Gary's Boring Blog

Customer Service, 3 Stories

I'm still not exactly sure where I stand on customer service in Japan. I have had a lot of great experiences, some not so great ones. As Gen has suggested, the general level of service is very high, but asking for something a little 'out of the ordinary' or unusual often causes problems for Japanese customer service staff (the same can be said of other countries as well). Some recent experiences:

1)When Dad was in Japan, he wanted some Kawasaki motorcycle goods. We looked around and couldn't find anything, but eventually he found a couple of t-shirts in an ad for a mail-order firm. We ordered these 'free size' shirts, but they arrivced after Dad and Marlene had already left. The problem was that they were not free size at all. The label said M, indicating medium. We checked the size, and since the shirts were a tight fit on me, there was no way they were going to fit my Dad. So, we looked through the catalog for other goods, but there was nothing else which looked appropriate, so we called and asked for a refund. The mail order company refused, insisting that the shirts were free size. When Megumi pointed out that the labels said M, they replied that in Japan, Medium size is free size. Megumi was insistent, however, and eventually the supervisor got angry and said "OK we'll give you your money back but don't think you can order from us again. We won't accept orders from you ever again"", and slammed the phone down.
Let me just say that once more, he refused any further business from us, and slammed the phone down on a customer. I have a copy of Customer Service for Dummies, which I was tempted to send the idiot. Unfortunately, it's in English...

2)Soundhouse is a musical instruments store. They sell amps, guitars, and all other manner of accesories. I bought some Shure earphones from them a few months back. As often happens with earphones/headphones, one of the wires seems to have broken or shorted, leaving me with sporadic crackling etc in the right ear. When I sent them a mail asking what to do, they offered to pay the costs of sending the earphones back to them. A day or two after sending the earphones, I received an email telling me that they were sending the fixed earphones back (fixed/new, it did not specify). Fast, efficient service, a very happy customer.

3)Finally, Sony Finance. I applied for a Sony Finance/ANA credit card in order to build up some air miles. When I started using it, I realised the limit was only 200,000yen, or about 1,000 GBP. Now, I have been a credit card holder for about 12 years. Besides the new ANA card, I hold 3 other cards, two of which are gold cards with limits of 2,000,000yen and 3,000,000yen, enough to buy a new car. When I started using the ANA card, I was refused service a couple of times becasue I was over my limit, for the first time in 12 years of holding a credit card. This was obviously somewhat annoying, so I asked Sony Finance to increase my limit. After much fighting and arguing, they eventually agreed to up my limit to a massive 300,000.

One of my other cards is now up for renewal, and I have to pay the yearly fee. Since I would like to shift my card usage over to the ANA card, I am considering cancelling the other card (it's Citibank), but with such a low limit, I can't do that (for reference, if we wanted to buy 2 ANA tickets to London with our ANA card it would cost almost 300,000yen). I decided to call Sony Finance again, and request a higher limit again. Once more, I had to argue with them for about 20 minutes. I got so frustrated, I actually asked them if they understood the credit card business. I was a little condescending:

You get commission each time I use your card - you understand that, right?
It is in your interests for me to use your card, right?
(after being told that their policies and Citibank's are not the same- what Citibank does is irrelevant)
...I understand that, but you are competing against Citibank, aren't you? They are in the same business as you - are you aware of this???

Eventually, I got them to up my limit to 500,000yen, the very minimum I consider acceptable. Obviously, they have riske management procedures inplace, and don't want to give too much money away to 'risky' customers. However, I never thought I would have to reason with a credit card company to give me more credit. If anyone reading this from overseas has problems managing their credit, moving to Japan should help you manage your finances better!!!

Posted by Gary at June 11, 2004 11:31 AM