Monday, December 11, 2006

Today's Customer Service Villain is eFax

I wrote the other day about how my fax to email provider upset me with "no-reply" emails. Today's experience with them was even worse - so I'm naming names!

I have been using eFax for ages, but when I got an email about a 30% price hike, I decided to investigate alternatives. I discovered that there are lots, and they are all cheaper. So today I set up a new account with another provider and then went to the eFax site to cancel my account.

Of course, they're from the AOL school of "let's make it really, really hard to cancel," so it took me a while to find a page that said how: click a button for live web chat with a service rep who would take care of it.

Except that the chat application doesn't work in either Firefox or Internet Explorer - it just produced an error. So, I clicked the "contact us" link and found an 800 number.

I called that, and jumped through a bunch of voicemail menus, until I got the support option - which was a recording telling me to dial a different Los Angeles phone number.

Grr. So I dialed that number, jumped through more menus, and got to the cancellation option, and got another recording: telling me that the only way to do it was through the web chat application.

Which doesn't work.

I went back to the site and did find a support request form, which I completed explaining everything that had gone wrong, along with the request to cancel the account.

While there I noticed that they have a credit card that expired last month. It's funny; last time a credit card expired, I had all kinds of issues with services billed to it not being able to bill me. This time I got a lot of emails warning me an advance that this would happen, and asking me to provide new billing information. Which seems like a sensible thing; how hard is it to find every customer whose card expires next month and send them an email?

Too hard for eFax apparently. Which is convenient, because I have a feeling that my support request is in some scary limbo where it may never be seen. At least the card information they have isn't valid.

What's really funny: they charge more than all their competitors. Shouldn't that at least come with good service? The difference setting up the account with a new provider was striking; when I wanted to make sure I got a Houston number, I used their (functional) web chat to get someone, who said, "Here's an 800 number, call me and we'll take care of it" - and he did, in minutes. It was a pleasure.

Good riddance to eFax.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey John, what was the name of the new provider you signed up with, and how do the rest of us dissatisfied efax customers get in touch with them.

John Whiteside said...

I went with MyFax - www.myfax.com. Easy setup, they were incredibly helpful at making sure I got a Houston phone number, everything done in minutes. So far so good.

And cheaper than eFax (like, oh, everybody).

Anonymous said...

I also use MyFax. It is a great service and the company is excellent to deal with!