phone company rant

[hytekblue]

you know I really hate the phone company right now.

I have a bill for my new OC3.

I know... how cool... an OC3 wooo hooo... neato.... spiffy and all that jazz..

however it has been "ring ready" for about three weeks... however the idiots at the phone company have not put the mux on it yet... soo it's totally useless.... and here I am with a bill for a sonet ring I cannot use. Our cut over date was suposed to be june 26th. We placed the order for this circuit nine months ago or so... thinking we had given SBC plenty of time to get it in and right.


ok... I am done... but the phone comany still sucks...

[dolanp]

Phone and cable companies have the most worthless wretched customer service in the universe. If they didn't have buddies in politics giving them virtual monopolies all over the place they'd be driven into the ground by a company who actually cares about the people that pay them.

[Vtwin]

What OC3 rings are they running? The company I work for sells them the equipment...

[one-eyed-fatman]

I use TXU for my land line. But TXU is now called Consolidated. But Consolidated is really TXU. But they call it Consolidated so they can charge everyone another fake $5.50 tax on there phone bill every month. They call this smart business. I call it lying, cheating and stealing.

[JimLongley]

As a former, laid off that is, telecom professional I must agree that they all suck. Now if one would hire me my opinion might change.

[dolanp]

Originally Posted by one-eyed-fatman

I use TXU for my land line. But TXU is now called Consolidated. But Consolidated is really TXU. But they call it Consolidated so they can charge everyone another fake $5.50 tax on there phone bill every month. They call this smart business. I call it lying, cheating and stealing.

Ain't that the truth. It's SNAFU in Texas for sure. Reliant wants to 'sell' electricity to people but they're using all of TXU's equipment so your bill says Reliant and you've really got TXU Electric Delivery doing the service on it. So it's just a matter of who you want to do your billing really.

I have CoServ though... seems everywhere I go I only have one choice even though TX supposedly 'deregulated' for competition.

[Brickboy240]

Could there be any WORSE customer service people than those at a cellular phone company or a satellite/cable tv company? Hell, the IRS is more helpful...believe it or not!

(Right behind those lovely folks are the BMW delearships....thats why I drive Volvos!)

-Brickboy240

[JimLongley]

Originally Posted by Brickboy240

Could there be any WORSE customer service people than those at a cellular phone company or a satellite/cable tv company? Hell, the IRS is more helpful...believe it or not!

(Right behind those lovely folks are the BMW delearships....thats why I drive Volvos!)

-Brickboy240

Part of the reason why I am no longer a Nextel customer, and also why they never got the contract for our tech support group.

Actually, back in the day when I did telco customer service, for a different phone company to be sure, customer service was a top product. Then they started "right sizing" and dollars started dictating service instead of service driving dollars, and then there was no more.

When my phone company went through the first iteration of downsizing many people wrote predictions about what was going to happen as a result, and they were mostly right. We were asked to justify our existence within the company financially, in other words how much revenue did we generate, and guess what? CUSTOMER SERVICE does not generate revenue, it saves it, and if you can't show that you add dollars to the bottom line, you are a gone goose.

I was very lucky in that when we were going through that first round, and there were many others afterward, I was recruited to be an instructor at the national training center, and thus was "loaned" from my company to the training center, and in the process saving another person's job. A body out the door is a body out the door.

When I got ready to return from my "loan" they were going through another iteration and I was offered an early retirement, which I took. I moved on to a couple of other corporations and mainly stayed in technical support, managing to leave one in favor of another just as they started to shove TS people out again, but finally getting caught and cut from the last one.

In the four years since leaving telecom I have watched as a less than dispassionate observer as technical support groups were raped and pillaged because they couldn't justify the dollars, and have noted the subsequent decline in public perception. Now I see the only way to fix it is for people to refuse to take it anymore and force the companies to provide customer service. Two things will happen, more of us who really used to provide that good product will wind up back in our old jobs, and customer service will improve.

You can force them to provide good customer service, but you must put some effort into it yourself. When service is bad you must let them know it, and don't take "gee whiz, were sorry you have a problem" as an answer. Escalate your dissatisfaction, insist on talking to people higher in the chain of command, agitate, call your state representative, call your congressman, call the public utilities commission, risk being labelled a crank. The only thing they can really do is provide you with the same poor level of service you are already getting, so there is no place to go but up.

Sheesh, this has gotten wayyyy long for me.

RANT OFF!!

[one-eyed-fatman]

I got TXU so pissed off once they came out and cut my wires.

[retired]

OEFM, I only "know" you from your posts, but I wonder why I don't have any problem understanding why they would do that? lol