Few things are more frustrating to me then when I want to pay for something and they make it hard for me to do so. Some examples:
Wells Fargo – As of now, they have no on-line bill paying available and we prefer not to mail checks. So, we call them. However, we’ve found that it’s quite a pain to do it that way, as you have to “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” stuff for a while before you get to a human. Then they have to look up your account, find your vehicle, see what you owe, get your info, blah blah blah. It’s easiest if we let the payment get late and then let them call us, because they already have our info in front of them and we don’t have to sit on hold. That works great, but it costs more (late charge).
Wal-Mart / Target / Etc – Long lines. It drives us all nuts. If you have so many customers buying things at your store, then you should be making more money and you could afford a few more clerks, right?
Home Depot – I have a few gripes about this place. First, they used to be great. You could go down almost any aisle and find a person in an orange apron and get excellent help. Now it seems you need to hunt all over the store to find help. The salespeople are still very friendly and knowledgeable, but there seems to be far fewer of them lately.
My second gripe with them deals with their long lines. I was there on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago and it was packed. They had about half of the registers open and the lines were pretty long. That would have been bad enough, but they had an employee behind us trying to sell us Home Depot credit cards! Now, I don’t mind if they push their cards on us, but not when things are crazy and they obviously need another register or five open. This woman selling credit cards should have been behind a register to help keep the paying customers happy. I don’t blame her, as it was likely a manager’s decision. The bottom line is that I don’t care whose decision it was – it shouldn’t have been like that.
It’s really quite simple:
A – You’re a business
B – You want my money
C – I want to give you my money
D should be “take it!”, but it’s not always that simple, is it?
I’ve been using Wells Fargo online bill pay for years. Are you sure we’re talking about the same Wells Fargo with billions in assets? I’m not saying that I love Wells Fargo, but they do have bill pay.
They’ve added it since I made that post, so it’s an improvement. It’s still a pain to use and they charge way too much for their “convenience fee”, but it’s a step in the right direction.