Failing causes anger. Seen at the offices of the newspaper that writer Adam Gallardo’s wife works at.

1. Offering discounts and lower prices to new customers without making the same offer to existing customers. Telecoms, cable companies and others are notorious for this.
2. Telling the world you used research to discover the obvious. A well known Travel and Foreign Currency Company recently did this when they announced that they were adding a consumer travel ratings and review service to their website after ‘research’ found that customers were using third party sites for this purpose. Duh. Or, as David Ogilvy said, “Research is often used the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.�
3. Telemarketing. Uggh. Let’s annoy and pester potential customers into buying from us. So, awful the Canadian government had to outlaw it.
4. Offshore customer service. Need I say more?
5. Treating incoming customer phone calls like a relay baton. To add insult to injury, using an automated computer voice and canned music interludes to do so.
6. Creating a product without involving the customer and then creative testing the product’s ad campaign in focus groups. Makes a lot of sense.
7. Revising the sunset clause on a loyalty points program and then retiring the members points, without prior notification. Lots of disgust about that one.
8. Calling a new, unknown and unadvertised product a brand.
9. Running boring, predictable ads and then claiming that advertising doesn’t work. Or, worse, that it’s dead.
10. Running an ad campaign telling people you’ve changed, rather than spending the money on, you know, actually changing. There are at least two high profile companies doing this currently.

 

This is just a start. Add yours in the comments.

 

Photo: Robert Budde

I received a letter today dated August 14, 2009 from Aeroplan that reads:

Dear Mr. Holmes:

We are pleased to forward this mailing and apologize for the delay. Unfortunately, your account did not reflect your current address; however, our records have now been updated.

Your participation in Aeroplan is appreciated. Should you require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Jerry McDonnell
Customer Services Mnager - Aeroplan

Encl.

The enclosure was another letter dated June 16, 2009, that informed me (for the fist time) of Aeroplan's mileage expiry policy:

In order to keep an Aeroplan account active and avoid the expiration of all miles in the account, members must make at least one qualifying transaction - either by earning or redeeming miles - every 12 months. Aeroplan will expire miles in the account if more than 12 months has passed from the date of the last qualifying activity.

According to our records, the miles in your account will expire on August 11, 2009 unless you make at least one qualifying transaction prior to this date.

We look forward to your ongoing participation in Aeroplan!

As you can see, Aeroplan informed me of not only their new expiry policy, but that my miles had expired under this new policy. I was informed of this a week after the fact (by the time I received the letter in the mail).

So, I called the customer service line. After the obligatory punishment of having to endure 15 minutes of bad music while waiting, a customer service rep finally answered and I filled him in on the details. Rather than customer service, he arrogantly informed me that it was up to me to check Aeroplan's website in order to keep up to date on their changing policies. That in fact, the loss of the miles was my fault for not doing so, regardless of the letter being sent after the expiration of the miles.

To make matters worse, the "customer service" representative was unbelievably arrogant and rude.

He seemed to take great pleasure in informing me that I just lost 16,000 miles gained from a trip that my wife and I took to Hong Kong last summer.

(As an aside, on the trip back from Hong Kong, they served food steeped in peanut sauce, without informing anybody. This is a common allergy that I have as well and it's quite serious. With great discomfort, I was able to recover with the help of a doctor on the flight. Afterwards, and despite a record of the event, I was offered no compensation. But I digress).

The arrogant French service rep, speaking in English, then went on to state that this wasn't the first time I had lost miles. He gleefully told me that I had lost 51,000 miles in 2007. Which I wasn't informed of until after the fact either.

Air Canada is an airline that's been in trouble for a long time. Like many other failing corporations, it's steeped in a culture of arrogance. The customer seems to represent an unpleasant cost of doing business, rather than the reason they are in business. The attitude is exacerbated by the Canadian government constantly propping them up.

Air Canada's loyalty program is an oxymoron. It just cost them the business of this customer and hopefully anybody else in my circle of influence.

#fail.