EverydayOrdinary

… and it makes me less polite than I like to be. Definitely not responding the way Jesus would want me to.

[VLR (Very Long Rant) warning]

Perhaps my visceral attitude is a response to built-up angst from my job — I’m in a customer service job and I have to deal with crap from customers all the time and I can’t lose my cool with them. So maybe when I’m the customer, I feel I can let loose a little.

Or maybe it’s just because unsolicited sales calls/email are just so darned annoying.

I was very short on the phone at work on Friday to a salesman from a Job posting site. He asked to speak to my boss (by name, which means he at least did his homework before phone-spamming us), who really wasn’t in the office, and wouldn’t have taken a sales call even if he was. So I told him my boss wasn’t in, and asked what the reason for the call was. When he told me about the job-posting site, I told him we weren’t interested. I didn’t give him any reasons, but a) we don’t have any job openings at our location, b) even if we did, that sort of thing is done at the market-level, not the district level, so he was calling the wrong number, and c) if we *did* want to advertise a position on-line, we’re not going to sit around waiting for a job site to call us, so we wouldd have already spent the advertising budget to post the job.

Then the guy tries to keep going, which does nothing but push my mood from “Mildly Annoyed” to “Angry Elf.” I mean, I’ve just brushed the guy off, told him that we aren’t interested, and he keeps going? Are there really people out there who woud say to themselves, “Well, I wasn’t interested before, but by golly, now that he’s kept talking after I’ve said we’re not interested, I just can’t help but sign up for his service anyway”?

So I ask him what part of “we’re not interested” was hard to understand. Then he has the audacity to tell me I was being rude. Okay, maybe a little, but he had it coming. The conversation didn’t last long after that.

Free tip for sales people: continuing after you’ve been turned down, and calling the potential customer “rude”? Not among the best of ways to make friends and influence people, and definitely not effective sale-closing techniques.

Anyway, as the comedian said, “I told you that story so I could tell you this one”:

Apparently, GoDaddy didn’t “get it” the last time they tried to sell me something over the telephone.

They had the misfortune that I happened to read a sales email from them (about an attempt to sell my services over the phone) on the same day the above unpleasantness happened.

Here are the email messages that went back and forth:

First, from GoDaddy:

******************************************
Please update your contact information
******************************************

Dear Robert Hill,

A member of our Outbound Support Team recently called to thank you for doing business with GoDaddy.com, Inc. and to either advise you of an opportunity to save money on products you already have in your account, or because you have a product that is expiring soon. Unfortunately, the phone number we called appears to be incorrect. For you to receive required updates, alerts and expiration notices, we must have the correct contact information. You can update your phone number in one of the following ways:

1) CALL OUR OUTBOUND SUPPORT TEAM at (480) 505-8859 and select option 1. A representative will be happy to assist you in updating your information.
2) ONLINE: Go to the GoDaddy.com, Inc. home page, enter your log-in name (or customer number) and password, then click “Secure Login.” Then click “My Account,” which will take you to the Account Manager. Click on “Account Settings” to update your phone number(s).

We appreciate your business and will do our best to keep you satisfied. Our mission is to ensure you’re satisfied with your products and to take care of any service-related issues you may have with your account and/or products.

Sincerely,

GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Outbound Support Team

P.S. Call the Outbound Support Team today at (480) 505-8859 to FIND OUT ABOUT OUR LATEST PHONE-IN-ONLY SPECIAL OFFERS!

FYI, “Outbound Support Team” is business-speak for “Sales Department.”

And my response:

Your “Outbound Support Team” damn well better not have called me. I
*specifically* told a member of your “Outbound Support Team” to remove
me from your calling list and that I DO NOT want to receive calls from
GoDaddy unless it is in response to an actual service issue.

And don’t give me that crap about calling “to thank [me] for doing
business with GoDaddy.com, Inc.”, because when you say “to either
advise you of an opportunity to save money on products you already
have in your account, or because you have a product that is expiring
soon”, that means a SALES CALL, plain and simple. There is never any
reason to call me about an expiring product because ALL of the
“products” I buy through you are automatically renewing.

My phone number appears to be incorrect? It shouldn’t even be on file.

And while we’re at this, consider this a formal request to have my
email removed from all promotional/sales/product information mailing
lists your company has.

If I want to buy something from you, I’ll ask for it. “Don’t call me,
I’ll call you,” as the saying goes.

Just so we’re clear about this: If I receive *any* more email
indicating that your company needs me to update my phone number
because your company can’t make a SALES CALL to me, or if I receive
any unsolicited phone calls, I will immediately cancel all services I
buy from you. I will close my hosting accounts, and I will transfer
all of my domain names to a different provider. I have this friend who
works for BlueHost …

I don’t like being so blunt, but I thought I was clear about this the
last time your company called me — apparently I wasn’t. So am I clear
enough this time?

Your frustrated customer,
Robert Hill

[Hey Richie, do you still work for BlueHost?]

I had hoped that would be the end of it, but then I got their response:

Our support staff has responded to your request, details of which are described below:

Discussion Notes
Support Staff Response
Dear Robert Hill,

Thank you for contacting Online Support. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. We would be happy to remove the number from the account for you to prevent any future contact. To follow through with this, please respond with the following information:

• Verification of your account via the last 6 digits of the credit card on file, or the 4 digit shopper PIN that you have setup.

• Your desire to be placed on our Do Not Call list.

Once you have responded with this information, we will notate your account with the proper tag, and you will no longer receive phone correspondence from our representatives.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Regards,
Stacey P.
Online Support

Which seems innocent enough, but I was upset with GoDaddy, so they weren’t going to get off easily. I sen them this response:

Okay, here you go:

“• Verification of your account via the last 6 digits of the credit
card on file, or the 4 digit shopper PIN that you have setup.”
Last six digits of credit card number on file:
****** [I put the actual numbers in the email, but I'm not dumb enough to post them forreal on the web. --RH]

“• Your desire to be placed on our Do Not Call list.”
My (strong) desire is to be placed on your do not call list. Please
place me on your Do Not Call list.

And just so we’re *really clear about it*, my desire is also to be
removed from all of your promotional mailing lists, both postal and
email. I know I said that in my previous email, but that didn’t have
“verification” of my account, so it didn’t really count.

I am a more than a little frustrated. If your company really doesn’t
know by this point that my desire is to be placed on your Do Not Call
list, then quite obviously You Have Not Been Paying Attention.

As I mentioned in my previous email to you , I told your
representative (”Joe”) MONTHS ago (November, to be specific) when he
called me that I do not want to receive sales calls. You’re saying
that phone conversation didn’t indicate my desire to be placed on your
Do Not Call list? Seriously? And the same for my long ranting email
yesterday? Come on, you people have to be smarter than that. If
verification (such as the last six digits of the credit card number
you have on file) was needed before, and that was the reason why I
wasn’t put on your Do Not Call list, then why didn’t “Joe” mention it
to me when I told him that I don’t want to be called? I made sure to
wait until after he assured me that he would “set that up” before I
hung up on him.

You know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to have to deal with
this anymore. I can’t believe I even have to send this email.

Let this be the end of it. You have in this email verification of my
account via the last six digits of my credit card number on file. You
have my formal indication of my desire to be placed on your Do Not
Call List. So handle it.

DO NOT SEND ME CONFIRMATION THAT THIS HAS BEEN DONE. JUST DON’T CALL
ME ANYMORE. I have wasted enough time over this, I do not want to
waste more time reading another email about this issue.

Sincerely,
Robert Hill

Hopefully that will end the calls from GoDaddy this time.

[end of Very Long Rant]

—
update, 04/13/2008:
The morons at GoDaddy’s customer service cesspool must have missed the part where I wrote, in capital letters, “DO NOT SEND ME CONFIRMATION THAT THIS HAS BEEN DONE.” Yes, they sent me confirmation it had been done:

Our support staff has responded to your request, details of which are described below:

Discussion Notes
Support Staff Response
Dear: Robert Hill

Your request has been put through, and you should get no more emails or calls. I apologize for the situation if you have any other issues please do not hesitate to call or email us back.

Thank You
Robey F.
Online Support

I’m not going to bother writing back to explain it to them.