Loyalty Points and a Widow's Interaction with Customer Service: What Happens When a Company Forgets the Human Behind the Account
A widow was blocked from using her late husband's loyalty points by a company that prioritized rigid, heartless bureaucracy over basic human compassion and common sense. What businesses can learn about customer service from her story.
One of the ways credit card companies, airlines and other businesses build loyalty and keep us coming back is through rewards points that can be applied to future purchases.
The terms and conditions for these loyalty points tend to be multiple pages, highly confusing and often disguise nasty surprises in language that even lawyers have difficulty making sense of. Several have been criticized as being unfair and little more than a bait-and-switch.
But what one company did to the widow of a loyal customer highlights a lack of care, compassion and common sense that others can learn from. We're not naming the company, as the situation could very well have been an outlier, but it's a useful lesson for management in what not to do.
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An escape from the world of chronic kidney disease
Reader "Anna" described the love "Dallas" had for this particular company's products, starting when he was a child. "He loved (them) even more after we got married. Born with failing kidneys, he found it a helpful activity when he was undergoing dialysis treatments."
Anna said he spent his many loyalty points on products that made him so happy, and toward the final stages of his illness, they worked together on a project that would be the last one they finished together, right before he died.
"Today, I look at it with so much love. We knew each other since college and were married only three years. It was an honor being his wife."
What happened to his loyalty points?
Anna knew his loyalty points account number and tried to use the points that remained to buy a gift for her father-in-law, but the company refused the transaction, saying, "Points expire after 18 months, and we sent (the account owner) notice of the impending loss."
They did, indeed, send that notice to his email, after he died. "Due to his illness, I handled all of our financial affairs and never went into his email account," she explained.
She sent a polite email to customer service, explaining that her husband had died and that, given he was a lifelong loyalty club member, would the company please reconsider and allow her to use his remaining points. On its website, the company acknowledges that it will waive the expiration period with good cause.
Anyone with compassion would consider Anna's situation "good cause."
A cold and heartless response
Company representative "Pamela" emailed Anna: "Very sorry to hear of the loss of your husband, but we cannot take any actions on the account except on behalf of the account owner."
A friend of Anna referred her to me, and when I read that, I wondered what insensitive, heartless idiot would tell a widow that the company could deal only with her deceased husband? These are the types of blatant unfairness that motivate me.
I regularly reach out to the media contact personnel at large companies and ask them to please look into an issue. Now, suppose that you were the person I contacted about Anna's situation. Wouldn't you fact-check first, and then, knowing that expired points can be restored, wouldn't you do that for Anna? Of course you would.
But not this company's media rep. "Wendall" referred the matter to "Charles," in his department, who called me. We both looked at Dallas' obituary online, but instead of saying, "Sure, we need to make this right," Charles did the bureaucratic thing and sent the matter back to customer service.
Days went by, proving that Pamela, Wendall and Charles had to have been standing behind the door the day common sense was handed out.
Finally, Anna received an email — not a phone call, because clearly, these three people have a problem with kind human interaction — from "Bill" in customer service stating that she would receive a gift card for the value of her husband's points. A week later, it arrived. So at least they did that part right.
A business professor looks at the situation
I ran this by Lyle Sussman, professor emeritus in the College of Business at the University of Louisville and a friend of this column for many years. "Beav, this reminded me of my favorite example of customer service from hell. A few years ago, a bank manager required a thumbprint from a customer without arms."
"Requiring authorization from a dead person is like requesting a thumbprint from someone who has no hands. It's also the kind of Kafkaesque SOP (standard operating procedure) that sets the stage for social media backlash and a column by Dennis Beaver.
"This issue is a classic example of rigid SOP constraining common sense in customer service. The fact that a customer service manager finally did the right thing is a testament to someone in the chain of command saying something like, 'Enough's enough. Let's stop being stupid!'"
With some loyalty programs, there are ways to prolong the life of your reward points. I'll explain how to do this in a future story and show why companies just can't wait for customers to forfeit their rewards.
Dennis Beaver practices law in Bakersfield, Calif., and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to (661) 323-7993, or e-mailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. And be sure to visit dennisbeaver.com.
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