What do you do when you are subjected to unacceptable customer service? Well, that depends on whether you’re dealing with a competitive business or a monopolistic governmental agency. With a commercial enterprise, if the poor service comes from indifference, arrogance, or incompetence, you can choose to take your business elsewhere where your time will be better used. With a monopolistic agency, like Riverlink, we have little choice . They control the toll bridges, their monopoly requires us to engage with them, yet they are disorganized, impossibly difficult to reach, and maddingly ham-handed.
Last September, The Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board that oversees Riverlink, transferred control of the toll collections to an outfit in Texas called Electronic Transaction Consultants . The results have been … disappointing, to be generous.
Billing has been erratic, delayed and inconsistent. Calls to straighten out drivers’ billing problems have increased and when you call to rectify your problem, you are subjected to longer wait times than before ETC got involved. Your first clue that customer service is at the bottom of their list of priorities is that whenever you call their 1-800 number for help, any time of day or night, any day of the week or week of the month, the first default thing you hear is, “We are currently experiencing an unusually high call volume.” Really? Even when they are closed at night or on the weekend?