I am not sure if the older you get the less flexible and forgiving you become.  Over the years I have exhibited a very high tolerance for iffy or downright awful customer service.

As time has progressed, my patience has diminished.  In the past couple of years I have sent written complaints to the President of Bank of Montreal, President of BMW Canada and President of SunLife Canada.  All of my issues were resolved quickly.

Today I had one of my worst experiences ever.  It was with the BMW Assist call center and unfortunately for my loyal readers, I am going to rant about it a bit.

Customer Care Agents (nice title, not accurate)

I received a letter today – Sept 28th.  The letter was dated September 9th and advised my BMW Assist subscription expired on Aug 25th and this was my last chance to renew by September 24th.  After that service would be permanently deactivated and I could not renew.    Given Sept 24th had already passed this was not too helpful.

I had called the BMW Assist call center on August 11th and requested they renew my subscription so I thought an error had been made and I would just call their friendly Customer Care Agents and they would help me and fix the mistake.

Hard to Believe

The agent that answered my call investigated and told me he could not renew my subscription and I would need to contact my BMW Center.  BMW Assist did not renew Canadian subscriptions.   He was unable to tell me how to contact my BMW Center (address or phone #) but this is what I had to do.  I protested that I had renewed my subscription through this call center two years ago and when I had called on August 11th they told me it would be renewed so I was positive they could do it and if he couldn’t help me I wanted to talk to his supervisor.

Supervisor Phil (operator #7091) came on the line and I got a better story.  He clarified they could not renew my subscription because it had been permanently canceled on September 24th.  Maybe my local BMW Center could help (what that was, where it was and how it could help eluded him).  He agreed I had called on Aug 11th but had not provided renewal instructions.  I asked if my word that I had in fact provided those instructions was not good enough.  He said it did not matter he could not renew my subscription if he wanted to.  I suggested BMW Assist had made a mistake and should fix the mistake they had made.  Phil did not agree with me.

I advised Phil that I would be escalating to Andrea Piotrowski the Customer Services Manager who sent me the notification letter about the last chance to renew.   I asked for her e-mail address but Phil would not provide it.

And that’s all folks

So that is my rant in a nutshell.  Now I am off to write my letter to Andrea Piotrowski.  I am going to include the link to this post in my note to her so she can comment on this post directly if she so desires.