Tip 5: Assessing the Hidden Costs

Picture this: you’ve been on hold for about 15 minutes trying to speak to a customer service representative about your airline reservation. As it turns out, you wanted to sit next to your spouse on your flight (why wouldn’t the airline and travel agent assume that when you booked two tickets, you didn’t actually care about them being together). Try as you might, you simply can’t get someone on the phone who can actually help you. When you eventually get through, the representative makes you give him all of your contact info (even though it’s in the booking details), only to then realize that he was typing on the “wrong screen” (any time I hear those words, I always wonder if it’s just my luck or if this actually happens to other people as much as it seems to happen to me). Finally, your seats have been changed. You’ve spent roughly 30 minutes of your time on this process. This was a free fix, of course, but as the saying goes, nothing is ever really free.

We often do ourselves the disservice of undervaluing our time. If we’re paid hourly, we know exactly how much our time is worth to our employer (and if we’re salaried, we can probably do a little math to figure out the average). But when it comes to personal customer service issues, we seem to exclude the cost of our time when figuring out how much to pay for a product or service. Take airline travel for example. With all the competition out there, you’re likely to see incredibly low prices for flights that may have cost much more in the past. Even when factoring in nickel and dime charges for excess baggage and meals, you’re still likely to pay less than even a decade ago. But did you ever take some time to consider whether you’ll be more or less likely to have a hassle-free experience with one airline versus another? Some airlines allow you to choose your seat online when you make your reservation. Had you chosen one of these in the example above, you would have saved yourself 30 minutes. Figure out how much your employer thinks 30 minutes of your time is worth, and then ask yourself if that’s more or less than the difference between this hassle-free airline’s fare and the more cumbersome airline’s fare. If it’s more or even close, ask yourself if you’d be better off by paying more up front to save yourself time and hassle down the road.

There are, of course, a few caveats to this way of thinking. First of all, if you’re like me, maybe you don’t really mind the hassle of dealing with customer service. Maybe you actually enjoy dealing with issues like this, and all you really care about is the bottom line price of doing business. You might feel that your time is really only worth what your employer thinks it’s worth while you’re at work; at home, your time might be less valuable (after all, who doesn’t enjoy a 30-minute customer service call as an after-dinner treat?). Also, you may not always be able to predict which purchase option will actually result in a customer service issue; you may pick the airline you’ve always used without any hassle only to discover that they’ve redone their customer service operation…and it’s gotten much worse. In this case, you might just throw your hands up and pick the cheapest option since you have no way of predicting whether spending extra money will actually result in a better customer service experience.

Ultimately, it all really comes down to the type of person that you think of yourself as. Are you the type of person that doesn’t really mind calling customer service, waiting on hold, and then working through an issue…possibly with multiple people? Or are you the type of person that, upon hearing the same hold music for more than 30 seconds, will immediately get frustrated and miserable and beg your significant other to just take care of this for you. If it’s the latter, picking the hassle-free option may be the way to go. It may cost you a little more up front, but you’ll be avoiding the hidden costs of time wasted and stress added…which, for you, may be far more valuable.