Customer Service

Whatever happened to "the customer is always right"? Whatever happened to taking care of your long term customers? Whatever happened to good old fashioned customer service? I miss it!

I've been a customer of the local phone company for about 5 years. I have always had their cheap phone service, but their best DSL. I love DSL for the security, the stability of the speed, and the upload speed. I have a roommate that loves to play games and when I am downloading, he needs good frame rates to enjoy his games. This is where the upload is so vital. Cable tops out at 256K for their competing price even though they have a 4MB download speed. With DSL I currently get a 1MB upload and a 1.5MB download, which will soon be increased to 3MB. I've always asked for and received their best speeds.

Billing has been another issue entirely! I was overbilled for 11 months in a row for my DSL. When they pull up my account it reads like a book with all the overbilling, cuts in service, and their own mistakes. I will admit that I have paid my bill behind a month many times, but they always get their money and more when they overbill. It used to be that if I was a few days behind they would turn off my phone, but leave the DSL alone. I could call from work, make a payment during lunch, and have my phone turned back on when I got home. All this without interrupting my DSL. Now they turn off the DSL instead of the phone. Getting DSL turned back on takes 5 business days.

Earlier this month I had made a payment and let a manager know that I would get caught up on the 15th when I got paid. I made my payment early that morning and while doing so on the phone realized I had no DSL. The manager had either put my payment date in the comments and they didn't get saved or he didn't enter it at all. When I had talked to him I was assured that paying on the 15th would not be a problem and would not cause an interrupt in my service. I was told it would be Friday before my service was back up. I did talk to a manager last night who was going to expedite this. I don't know what they did, but I'm back up at full speed tonight, even though earlier tonight a manager told me he would have it back up Thursday instead of Friday. I just happened to notice it was up while playing cards and Norton performed an update. Weird, but I will take it!

Since my service is back up early for some unexplained reason, why am I still griping? As a loyal customer in spite of all the problems they have brought on, do I get decent treatment? Well, it depends on who I'm talking to, how ticked I may be, and what mood they are in. Why should that matter at all? Shouldn't they be so kind as to call and ask if there is a problem with the service if I'm more behind than usual? And shouldn't they do this before messing with my account? Wouldn't it be nice if they asked me what they should turn off to get my attention? This way I could choose the phone so that I'm back up and running within hours instead of days.

I'm just tired of having so many problems with this one company after all this time and after all their mistakes. You would think that they would go out of their way to provide great customer service when they have gotten my money for several years without fail. I have never had so many problems with this one company that I wish I could start up competition.

I have trained customer service representatives. I know how customers want and should be treated. I've trained computer technicians how to treat customers. I've trained perfume/cologne sales people on how to take care of their customers. It's really a no brainer. You treat others like you would like to be treated. I know we all get caught up in our jobs and think that what we are doing is so much more important than taking care of the people who pay our paychecks (at least in retail and service), but anyone who thinks that is totally wrong. Customers first. Treat them great at all times. Even if they want to be mean and call you names, smile, be nice, and treat them great. It's simple, isn't it?