My mortgage company Countrywide made the wonderful decision awhile back to start charging people $5 or so if their mortgage payment is after the due date but BEFORE the grace period of the 15th. Why? What is it hurting them? Nothing. But what this means is that there really is no greace period. Thanks Countrywide. Thanks for nothing.But that is not the point of this post. My point is that I used their website to send them some email on my thoughts about this topic. Not a harsh, violent email. But a pretty stern one. And after the submission their web page told me (in the loving caring way that a web page can) that my comments had been accepted and someone would be getting back with me.

Guess how long it took them to get back with me ? I’ll let you know when they actually do. That was a month or two ago.

If you are going to put customer service request forms, contact us forms, or any type of electronic communication on your web site you’d better have a process set up to read it and respond to it. For some of the better sites I’ve been to my request is instantly assigned a case number, and that case number is sent back to me right away. A solution does not have to be this sophisticated. But if I as a paying customer have something to say I’d like to know that a) Somebody hears me and b) Somebody responds to me. I think that is taught in customer service 101.

So… Countrywide. Get with the program. A big thumbs down for you.