Hi Clive, Boy, I understand your frustrations with customer service. I've had problems both with TDAmeritrade and the company, ELB, that I am a sub-registrar for. At TDA I've been complaining about the web page display of my positions where the daily gain/loss does not match two other figures they display for the same thing. I keep getting bs reasons as to why that is true and correct even though I point out that those reasons don't apply - ex-dividend, after market pricing, and a couple other I don't recall at the moment - and I am supposed to be getting the "APEX" level of support.
As to ELB, they don't even bother to reply to e-mails or phone calls. They keep sending me French language e-mails that are not even relevant to my issue, but they sure did take my money quickly enough!
As a fairly technical person and President of the BoD of a small credit union I've been trying to help with the upgrade to the burglar/bill trap/video systems. What a pain. They didn't send the camera with the specs we requested, one of the pieces of gear they sent appears to be defective, the techs sent to install the recorder had never done this one before AND they had never had any training on installation AND they were not given a manual or the proper default admin password so they could set the proper time-out for the cameras. To keep it going one had to wiggle the mouse every 29 seconds. Even more frustrating is that they didn't provide the techs with the proper gear to set up the cameras.
I guess they figure there is no ROI on training or manuals but they sure don't understand that bad service eventually results in moving your business to someone who does a better job. It sees like "preventative care" is "too expensive" but fixing it after it is broken is less costly, or at least that is seems that is the thinking. Huh? So, not bothering to change the oil regularly in your car is more expensive than replacing the engine when it fails?
Oh dear.
Best,
Allen