“Yes, I’ve powered down the modem!”
April 24th, 2006I was going to chronicle my epic, nearly week long struggle with Qwest and USFamily.net, but I think I just need to let the whole episode slip into fading history. We’re back up and Helen has posted something about it, so I think I’ll leave it lay.
However, I do want to congratulate modern corporate society for the invention and skillful implementation of the Customer Service Moat: a carefully crafted network of automated answering services and half-informed first tier customer “service” staff whose purpose is to ensure that no one penetrate too deeply into the corporate castle. Never have I so clearly and so often heard the auditory equivalent of the blank stare. Modern physics is wrong; energy can be turned into nothing.
Please, someone somewhere… please note that I will always try powering down the modem before I run to the phone for the pleasure of the customer service experience.
April 27th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Bring back recessions! At least then the customer service drones are moderately interested in keeping their jobs, and those companies whose sales might be turning downward (due to the recession), seem to pay closer attention to how customers’ complaints are handled. Therefore the
C.S.D.s are held to a higher standard of accountability.
I had a similar experience with T-Mobile when, after seeing on the news about some of their
customers having non-existant phone numbers appearing on their bills as ones being called or recieved, and at great length. By the way, the numbers would usually show up as
000-000-0000 or 111-111-1111.
After seeing this report, I grabbed my most recent bill, and sure enough, there were at least six or seven of the 000-000-0000 numbers on it.
Of course I called customer service and was told by more than one drone who was looking at their version of my bill, (and noticing that one of the legitimate phone numbers I dialed was that of my voice mail access number that has 3 consecutive zeros in it) that I must have “accidentally” dialed the all zeros number.
I then had to painfully point out to each of these know-nothing-know-it-alls, how extremely unlikely it would be for me to not only not “accidentally” dial 10 consecutive zeros, but also that it would have required me to have stayed on the line for an average of something like 13 minutes after a connection was made, all the while still thinking that I would at any moment be hearing my messages.
Finally I spoke to someone who probably had seen this problem before. Because it took all of about 2 minutes to fix everything.
Indeed, getting to the RIGHT person right away is now my first goal when calling anyone about a customer service matter.