Comments on: Discover Card, Please Stop Calling Me!

By: mary

mary — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:27:28 +0000

I do request getting off the list. And, I do my best to be polite to the caller – they are, after all, trying to do a job. So, I’m not “mad” – just wish Discover would grok the new marketing.

And, the outbound calls I’ve received have all been trying to get me to do something.

And, I don’t request an APR decrease – inbound or outbound – since I pay the bill in full every month. So, not sure where that reference comes from.

By: Zach

Zach — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:55:55 +0000

I work at Discover Card, and I agree with you, but you should know something:

1. Like any solicitor call, you can always request “Can you take us off your calling list?” and they do. There is an option to do that that we mark immediately.

2. They don’t sell products to you on outbound calls as far as I know. My outbound calls are where I say exactly what you said I should say: â€œWe want to thank you for your business all these years. Is there anything we can do to improve our service?â€ (People still get pissed no matter what you say.) Request an APR decrease… they can do that immediately in a few ways, but they don’t really have the ability to bargain with you… Discover gives them the deals.

3. Remember that the people who call you on outbound are just people trying to get money… Discover pays them well and tells them what to do. It gave me a new perspective. There was a Seinfeld routine where he would yell at a solicitor, but now I see that as harsh. It’s the upper-management you should be mad at. Not the people who sit at call centers for 8 hours a day to pay for college.

By: mary

mary — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:48:57 +0000

John,

Amazon must like you better

(I did finally get off the list.)

I’d add, “delivering more value to the customer” isn’t the same as “selling them more crap.” (We customers are funny – we don’t think it’s our job to make companies profitable.)

And, while we’re talking about gas, I really hate those “friendly” voices that start blaring when I start pumping. Yargh and argh.

By: John Whiteside

John Whiteside — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:43:38 +0000

Sirius satellite radio is another company that needs to learn this lesson.

I’ve actually found Amazon to be very good on this count; you set your email preferences with them, and they follow them to the letter.

I think everybody drank the “increase the value of each customer to us” koolaid and now are convinced that because we use their credit card to buy gas, we want to buy a whole bunch of services from them. Well, it’s good for their bottom line; shouldn’t that be a motivation for us? Um, no.