We've had nothing but trouble with the internet service at our business for the past three years. Despite numerous phone calls and visits by repairmen, the problem has never ever been fixed. It's extremely difficult to operate the online portion of a business when one's "online" is more off than on, so Wednesday I called AT&T just one more time to complain about the lack of reliability of the their "service." A very polite young man in India did his level best to help me but try as he might, the poor fellow just didn't get it. For starters, he kept insisting that our service was residential. No matter how many times I corrected his mistake, he kept referring to our business as our "home." Patronizing irate customers isn't a good thing to do, yet this young man tried to reassure me that he fully understood my frustration. Excuse me? The guy has been trained by the company that for three years hasn't fixed the problem, he doesn't realize that I don't live in my warehouse, and he wants me believe that he understands why I am upset?
When I could stand his platitudes no longer, I shouted at him, "Young man, stop patronizing me! You are halfway around the world, working for and trained by the company whose service is compromising my BUSINESS not my HOME! You do not understand how I feel because you are employed by a company that pays the salary that feeds your family. And where does that salary come from? It comes from people like me who pay that company for a service that is supposed to work! And guess what? When that service doesn't work, people like me can't conduct our businesses to make the money we need to feed our families. So don't even try to tell me that you understand how I feel, just find a solution to the problem that has been going on for three damn years!"
He quickly set up a trouble ticket and arranged for a repairman to come and examine the wiring -- for the umpteenth time -- on Thursday.
The repairman who came had been at our place twice before and knew the problem. He felt sorry for us and really tried to find a solution. After a thorough check, he determined that the line was fine. He thought perhaps switching our service to another router might solve the problem and made an order for that to happen over the weekend. No go. AT&T would not give him a specific time frame; the best they could do was to tell him the ticket would be processed within 24-48 hours and that the switch would take 3 hours to complete. Ok, that's not bad -- we would be without online access on Saturday or Sunday and could live with that. By the time he left, it was 10 a.m. and time to get started processing UPS shipping labels which require internet access, and here's where the great cosmic joke starts. . .
With close to 100 orders to finish processing, the lights on our wireless modem started doing the hoochie-koochie, flashing red, green, red, green, red, RED, DEAD! But wait -- the repairman specifically said that we'd have internet access to finish our work! When the promised three hours turned into four and the internet still wasn't working, I called AT&T, only to be routed through India again to hear more platitudes about understanding my dilemma before being transferred to someone in my state who tells me that they have begun the switch to another router and that they have until 6 PM to complete it. We left the business at 7 to meet some friends for dinner and do you think we had internet service? Heck no! Who knows what we'll find in a few hours when we return. . .
2 comments:
level best...I'm still chuckling over that. If they hold a monoploy in your area, you could yell about suing.
AT&T doesn't hold a monopoly for DSL in our area, but the problem is that any other company that would provide the service would use their lines. And since the problem is with their lines, it doesn't make any sense to switch to another company because we'd be singing the same song with a different band. . .
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