I guess, hope?- thinking.) “Okay, that’ll take at least two weeks to process.”
Me: “Why? When I booked the trip, the rep processed the charge that day.”
Response: “…Uh, because we have so many credits to process.”
Hmmm…begs the question why they have so many credits to process. What am I’m getting myself into?
Snafu 3: Question about a catalogue special (after initial booking, already paid in full.)
Me: “I was just reading about a price reduction for the River Danube cruise. Can that apply to my booking?
Response: What’s the offer number?”
Me: “I don’t see any ‘offer number.’ A friend sent the catalogue to me.”
Response: “I can’t help you without the offer number.”
Me: “There IS no offer number. I’m looking at Page 5 in the catalogue dated April 2007. It says the following (I read the entire block of text.)”
Response: “I can’t help you without an offer number.”
Do I really need to add that Viking is now bombarding me with catalogues and special offers? Naaahhh…And, upon arrival at the Budapest port, if there’s some scrawny guy on the bow of the boat shouting “I’m king of the world!” I’m not setting foot on the thing.
Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, customer service, Viking River Cruises
View the Blog Roll
August 27th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
I can’t stand it when I have to tell a company something about their own information. I just finished filling out a boatload of rebate forms from MacMall, all of which require me to send them a copy of the invoice they sent me, and copy part numbers of their invoice onto the rebate form - which I am sending to them WITH the invoice with the numbers on it - which was generated by them.
They can obviously fire up a computer and see that yes, I bought a MacBook eligible for rebate. So why do I have to repeat it back to them?
I saved money. But actually, after spending all that time (and I still need to copy things for when the checks inevitably don’t show up) I decided that next time I’ll just pay more at the Apple Store.
August 27th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
John,
I hear ya. They depend on the fact that it will simply be too much trouble to jump through the hoops. But then they run into contrary people like us! Such rebate battles become a matter of principle for me.
Here’s something companies such as MacMall don’t consider. I’ve got to buy 10 iPODs, one IPhone (for a client promo) as well as a notebook for myself. I was going to look at MacMall - and now I’m not. I’ve got an Apple store a mile from my house.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:00 am
The funny thing is, MacMall is OK - you get a little discount without the rebates. They’re making themselves annoying.
Of course, this week the Apple store managed to ship an order to me in two parts - and the address somehow changed at one so the package is MIA. The other package, from the same shopping cart, is addressed correctly. What is going on this month?
For all the convenience of online shoping, I think the best computer purchase experience ever was driving from Boston to just over the state line in New Hampshire to buy a new Mac at a retail store (no sales tax in NH!) I drove up with a friend, we chit chatted for 1.5 hours total driving time & caught up on life (no cell phones then), and it was just… fun.
I’m feeling Luddite today I guess.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Had to post the followup to that last comment. You get so beaten down by people providing bad service that you expect it. I called Apple, ready to tell my whole tale. I waited less than one minute for an operator, got through the first three sentences of explaining what happened, and he said, “We’ll overnight you a new one today.”
Bing. Done.
What’s sad is not EXPECTING that to happen!
August 29th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Yeah, sad isn’t it? And, we’re so pathetically and intensely grateful for getting what we should receive, we’d probably buy just about anything else from them at the time of service (”Hey, what else can I give you money for?”)
if companies (of all sizes) would only realize ALL they have to do to stand out from their competition is to actually treat their customers with respect and deliver on what they promise. Little things like honoring guarantees, answering the phone, replacing a bad piece of equipment without automatically assuming the customer is at fault, and so on.