Customer Service is Dead
So I’ve been trying to avoid turning this blog into the worst type of blog/online journal, the “this is how my life sucked today” daily puddle of teenage-style angst.
Or at least that’s a good excuse for why I haven’t updated BTN since I began the moving process two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve gone 1-for-6 in various service-oriented businesses showing up on time for the first scheduled delivery/installation, with all the necessary items. I am still without local phone service (should have gone with Verizon in the first place — though a lumbering former monopoly they may be, they’ve appeared competent in my previous dealings with them) or a cover for my (finally delivered) sofa. When I’ll have a cable TV outlet in my bedroom, nobody knows, and I’m almost past the point of caring. I’d just better not see a charge for it on my bill.
In the middle of all this, I had a mini-war with SunCom over an outrageous charge on my December cell-phone bill. But to their credit, they resolved my complaint to my satisfaction, and I only had to call them once. Certain other communications providers make you talk to Pittsburgh or “the great Pacific Northwest” (via a local Richmond number), can only communicate with the Richmond people via e-mail (always a great way to get instant response, let me tell ya), and make you call back four times only to find out that you still won’t get anywhere. I’ve got a letter to the Henrico Board of Supervisors ready to roll in the next couple of days — municipally-granted monopolies have a responsibility to the residents of said municipality, and the Board ought to be holding them to it. I’m about one-and-a-half more screwups away from dumping the whole mess and going to DirecTV and Verizon DSL.
But it’s best not to lose sight of the most important part, which is that I have an apartment now (woohoo!), most everything works, and I now have 70 minutes free in my average day that I used to spend commuting. Not to mention the 15-minute-shorter travel time to Blacksburg, 20 minutes shorter to DC, etc… and best of all, I can come home, turn on a hockey game, have a Chuck, and yell at the TV in peace.
6 January 2003 / 0 Comments / Tags: customer service, life