"I'm sorry you feel that way."

That is not a response I ever want to hear from a customer service rep.

That immediately tells me that s/he absolutely doesn't give a crap about how I feel or is willing to take any responsibility for rectifying the situation.

I had two very different experiences in the past 48 hours. One with a local attorney's office and one with Fedex.

With the local attorney's office, they're handling a transaction for me. The attorney's assistant needed to ship me some documents.

She didn't confirm a shipping address with me before dispatching the documents. So they were sent to me, priority overnight, to an address where I wasn't going to be. For three days.

In addition, the attorney, who in this case, is operating as a title company, claims to be charging a 'competitive' rate but in fact is charging me $50 more than a title company I typically use. And the attorney's office is delivering less.

When I brought this to their attention, instead of listening to my concerns and complaints and responding to those concerns by either covering the cost of the shipping -- since it was their presumptuousness that delayed the documents' arrival -- and/or actually becoming competitive in their pricing, they chose to say to me, "I'm sorry you feel that way."

So you're sorry that I'm upset that you spent my money on shipping something to me in the most expensive way that you could when I didn't actually receive it for three additional days. Really?

I'm not looking for sympathy, and certainly not false sympathy.

I'm looking for you to rectify YOUR error and cover the cost of that error. Your apology while I'm paying for your mistake seems disingenuous at the least.

The sooner we all start to hold folks accountable and poke through this fog of insincerity, the sooner we might actually receive customer service that feels like service, rather than a necessary inconvenience for the vendor.

Tomorrow, I'll share the story about Fedex.

FYI -- the only reason I agreed to engage this attorney was because the buyer had already engaged them and at that time it seemed easiest. At this point, as the deal is set to close next week, there are contractual deadlines in place and it would be overly disruptive to change. They will never receive business from me again, and I will certainly share this story with everyone who is in that town.