First of all please allow me to mention than by sharing this post on Facebook and twitter you will help other individuals. The purpose of this post is to write about my fight against Mobistar in an attempt to enforce my rights as a customer. Don’t hesitate thus to use the above Facebook and Twitter buttons. Help me make this world better. Thank you.

Let’s start with the end, that’s to say the result I achieved. It took me ca. 6 months to get this

“Office of the Ombudsman for telecommunications
Mobistar apologizes for the inconvenience and the delay in answering your request.

The operator confirms that a 2-year warranty applies to your accessory“

instead of this

“warranty denied”

or this

“Dear Customer,

per our phone call I’m herewith confirming you that the warranty on [cell phone] accessories is 6 months. This complies with European laws”

or this

“accessories are guaranteed 6 months”

Here is how my fight against Mobistar, started 6 months earlier, ended up positively

I already recounted on this blog my adventures with Mobistar. In April 2011 I tried to enforce my consumer’s rights without much success. But I didn’t give up like most of other customers.

Mobistar kept denying my rights and although I sent them complaints by registered mail (which never got answered by the way) and although I went in person to complain at their headquarters, I was eventually forced to start a procedure against them. At the end of this procedure, which was managed by the Office of the Ombudsman for telecommunications, Mobistar eventually recognized in writing that they were wrong and that a 2-year warranty does apply.

Still, I can’t be happy with this. While I was winning my fight against Mobistar other individuals were denied their rights and this must stop. There is a huge gap between Mobistar’s official speech on the importance of customer service (especially since they were turned ridiculous by the members of the Basta team) and the daily reality as it is practiced in Mobistar’s sales points. Actually it’s not a gap. There is just no fit.

Every single time I went to a Mobistar store to try to have the warranty applied, I made sure that Mobistar employees gave me in writing their denial. After I told them that the legal warranty was 2 years they all told me (without exception) that the 6-month story was what they had learned during their training. I even had an employee telling me that Mobistar was the only company in Belgium giving a 2-year warranty on cell phones. This reveals a deep lack of knowledge on the part of sales representatives.

Mobistar should actually thank me because I helped the company correct this lack of knowledge. I taught employees where they could find the terms and conditions and, more importantly, where they could read that the 2-year warranty applies. Believe it or not employees are prompt to tell you that the warranty is only 6 months per the terms and conditions but they don’t know where to find those very T&C and have never read them. When I first handed them over their own T&C and pointed at section 4.2 you can guess they had a hard time. For you information the T&C are printed on the back of each invoice. Be warned.

My quest for truth and justice allowed me to discover other abnormalities. I discovered for instance that certain stores (probably franchisees), with their own websites, modify the T&C to mention solely a 6-month warranty. Here’s a screen capture that I took on October, 30th which says that “wear parts (batteries, keyboards, protective coverings, …) are guaranteed only 6 months”

The CRIOC, which is a NGO defending consumers’ rights, dealt with this case and clearly stated that a 2-year warranty applies. No doubt about this.

Last but not least I took a picture which says a lot. While an employee of Mobistar was desperately trying to send my accessory to the repair centre (after he was forced to by the Ombudsman), he authorized me to take a picture of the screen of his computer. Believe it or not, the interface is made to have the repair under warranty denied if the purchase date is older than 6 months. And there is no way to change it as all fruitless attempts by the Mobistar employee revealed.

My take:

Enough is enough. For one client who decides to fight back, 999 other will give up and end up in buying something new.

Stop talking about customer service, customer relationship and the likes if you are not able to respect the most basic legal requirements. At the least all firms must respect the law and must make sure that their employees are trained to know the regulations which apply. It makes no sense to invent an illusory customer service promise if you break the law.

Belgian consumers are already the victims of a market without any real competition. The threats of the EU Commissioner and all new regulations aiming at lowering prices paid by consumers don’t seem to be very effective. For one cent saved on the price of a sms, you can be sure that telecom giants will slightly change their offers to compensate the loss.

Banks championned financial engineering techniques. Telecom firms invented the pricing plans engineering, a new discipline that allows them to make sure that they can’t be compared to their competitors. Without comparison points the consumer can’t choose consciously.

My fight and my little success are however nothing if my story is not diffused, if it doesn’t help other individuals and customers. I spend time fighting against injustices because I believe that I can help make this world better. Help me and help the world around you.

I have a lot of stories to tell as far as customer service is concerned. I have a lot of bad ones and very few good ones. So when I have receive an exceptionnal customer service I’m eager to tell about it.

I recently offered a stay in a fine hotel to relatives. I love to please those I love and let them enjoy experiences rather than tangible presents. My guests had just returned and 24h later I got a letter (a REAL letter; not an email) from te hotel. The manager was thanking me for having chosen his hotel and hoped he had positiely contributed to a pleasurable experience for my guests.

My take:

This letter, which is not much in itself, is an extraordinary moment of truth and an extensionof the positive experience. Kudos.

Enriching discussions can also take place online and I was very positively surprised by a discussion I had on Linkedin. If you are familiar with this website you may know that there are groups to which you can get affiliated according to your professional background or experience. Those groups are very useful if you want to discuss some specialized topics with people in the same industry.

A discussion was started on one of those groups after an information was posted regarding the strategic plan the French retailer FNAC was about to launch.  The title of this post was “FNAC reinvents customer relationship” and it explained that one of the three pillars to realize this aim was a “privileged customer relationship”.

One of the participants in the online discussion explained that FNAC’s aim was probably to create a “customer data Hub” and to use data from different sources in order to create a cross-canal approach to address customers’ needs at the level of the individual.

Alan’s explanation, which I don’t challenge because it certainly reflects the FNAC’s intentions, was however somewhat disappointing for me. Can a firm learn a lot about its customers just by looking and “playing” with data? Where should the “reinvention of the customer relationship” actually come from?

I was picturing myself in the skin of FNAC’s marketers, trying to make a sense of data stored in pivot tables, crossing data on time spent in the store with the color of the cover of the books purchased to conclude that black seems to make customers stay longer in stores.

The last word went to Brigitte Stroh-Goujard who very cleverly summed p the whole discussion: “given the complexity of the customer experience and the different distribution channels, it is certainly necessary to build a strategy backed with analytical tools. Yet the basis for any “reinvention” is still to have a real vision on the type of marketing a firm wants to have with its customers. Tools should of course complement this strategy (by enabling the cross-analysis of data). But a reinvention with tools only and certainly this mixing of data as it is currently proposed, is deemed to failure”

My take:

What about forgetting all these damned tools. What if we’d stop thinking that the light will come from softwares, data mining and the likes? At best you’ll understand WHAT the client has done but never WHY he/she has done it. Most of the time he/she doesn’t even know himself/herself!

Service quality is one of the major antecedents of customer satisfaction. Sometimes it may be impacted by little details which can ruin all your efforts.

Vanden Borre, which I mentioned in an earlier post, has done a major mistake when they handled my complain.

In the last written communication I received from them to close my case (in my favor), they wrote “we grant you the benefit of doubt”.

This is just a major mistake when writing to a customer to resolve his or her complaint. If you give someone the benefit of the doubt it means that you doubt that he or she is honest and that the complaint is justified.

My take:

Rather than discussing whether or not a complaint can be accepted, firms should realize that handling those complaints and trying to refuse comes at a cost. I’m not even mentioning retaliation risks here but merely dealing with the internal treatment costs. Stop discussing and give an immediate  refund. It will foster your professionalism in the eyes of the customer and you will slash your internal costs which will balance the cost of the refund. Of course you need to have sufficient knowledge of the cost of your internal activities (which means using ABC-costing) and monitor them. What about trying this in 2011?

Keep in mind what Hocutt et al. wrote in their paper “The art of service recovery : fact or fiction?” :

effective service recovery results in higher levels of satisfaction, and a lower tendency to express negative word-of-mouth, than if there had been no service failure. When service recovery involves high redress, responsiveness and empathy/courtesy – the best possible combination – customers are much more satisfied than when no service failure occurs. But there is no significant difference in negative word-of-mouth intentions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that consumers do not share word-ofmouth when the service experience meets their expectations – which represents the authors’ “no failure” condition

Vandenborre is part of the French retailer “Darty” which became famous thanks to its excellent slogan (and promise) “A contract of confidence” (le contrat de confiance).

What Darty realized well in advance was that consumers shopping for electronics and home appliances want to have a professional hassle-free service they can trust. Their simple idea was therefore to make the customer’s life easier with, for instance, an at-home installation of purchased products. It may seem obvious but as I stressed in a previous post some countries (lie France) just lack the service culture and Darty’s strategy was therefore a good one.

Well, not only do you need a good strategy but you must also roll it out effectively. Let me recount my personal experience (anecdotal) on which we will draw some interesting and broad conclusions.

My old 100€ dvd recorder on which I had recorded some 500+ TV shows dies. I’m aware of some compatibility problems with DVD disks between brands of recorders and decide to take a few disks with me to make sure that the next DVD recorder can actually read them.

Here I come at Vandenborre on a Saturday morning at 10:05am, 5 minutes after the stores opened is doors in Brussels’ biggest in-town mall. The store is empty. All salesmen are in the TV department, laughing and watching TV while I go through the DVD department, some 10 meters away. It is an unexciting display of equipment with a technical description on the left mentioning all too technical facts like power consumption, norms, number of channels, … I’m not a specialist and since none of the products on display are directly available in the shelves for purchase (they are stored in the warehouse like in most stores) the help of a salesman is necessary. After 10 minutes waiting I finally succeeded in catching the attention of one of the salesmen who was so busy at watching TV with his colleagues.

He comes and I explain my problem of compatibility:

Me :  “Before I choose one recorder I’d like to make sure that my old DVD can be read. Could you try one of them for me?”

He :  “no I can’t”

Me : “why is it so?”

He : “because the DVD recorders are not configured”

Me : “perhaps you could just configure one of them so that we can carry out the test?”

He : “no I can’t. Products on display are not intended to be used”

Me : “what if I buy on your advice one recorder and I can’t read my DVD’s?”

He : “just bring it back and you’ll get a refund”

Me : “OK. So which model do you recommend?”

He : “I recommend brand X with a hard disk capacity of 320Gb. The picture quality is better than the 160 and 240Gb models”

Me : “What makes the pictures better?”

He : “the electronics is better”

Me : “well, maybe it’s better but I don’t need do much capacity as I record mainly on DVD’s. I go for the 160Gb”

He : “if I were you I would stick for the 320Gb. It’s better than the 160Gb”

Me : “No, thank you. 160Gb is enough for my usage”

We then go together to the check out line.

He : “Do you want the reduced warranty or the normal one”

Me : “what do you mean with reduced warranty?”

He : “reduced warranty is 2 years from purchase date, normal warranty 5 years”

Me : “I prefer the normal warranty of course. Does it come at no costs?”

He : “no it’s XX Euros more”

Me : “in that case I go for the reduced warranty. 2 years is enough”

To make a long story short, I went back home, tried the DVD recorder and guess what, it couldn’t read my old DVD’s. I tried to call the store (I had to let the phone ring 64 times) and eventually got the very salesman I spoke to 1 hour sooner. Call the hotline he said, I can’t decide whether or not we will refund your purchase since since you used the equipment already.

How was I supposed to discover the compatibility issue without unpacking and installing the equipment then ?

The hotline refused to take the recorder back because of the company policy and I had to threaten them in writing to finally get the right to bring the product back.

My take:

My personal story may seem anecdotal but reveals several points that Vandenborre got totally wrong.

1. Service at the point of sale
   1. Salesmen showed no empathy and are not willing to help the customer promptly and spontaneously.
   2. Products on display are non functional and can not be tested: how is the customer supposed to form a judgment about it then?
   3. Shelves are crowded with products which are unattractively displayed
   4. Salesmen are not knowledgeable about the products they sell.
      Remember, the recorder with the largest capacity was supposed, according to the salesman, to have a better picture quality. I called the manufacturer and this argument proved to be wrong. The salesman just tried to push the sale of a more expensive product by lying.
2. Incentives
   Most HR-specialists will tell you about the marvelous power of financial incentives on salesmen performances. I would like you to remember that bad incentives will have the worst impact you can imagine on the service quality and on the customer experience.
   In the case of Vandenborre and Darty, salesmen get incentives on the sales of extra warranty leading, in my case, to a salesman making an unlawful statement (the “reduced” warranty he was speaking about was actually the legal 2-year European warranty and the “normal” warranty an extended warranty proposed by Vandenborre) to make extra money.
   Make sure that you set the right incentives in order to have the interests of your customers served first.

A few weeks ago I announced on this blog that I started a small-scale study on real estate agencies in Brussels. One week after the launch the results were already catastrophic, the response rate being very low.

The method of the study was the following. I sent a detailed inquiry to the first 58 agencies (in terms of goods for sale) of Brussels, requiring that they send me their offers. I chose to inquire on purpose for an upper-tier priced building (priced at €1m), assuming that a higher sale price would be an incentive for real estate agents to answer more rapidly (their fee being a percentage of the price).

On the graphic below you can see the evolution of the response rate.

Out of the 58 inquiries I sent on day 1, I received a cumulative response rate of 12%.

I received 4 answers the first week, 2 of them being unqualified (meaning that the building proposed were not matching with my criteria), 1 was qualified, and 1 was a message to apologize that no building was available at that time which matched my criteria.

I received 2 more qualified answers on week 2, and surprisingly a answer on week 4. The latter was probably the most unusual of all since I didn’t include even a note, just an attached pdf file depicting a building which was at the complete opposite of what I was looking for.

My take:

Real-estate agencies in Brussels are far from being professional and depict practices which are very amateur-tainted. My little study revealed a response rate of 12%, which means that 88% of real-estate agencies didn’t even make the effort to answer (remember here what the criteria to judge service quality are).

Not only do they fail to answer enquiries but they also fail to return calls or even answer the phone. Real-estate agents seems to completely misunderstand how best practices could enhance their credibility and financial results and browsing a catalogue of real-estate ads gives another look into their amateurism. The vast majority of pictures depicted in the ads are taken without any understanding of how to hook the customer which results most of the time in poor view or even unsharp pictures.