My experience in the last six months or so trying to call Schwab has been very poor. Long hold times, and on one call I was unable to choose an option to speak with a live rep until going through an extremely long message about activating "Voice ID," and there did not seem to a way to opt out of it.
Yes, they have a phone number, but I have zero confidence in my ability to reach a live rep when it really matters.
And it isn't just Schwab. I am certainly not the first person to make this observation, but every financial institution--whether it's a bank, broker, insurance company or something else--seems to have decided that COVID-19 has given them an excuse for really, really bad customer service and long hold times. Of course, it doesn't make sense. If everyone can, or in some cases must work from home, they should have more reps available--not less. A reduction in available staff may have made sense at the very beginning of the lockdown back in March, when many companies were not equipped to allow their customer service reps to work from home. But now it's just a bogus excuse to cut back on service, and force people to conduct business through e-mail or secure messaging instead of by telephone.
And this is a trend that began long before the pandemic.
Almost two years ago I got into a dispute with Spotify about a gift card that could not be activated. They have never had telephone customer service. When I e-mailed them, I got a canned autoreply suggesting that I communicate with their support team on Twitter.
And of course, the Twitter account, like most support services through e-mail, is staffed by dozens of people. While working a single issue, you have to exchange messages with multiple team members, and they don't always read the entire thread. So to put it bluntly, sometimes they really don't know what the f**k they're talking about. It's really disgusting.
My dispute with Spotify escalated to the point where I filed an arbitration case. And even their staff attorney would not give me a real office telephone number where I could reach him. Keep in mind that this was in early 2019, long before COVID-19. The only phone number I ever got was a cell phone that forwarded into Google Voice if he did not answer.
Spotify has even stated "We do not have a telephone number" in some of their SEC filings. No joke.
It's utterly ridiculous.
The one advantage to e-mail and messaging is that you get a great "paper" trail of the complete incompetence of some of these support reps.
I can't disclose the details, but my case against Spotify was settled, before reaching a full arbitration hearing, in a way that was very favorable for me. And pursuant to their terms of service, they had to pay all the arbitration filing fees, too.
All over a $30 gift card that their support team could not get activated. I drilled them a second as*hole, and thoroughly enjoyed the process.
BMK
