Gypsy vs. Jawbone

In an earlier post I talked about the poor customer service that I have been receiving from Jawbone when it comes to their UP fitness band. Now I have been having back and forth conversations with them about their product because I decided to go to twitter. Here is the thing, they keep promising to get back to me with answers about why I received such poor customer service, but all I have been getting is standard prompted messages about the issues.

Now I returned their device weeks ago, and the only thing I asked was for them to look over my tickets and emails and see that I wasn't getting helped. Instead Jawbone has taken it upon themselves to open new tickets for me concerning a device I no longer own. I have told them this 4 times but because they can't seem to read they haven't caught onto that yet. 

On May 17, I posted another message on twitter, about yet another band that went bad. That was 4 bands that I got that had issues. Now I paid around $350 in gas, warranties, and the devices themselves because I want to be healthier. The first few days it worked great then it was all downhill from there. Needless to say I was fed up and let them know it. They just now responded to the tweet and even though I told them in a direct message on twitter that I didn't submit a ticket for the fourth and final band because of their poor customer service. I was pretty much blown off because they took it upon themselves to open another ticket for me. 

Once again I was emailed a promoted response and asked for information I already told them they weren't getting, because I was done. I told them that I had returned the product and the only thing I wanted was to know why their support team was unwilling to help me and put the blame on Best Buy,

Here was their first response:

"Hi Sara,

Thanks for reaching out to us on Twitter. I have created a support ticket for your partner, and a member for our Customer Care Team will be in touch shortly. Let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. Also, feel free to respond with your partner's contact info, so we can reach out to her directly.

All the best,

Alexandra Howard"

I got this after I had already told them on twitter I no longer had the device nor did I feel the need to submit a ticket for the fourth device. So I replied to them with this:

"I'm the one who purchased both bands so I will be the one communicating with you. I don't want her to go through the same hassle I have been going through because of getting defective bands. That and your support team is total crap for not listening to the issues instead gave standard prepared responses to my issues. I shouldn't have had to put in 4 tickets to get my issue resolved and it took me going back to Best Buy to fix the issue which meant returning it and getting a completely new device."

To which they responded with:

"Hi Sara,

My name is Mina and I work on the Customer Advocacy team here in our headquarters in San Francisco.

I am sorry to hear that you had to go through so much hassle to get a replacement. I would like to personally provide assistance with your partner's band and make sure that everything goes smoothly.

If you could let me know a little bit about the issues that your partner is having, it would be very helpful. Also, please provide either the band's Serial Number or the email address associated with your partner's UP account.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I am always happy to help!

Thanks again, Sara. I look forward to resolving this for you guys!

Mina "

Now this told me that once again! I was ignored and given another email about something I don't even own anymore. I am fed up to say the least. I have worked customer service, so I know how it goes but these emails have all been the same and nothing ever got resolved. 

So, I took to twitter again cause I was just done. 

"@GypsyGothika: @Jawbone you really need a course in customer service. Stop saying you will get back to me with your standardized emails & DMs."

Honestly I am tired of them sending me generic responses that aren't going anywhere and are really a waste of my time and there is nothing I hate more then going around in circles with customer service reps. I hate that if it isn't on their script that they try and get you back to what is scripted. 

What in the hell happened to customer service? I mean when did they stop listening and start depending on scripts to tell them what to say? To tell us how to fix things even though it had been previously stated that what they were asking had already been done, and didn't work? How many tickets do people have to put in before they are finally given a solution? And why in the hell does it take 2-4 weeks to replace a product that someone has owned less than A week? Because customer service is going down the tubes that's why.

Being that I am just done. Completely and entirely done with this whole mess I replied to jawbone with this:

"I don't know what pisses me off, the fact that I get standardized messages from you all, or the fact that no one actually reads the messages I have sent. The bands were returned to Best Buy because they didn't function properly and when I tried to get help, all you guys could say was to reset it. 4 tickets I put in for the same damn issue and every time I got the same damn response. Then I took it to twitter and all of a sudden you all start acting like you cared yet I'm still getting the run around. 

I have now told your company 4 times, not including the support tickets, that I returned your product to Best Buy and went with a new brand because I was tired of putting up with poor customer service. 

I put that on twitter and suddenly you all wanted to help again but still gave me the run around and then tried to blame it on Best Buy. I'm quite tired of having the same conversation with you people over and over again. 

The bands we got either didn't vibrate at all or wouldn't stop vibrating even when in movement. You are welcome to look at my passed tickets using this same email address and you can see that your support team wasn't all that interested in helping me with the matter.

Even when it got to the point that your support staff agreed that the band needed to get replaced I was told it would take 2-4 weeks to get a new one. I had the band for about a week before it went bad so not only did I spend 129.99 on the band but I also got a 19.99 warranty through Best Buy (thank god) that is not including the 4 trips I had to make back Best Buy to replace the damn things because you all couldn't do it any faster not did you seem interested in trying to make your customers happy. 

I ended up spending close to $350 dollars on products that didn't work and that was stupid on my part. If you all want make this right then I would be more than grateful to have the $30 dollars in gas back that I had to use going to and from the store. Seeing as I can't get back the countless hours of time, there is really nothing you all can do to resolve the issue because I already took care of it. I moved on to a new brand with better customer service."

Ya it may be a little harsh but this is like ticket number 10 that has been opened and never resolved. They don't follow through with anything but "let's try resetting the band." Well that can't happen if I don't have the device which I have told your company now 4 times. 

I'm not saying that people should boycott Jawbone I'm saying we need to fix customer service because obviously its broken. I am tired of the back and forth and hope that this blog gets companies to open there eyes. Stop scripting your calls, have your people actually listen to what is being said, and if someone owns a product for less than a week don't tell them it's going to take up to a month to get a replacement. That is what kills me about this whole thing, they couldn't be troubled to pay a little extra to overnight me a new band, noooooo they said I was better off going to Best Buy, so I did. 

I hope the next response I get from the company, if I get one at all as they don't respond if it's not part of their script, is something that shows they have actually taken a moment to give a damn about everything I went through. I guess it is asking too much to be asked to be treated like a human and not a computer.

Sorry for the long rant but I felt this had to be shown, because something has to change. 

Sincerely,

Gypsy

Added 5/28/13 6:14pm: This was the response I got from Jawbone with response to my email. This just goes to show how out of touch and out of sync the companies is, that they didn't even bother to tell the rep that I had returned the product.


"Hi Sara,

Thanks for getting back to us. It wasn't clear to me that you have already returned your partner's band, so I do apologize for my previous response. I totally understand how it might have come off as standardized.

Once again, we are sorry to hear that you had such a negative customer service experience and thank you for your feedback.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you."

Thank you jawbone for not giving a damn.

Fitness Bands & Poor Customer Service (rant)

Hello readers!

I haven't posted in awhile, because I haven't really had much to say. I have been trying to get this whole diet and fitness thing under control and it is harder than I thought it would be. I also realized yesterday that I was doing some things wrong, but you live and you learn right? Of course!

Anyways... moving on.

Lately I have been doing a lot of research on Fitness bands. I did have a blog entry about the Jawbone Up but I removed it. Now, I want to start by saying that the Up is a good product.... when it works. However if you have an issue with the Up getting help is like pulling teeth. I had my Up for less than a week and it started to malfunction. It has this timer that you can set when you have been idle too long, thing basically reminds you to get off your behind and do something. I liked that feature it was the reason I bought the band. That and it helped you track your sleep and also helped monitor your steps. Well the awesome band turned into a horrible nightmare after only a few days. My idle alarm went off every thirty minutes regardless of if I was moving or not. Naturally I contacted the customer support and went through all of that. I had 4 conversations with their customer service in a 24 hour period.

You know what they did? Absolutely nothing, all of them told me the same thing 'well it looks like we need to reset the band.' I explained that I had already done that and they said to try and reset it again and to contact them should the problem persist. 3 online sessions and one email later, I still had issues with the band going off every 30 minutes even when I turned the alarm off. It was a nightmare and a half cause I got woke up every 30 minutes. Now, when this band vibrates you can hear it, it is louder then when a cell phone vibrates, which was great until it went wrong.

So after I got no help from Jawbone, I contacted Best Buy where I purchased the product from. I finally got help! They looked up when I purchased the band and told me I was well within the 15 day return policy and that they would be happy to take the product back with no questions asked. The woman was very kind, apologized for the band and told me that when I came to return it to seek out the employe who is designated to the fitness band area to get fitted with a suitable band for me.

Well I took the band back and decided okay, it just has to be this band so I will give it another go. I get home set everything up again and nothing happened. The thing didn't vibrate at all cue another conversation to Jawbone, and two resets later I took the band back to Best Buy again and returned the thing. Now, I know that working in customer service there are times when you simply cannot help a customer because nothing makes them happy. Thing is I was happy, I just wanted my band replaced because it wasn't working, they told me that would take 2-4 weeks to receive. I spent $129.99 for a product that worked less than a week and now they want me to wait longer for a product? No thank you, I told them I would be returning it to the store and the store could deal with them from that point on.

I was so frustrated with this product, if only because I paid $129.99 plus three trips to Best Buy which is roughly about 10 dollars in gas for me because they aren't close. So I ended up spending over $150 dollars on something that was supposed to encourage me to move more. Needless to say I took my frustrations to Twitter and caught the companies attention pretty quickly. They followed me and sent me a direct message asking where I bought the product from. I explained that it was Best Buy and they said they would look into this... like it was something that Best Buy had done to their product to make it not work.

So... hold on a minute.... now not only were then just taking me through the reset process but then they proceed to blame the faulty product on where I bought it? Come on now, that would be like me saying that letting my milk spoil in my fridge is all Walmart's fault. They didn't want to take responsibility for their faulty product.

They asked me for the ticket numbers and email in which I used to communicate with their staff and just now got told that they appreciated my feedback. Now the thing that really pissed me off about all of this was the fact that no one cared. It didn't matter how many times I contacted them I got the same generic response each time, and if there is anything that gets under my skin more, it is generic prompt read responses. None of them took a moment to actually listen to the problem, none of them cared that this device was causing me stress. I couldn't get them to answer any questions outside the prompted answers or 'if you would please follow the instructions we are sure this will fix your problem.' The when all was said and done after all the emails all the online chats and all the issues their final reply was 'thanks for your feedback.'

They didn't care that I wasted nearly 6 hours of time trying to get a replacement band. They didn't care that I am jobless and couldn't afford the gas to keep going back and forth. They didn't care about anything that I had to say until I took to Twitter... then they suddenly cared, apologized for the faulty device and said they would be looking into why I wasn't helped. You want to know why I wasn't helped? Because companies have stopped training people to listen and started training them to read a prompt. I am pretty sure if any one of those associates had listened to the fact that I have an Anxiety disorder and the band was making it worse, then they probably would have acted sooner. Nope, they just kept going off their prompt because hey, they already had my money why should they care?

So, I ended up going back to Best Buy and got a whole new band all together. I purchased the BodyMedia armband because I know it works. I know it works because its the same model that they use on the Biggest Loser. At first I was like great, now I have to pay a subscription fee for the band on top of my subscription fee to Jillian Michaels, so I was stressed out. Thankfully I finally had some good news and luck on my side, because I already had a membership to JM I could just sync my band up to my account and not pay any additional money. So now I am paying $4 dollars a week to help get my butt into shape and a band that syncs with the program so I get more accurate counts for my calorie burn and so forth.

 Here is what the information looks like when going through JM website. On a side note the band will not automatically send the data to your JM app you have to sync it with your computer to get the information off. This isn't actually a bad thing because you aren't supposed to wear this band 24/7, they don't want you to exceed 23 hours a day. So, I take my band off for an hour a day to sync and charge the band at once. If you want results throughout the day I highly recommend the bluetooth version of the band and use the app to see your progress throughout the day. If you don't need fitness advice you can simply use the BodyMedia app but you have to pay for their subscription if you go without the Jillian Michaels app subscription. 

Now, I also want to let you all now that I am not saying that the Up isn't worth it, because it totally is as long as the band is working. I was thrilled with my results until it went faulty but at the end of the day I switched to a new band because I wasn't treated like a person, I was treated like a robot and felt like I didn't matter to them. Needless to say, if I know the product improves and that I wouldn't have those issues again, I would get the Up. It was comfortable, and looks like a bracelet so I didn't feel like anyone was staring at me. Sadly, that is not how it turned out, and I went with something I had more faith would work. Now, I also want to mention that Jawbone and BodyMedia are merging, I just hope the poor customer service doesn't continue when that happens.

Sorry for the long rant, but I just felt like I needed to write this entry because Fitness bands are becoming a huge thing. People want them to be fashionable and they want to know that they work. We shell out a lot of money for these things to work and to keep up motivated, so mine as well get the best quality possible right? Right! I would still like to encourage anyone and everyone who is trying to get into shape, to seriously look into the fitness bands. However, when looking into them keep in mind what you want the band to tell you.  Every band has its own perks, advantages, and disadvantages. Do your research, ask your friends, and don't be afraid to talk to sales associates. I highly recommend getting a product from a third party source such as Best Buy, as they tend to offer better warranties and if you get it from Best Buy you can get an additional 2 year warranties (mine was $19.99) and if something goes wrong you just go to the store and they replace it with a new one. That and most stores have a 15 day return policy for electronic devices, but always be sure to ask if your product falls within the 15 day return policy guidelines. Some stores will not take back an opened product.

I hope this entry helps someone!

Sincerely,
Gypsy

It's Okay To Have a Bad Day

Hello Readers,

So the last couple of days have been hard on me, not that anything bad happened, but that I started fall back into old habits. I made my favorite kind of rice and told myself that I was only going to eat one serving. I dished out my portion and put the rest in a container to have another day... ya I ate the whole box. The next day I did the same thing, told myself I had self control to not eat the whole box and made my plate of food dished out my one serving again, and again I devoured almost the whole box. So then I decided that I was going to avoid cooking, just eat salads and things that didn't require me using the stove, then I ordered a pizza. Needless to say habits are hard to break but that isn't a reason to break down and give up.

Today I decided it was a good day to start over, because that is allowed. I went to the store and looked over various products read labels and made better choices. I stocked up my fridge and my freezer on things that would be healthy and you know what? I threw out all the things from my freezer that I didn't need. I got rid of my ice cream, TV dinners, and various other, bad for you products. It felt good to get all of that out of the house and get rid of the temptation. Now I still have several boxes of my rice left but I am going to use it so that I can learn to control my portions better. It is something we all have to learn at some point.

I find that I am constantly reminding myself that I am only human and that I am entitled to make mistakes. I think as a person we often forget that mistakes happen, they are things that we cannot avoid even if we wanted to. Our mistakes help guide us in new paths and through challenges in life. My mistakes gave me the drive to finally throw away all the things that tempt me and I will tell you what it felt good.

Not only did I throw away the foods that I shouldn't but I also invested some money in myself. I bought myself Zumba so that I could be more active at home. It isn't much but being jobless and having nothing else to do I figured I could at least try something. I know most would say that I should just go outside or go to a gym, well I have another complication that has the odds against me, I get exercise induced migraines. What does that mean exactly? If I do too much exercise then my head decided it is going to hate me and cause me to go to bed. Right now I am working with my doctor to try and find a treatment plan that will help me be able to tolerate longer excises but for now I have to keep things at a low level of movement.

It sucks but I am working with what I got, so for now instead of concentrating on the 'eat less, move more' I am focusing on eating less but still staying healthy. I am trying to walk more two, and this Jawbone Up has been very handy.

That is all I really have for now, I just want those of you who read this to know that its okay to have a bad day, or bad days, bad weeks, or even bad months. What truly matters at the end of it is what you do next. Are you going to continue to have bad days and drown your sorrows in self destructive ways, or are you going to do something about it? Me I am choosing to do something about it. If you need help, guidance, or just support, please feel free to leave a comment I will help anyways I can.

Sincerely,

Gypsy