I'm a winner!! I fought Customer Service at my phone company and I won! This is funny!

[Breeze54]

Been trying to get a DSL and a really crappy phone line repaired for a week or more and I was sooo frustrated from being hung up on repeatedly and transferred to the wrong dept. and getting help (that didn't work) from a 'tech' who escalated my issue but to the wrong dept. and so, today, I decided to try again and I, after being on the phone for another 2 hours, finally was transferred to the correct dept and that guy kept saying he couldn't hear me when I, again, gave them my phone number so I started yelling the number into the phone and then he got pissed off and said, "You don't have to yell, mamam! So I said, "Well? Did you hear me that time?" So he says, "I'm not sure if I heard you correctly because you were yelling!" So, I said, "Then repeat the number back to me. " He did and he had it correct and so I said, "Well; then I guess you DID hear me the first time and THAT'S why I'm calling. I have noise on my line!" So, he in a very obnoxious tone says he'll escalate it and someone will be there tomorrow (Saturday?) between 12 & 4 PM but it will cost you!" and I said, "Fine! Send help!"

Then about an hour later, my oldest son calls me and he's having trouble hearing me too but we kept trying to talk when I hear the buzzer for my door going off and I run to the kitchen and hit the intercom and it's a tech from Verizon!!!

How's that for fast service?!!

He checked all my lines, installed a filter from the point of service in the basement of the building and split my phone line from my DSL line and I now have no noise on my line and I haven't been booted off the net once since he left here! He was very funny too and I told him about the asshole that sent him and he laughed. He also said that he got a call to get here right away but that it was actually scheduled for Saturday, tomorrow.

I am in disbelief that he arrived that fast and fixed it and he said I would NOT be charged at all!!

I'm very happy now!! No more aggravation!! Yeah!!!

And how was your day? Good, I hope!!

[ThatsMyBarack]

1. My day's been too crazy to describe.

Here's just one part of it:

On the way home from work I tried to deposit a check at my bank's local drive-thru window, but that wasn't working; and I couldn't find any parking close enough for me to not freeze in 15-degree cold. When I got home, I called my bank to ask them why I can't just MAIL them my checks. The lady on the phone said, "All our mail has to go to Rhode Island because we don't have the facilities to accommodate everyone mailing their deposits in."

[Breeze54]

2. That's frustrating and weird!

My bank gave me stamped envelopes to send them some paperwork they needed.

But I wouldn't mail the check, especially during the holidays. Can't you do Direct Deposit?

I hear you on the cold! It's freezing here in MA too and getting colder in the next few days too.

I hope your Friday night and weekend goes better for you!

[TomInTib]

3. Where are you?

They can process your walk-in and drive-up deposits, but not a mailed one?

No wonder the banks are in trouble.

[Ikonoklast]

4. Sorry, could you please repeat that?

Can't quite hear you over all that buzzing you got there.

[Breeze54]

5. I SAID, THE NUMBER IS 555-555-!@#$ !! CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!

[JerseygirlCT]

18. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!!

Too funny! Good for you!

[Breeze54]

22. LOL !! Thanks!

I'm sooo proud!!

It really does feel good to have gotten MY way on this!

It was really causing me indigestion, I swear!

[JerseygirlCT]

25. I know how that goes

Glad you've got it all set!

[TomInTib]

6. Good for you, Breeze.

I won't even go into my story about the woman at Comcast who applied four months of my cable/DSL payments to her boyfriend's account in Stockton.

As it turns out, she managed to get herself appointed to investigate my claim. She almost drove me crazier.

[Breeze54]

14. OMG!!! Comcast! UGH! They got me too!

My neighbor was moving and called them to cancel her service.

We lived in a duplex. Her side and my side but when Comcast came out to disconnect her service?

They just cut the line to the whole building and I lost all my service and then they kept billing me for it and all that time I thought they had cut me off for a late payment and I went through HELL getting them to credit my account, which they finally did, but the supervisor was on "vacation" and no one there could do anything until she came back! We're talking a LOT of money too! It took me months to get that resolved. I'll never use them again!

I hope that woman was prosecuted that stole from you! Gheesh!

[Brazenly Liberal]

7. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

We are forced to have Verizon for our local phone service and they have the worst customer service I have ever encountered. Ever. Anywhere. I can't tell you how good it makes me feel to know someone has actually gotten some results from them!

[Breeze54]

12. We're forced the same... it's a monopoly! - And I agree!

I never encountered so many assholes at one company in my life!

But the first DSL tech I actually got to not hang up on me was very nice and he did his best to escalate and fix my issue. He was very nice but the rest of them, besides the guy that came to my house today, are a bunch of ignorant, rude, assholes!

My very first call to them, I was hung up on by a CS rep after repeatedly giving her the phone number and she had me repeat 3 times because, as she said to me... "I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I was talking to my girlfriends and didn't hear you."

[TexasProgresive]

8. A question

Did you have the small filters installed on all your phones. DSL makes noise on the line and the filters block from the phones as well as prevent the DSL from being knocked down when you use the phone.

What the tech did is to install a splitter which separates the DSL from the dial tone.

Now for an explanation as to the trouble you had with "customer" "service" The idiotic Telcom I work for and is your "service" provider decided in their infinite wisdom to have two different groups - one for POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) the other for Enhanced Services like ADSL. This causes lots of problems for the customers and for the technicians as well.

I'm happy that your service is working now and sorry that you had so much grief getting relief.

[Breeze54]

11. Yes, I had the "crappy" (the tech's word) filters on my jacks and

that's why he decided to split the two at the source and install filters in the
box in the basement, so I no longer need those filters on any of my phones.

He actually re-routed all my wiring and split the two services and installed filters on each.

I also understand how they 'split' the Depts but the real issue, or at least one of them, is that
the people in the phone Dept nor the DSL Dept know what the phone numbers are for each other!!

I ordered service from them in Oct for starting on Nov. 1st and my DSL equipment was never ordered by them and I had to call them on that and get them to send it out. Then my equipment was stolen!! UPS failed to get a signature and just dumped the package! I didn't know how it was arriving, as V told me it was coming via US Mail, UPS and that a tech was coming to install it at my place!

So, I was getting charged for DSL service I was unable to use! I got that resolved 17 days later!

And then realized I had this noise issue on the line which kept causing me to get booted off the net.
It has been one helluva ride with V this last month! They better not have charged me one dime for this repair!!

I'm happy that my service is working now too! I couldn't afford anymore Malloxx!!

Thanks.

[Warpy]

9. When my phone line has died completely

they've been extremely annoyed that I can't give them a phone number where I can be reached. I don't have a cell, my neighbors are at work, and MY PHONE LINE IS DEAD! THAT'S THE DAMN PROBLEM!

I was lucky the last time, I called them on the intermittently working phone line with the frying eggs static on it and they told ME something was wrong with my phone line.

They must feed people stupid pills when they work for the phone company. It's either that or their troubleshooting and repair protocols were written by a Republican.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. My favorite is when the dsl goes out and I call the repair line

and have to sit thru several repeated mesages that tell me how much faster I could be helped by going to their online website.

My revenge is this:

http://gethuman.com /


( how to bypass the telephone trees of most companies)

[Breeze54]

15. Great link ! Thanks!

I'm going to keep that handy!

I know!

If only going to their website could solve the issue or that I could get there!

[JerseygirlCT]

19. Good resource - thanks! nt

[Breeze54]

13. I hear that! The guy who sent the tech today had made a note

on my case that I was "irate" and that I had "refused" to give him an alternate phone number!

My "alternate" phone number is my son's cellphone and he had his phone with him at work!

I wasn't rude to him at all but had to yell, as he kept saying he couldn't hear me!!

The tech at my house was laughing at the irony of it all.

I mean, if there's noise on the frigging line and you work for the phone company and you can't
hear me, then, IMHO, the logical conclusion is that there's a problem with the phone line...

NOT the customer!!

The tech was laughing at that and agreed with me that the guy was a dolt!

[SmileyRose]

17. You'll enjoy this

My husband was at home recovering not long after Desert Storm and was having some problems - before cell phone every place. Some Bellsouth technician blew up the whole neighborhood somehow while working on the box out on the main road. So instead of Bellsouth just sending someone to fix the whole neighborhood, they demanded every household call individually and get a repairman out. It was beyond stupid.

So I had to take a risk and leave my wounded veteran husband alone long enough to walk up to the corner store and call Bellsouth on one of their own seriously crappy pay phones. The sound was insanely awful and out on the corner with all the road noise to boot.

So I'm screaming as loud as I can into the phone and the customer no service nutjob on the other end is getting mad at me because she can't hear me. Finally she understands it's my HOME phone that's out and manages to repeat my number and address to me and then tells me she can't put it in for service unless they have a number to call me to verify 24 hours before my appointment to make sure I'll be there or else they won't come. It took a full 15 minutes to get her to understand I have no other phone number for them to call. Then she wanted to set the appoint in 2 weeks - with a husband at home in a rather fragile medical condition and no link to emergency personnel or family - I almost cracked. 15 more minutes of screaming into the payphone so she could hear me she finally understood this is somewhat of an emergency and they needed to come out yesterday.

I was in tears at the time but looking back it was hysterically funny.

[Breeze54]

20. Oh my, that is beyond unreasonable and not to bright on their part! Yikes!

I would have gone insane and ballistic, if I had been in your situation!! Gheesh!
Do they think they are being set up for some sort of crime by the customers with
this call back number and alternate numbers they insist that you have or give them
before they'll even come out to fix the problem?!

It's insane!!

I'm glad you can laugh about it now!

[ContinentalOp]

16. It's frustrating as hell...

but I'm convinced that the only way to get any real customer service out of companies like this is to scream at them on the phone, ask to talk to managers, scream some more, etc. until you get what you want.

[Breeze54]

24. They tell you that they "can't transfer you" to a supervisor.

That's a crock!! The supervisor's will refuse to take the calls.

I know. I worked CS for a satellite company and they rarely took

customer phone calls for me. Told me to handle it myself.

Sometimes the customer was wrong and/or hadn't paid their bill but

wanted to argue or call me a "Northern Yankee"

As in, "Oh, you're one of them northern, liberal yankeeeee's.
Now I see why you won't turn my service back on."

Yeah right, pal! It wouldn't be that you owe the company $700.00 would it!?!

[Time for change]

21. Congratulations

My family too has been through that kind of stuff with Verizen so many times. We ought to have laws that allow US to charge the phone companies when they repeatedly screw us over like that.

[Breeze54]

26. That would be an awesome law!!

I think one might be able to sue them but I fear you wouldn't get to far.

They've got it all locked up here in the northeast.

[Historic NY]

23. Heck my Credit Union went paperless........

I told then I needed to deposit a check....they said they could take it and it was paper.
I then asked if I could get a receipt and they gave me one, so much for paperless banking.