Dont get me started on phone service providers. Well I guess I actually started this so I'll explain my tone. First, there are decent, honest, and truly concerned phone service providers that do that you have no idea what it means. Sometimes they peer you so much nonsense that you just give up and go along with whatever is that they say. Yet other phone service providers will simply transfer you off to another employee a study have to go through the whole process of explaining yourself again. For example, when I relocated two years ago (while I searched for the ideal, quiet, remote area to settle and write without interruption of dogs barking, criminals thieving, drug addicts interfering, or gun shots startling), I had to call the two phone service providers I had already had service with for five years. One had an employee who explained to me the charges of switching over my DSL, relocating services, etc. That would take days, would require a deposit (again with the depositone that you never seem to get back), would demand a set-up and installation fee, would necessitate a new this fee and a flip such and such switch charges, etc. etc. It was maddening to have to go through all of this. Especially in light of the fact that I was already one of their customers. This new king of phone service providers (having bought out their competitor) sent a technician, based on SPECIFIC dates I had PURPOSELY arranged for because I had a tight schedule and didn't want to rearrange it for the sake of the phone company, especially since I had given the advance notice and was paying insane fees to do so (I rely on the Internet). The technician went to the residents I was going to move into as I head previously requested while I had the old place cleaned. That would've been great except for the fact that I wasn't there because he didn't go when I had asked him to go. Ahem. I then actually got a angry phone call from him telling me that he couldn't help me now if I wasn't home. No sh*t. He may have tried to follow the work order and seen that my request with specific and made quite some time ago. But I'm guessing that wouldn't have mattered. Of my two phone service providers, number two, however, was (and always has been) the antithesis of number one (and I use number one for distinction of order, not status, here, by the way). This second PSP I called when I was in the new place and had phone service, as it (the second one) is my long-distance carrier. Heres how the second interaction played out: When I called them up on actually had a human being answer the phone. I explained the following 1) have my long distance transferred from old point to new point; and 2) change my billing address. The woman types in the new information. She then requested that hold for a moment but she actually return rather quickly and stated, You know, you could be paying a lot less for your long distance, so I crunched some numbers for you. How about X (shockingly low by 3000% of what I had been paying) per minute? Are you kidding me? Did that just really happen? I think her profusely for doing such a wonderful job and she just humbly replied that it was her pleasure. But how many phone service providers have employees that REALIZE when you have a job, you do that job, and you do it right the first time as requested by the customer? I decided not to tell you which phone service provider gave me such shoddy service, but I will tell you that the second is good old AT&T. I guess the old company still knows what they're doing. |
