Goines On: Hi-yo, Silver! Away!

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“Complaining is fun!” Goines shouted from the middle of the street as his wife approached on her walk. His own walk had been interrupted by a telephone call from TurboTax that had just ended with an assurance that they would issue a refund.
    “It’s fun when it works,” he corrected himself and then summarized the TurboTax conversation for her. TurboTax was sorry for what had happened and wanted to make up for it and regain his trust and his high marks for TurboTax.
    On Friday, a few hours after he e-filed their joint income tax returns, a postcard was delivered to the Goineses’ mailbox providing a 20% discount code for filing their income tax returns this year with TurboTax. Goines had immediately telephoned Customer Support to have the discount retroactively applied, because, he reasoned, it wasn’t his fault they had mailed the card so late into tax season, and if he himself had filed a day – or even a few hours – later, he could have applied the code.
    The first person said she could do nothing to help him, and the person she consulted gave him the wrong advice: to use a specified form to request a refund that turned out to apply to a software purchase. It had been almost ten years since Gaines had purchased TurboTax, from Costco (where else?).
    After a few minutes rest, during which time he received an email from TurboTax that the IRS has accepted their federal income tax return, he called back again, this time getting someone much more understanding and sympathetic. She even agreed that TurboTax should have mailed out that offer much earlier. Nevertheless, she informed him that “nothing could be done,” especially because one of the tax returns had already been accepted.
    Goines told her that he appreciated her candor, but the whole situation was enough for him to never use TurboTax again.
    After that conversation, Goines had upped the ante when he responded to a survey from TurboTax seeking his rating of his experience with Customer Support. He commented: “My otherwise good experience with TurboTax turned very, very sour after my recent encounters with Customer Support. If you want me back, please respect your postcard offer of 20% off my filing fee and refund my 20%.” And he provided enough information for them to check into his two calls.
    “Complaining is fun, when it works,” he shouted back to Mrs. Goines as he continued his walk. “It isn’t its own reward.” And then he sped up, walking with extra vigor.
    When he was back home, he got out the unopened carton of “Limited Edition Cheerios with HAPPY HEART SHAPES” remaining from the 2-carton package from Costco to see if it gave an email address for customer complaints. Very few of the Cheerios inside the first box were heart-shaped. Maybe General Mills would mail him some coupons for free cartons of Cheerios.
    An image flashed in Goines’ head of that ranging hero of his childhood.
    After lunch, Mrs. Goines asked him whether he had listened to their Congressman’s voicemail. He hadn’t. “He invites us to attend a town hall meeting.”
    “So, you want to go to it, or what?”
    “Certainly not – that man’s repugnant politics!”
    “We could display protest signs; they just might get results. It could be fun.”

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