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Lycos Deletes Emails and Says 'Too Bad!'
Billosaur writes "The Consumerist brings us a tale of woe which is apparently generating outrage in some quarters, along with death threats. Lycos email customer Whitney did not access her account for 30 days. This resulted in Lycos deleting over two years worth of email. It isn't so much Lycos' policy that's the problem (though that requires some scrutiny), but the response of the 'manager of all of Customer Service,' Mike Jandreau. Apparently he's not too service oriented, as his exchange with Whitney shows. And since this story was posted to The Consumerist, apparently Mr. Jandreau has become the focus of some unwanted attention. Of course, his final response to her might have something to with it: 'I'm sorry, no one here has any intentions of helping you with anything. I am the manager of all of Customer Service. There is no one higher than me that you will speak with. You violated our policy, which is, despite what you say, completely clear. No one is holding anything hostage. Your e-mails have been completely deleted, and no amount of money can now restore them.'"
What do you want for free? You think you have the right to escalate the matter to the CEO of the entire company over your FREE email account? Gawd quit whining and move on.
stupid!
I have a hard time with this kind of reaction from Lycos, and other companies. How can they get away with being assholes?
Considering this is the first time Lycos has been in the news for several years now, I would say the answer to your question is: they don't. They're a dead company walkin', and anyone worth their salt has probably high tailed it for greener pastures long ago. All they've got left are power hungry douche bags like Mr. Jandreau.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Now you've completely ruined your chance at ever getting your email back because, when an asshole pissed you off, you decided to be an even bigger asshole.
Who knows how this case will turn out. But based on experience, I totally disagree with that statement.
It has been my experience that when a company's customer service reps give you the run around, the absolute most effective way to halt the run-around process and get some relevant support is to be a total ass. I believe it is a modern version of "the squeaky wheel gets oiled."
My process is pretty simple, the customer service people get two chances to actually provide service. After the second non-helpful response, I start in with the vulgarities and go from there. That tactic almost always causes an immediate escalation to someone who will make an effort to fix my problem.
I think this is a terrible way to run a customer service group, because it encourages customers to treat the reps as poorly as possible. I suspect that the companies that run this way (almost all of them) are quite willing to sacrifice the mental/emotional health of their front-line support reps because there are plenty of people who won't assert themselves enough to break past the run-around, thus saving the company lots of money by avoiding the costs of supporting those who give up.
So, while I totally understand about how much it sucks to be a cog in the wheel of the machine, I think your blame is misplaced. The guilty party isn't the irate and abusive customer, it is the employer who sets up the system so as to cause customers to act abusively if they actually want a reasonable level of service.