I had the need to deal with customer support of 3 different companies, over the past couple of days. Two of them were by phone and one was in person (I won't mention company names out of principle). All three experiences were time-consuming, frustrating and fruitless! I swear that the two people I talked to on the phone had no idea about the product we were discussing, had no common sense, and probably had to google every answer before they tried to answer my question. And, I am talking about basic functionality of the product here. I mentioned it to my friend and he said, well at least they were pleasant. No, they weren't even that. They were horrible, monotone voice, placed me on hold for a few minutes every time I asked a simple question (as I said, they probably had to google the answer), I could tell they were using scripted language, just horrible.
The best one, however, was the one where I had to deal with them in person, in the store. They seemed as if I was bothering them with my presence there. They were abrupt, ignorant and when it turned out that their product (only 2 months old) broke down because it was faulty, they offered to replace it with a brand new one at half-price. Are you serious? "Well, this is company policy" is the only response he would repeat at my trying to explain that it really was a faulty product and they needed to replace it for free.
Man, I long for the days that I would walk into sears & roebuck with a 2-yr old broken craftsman tool, and they would look at it, hand me a new one, without a question asked, and thank me for being their customer. That's when people and companies stood behind their work!