... but, right now, I'd have a hard time coming up with one.
My wife wants a laptop for her birthday/Christmas/ next anniversary so last night i found a good deal on one. Good reviews for quality, lots of neat features, really good price. So, I ordered it for her. Now, since we will both be having PCs we need to be wireless. I used to do all that kind of thing myself but I've gotten, older, sicker and lazier (if that is even possible) so I wanted to just upgrade my Roadrunner Turbo to wireless.
Now, I was a TWC customer for nearly twenty years before they finally pissed me off enough to get DriecTV and DSL but I got tired of Ma Bell's glacial slowness so I went back to Roadrunner for Internet. Having dealt with TWC's long hold times and indifferent service personnel I decided to do the online chat thing.
But FIRST I read all the FAQs to see if they had the answers to my questions. The didn't so I initiated a chat with technical support for the answers to three really simple questions. I thought I knew the answers but I wanted to verify. Being wrong is not a new feeling for me.
Ok, they have a form to fill out prior to the chat. On the form they have a text box to describe your problem. I did that but I don't think the technical support person even read it. He came on and asked what he could help me with and I explained I was upgrading RoadRunner Turbo to wireless and I had some technical questions.
Seems simple enough to me. Guess he did not understand 'technical' as he simply "escalated" me to a sales rep. Ok, the sales rep did nothing but lead me by the hand through the online ordering process which is very simple and straight forward. Ok, I was going to order anyway so might as well get it out of the way so no problem. When we finished that I asked her if she was able to answer any kind of technical questions. She said she was not and asked if I would like her to transfer me back to technical.
I said I would. I even said 'please'. At this point in time I was only mildly irritated with TWC. The totally 'pissed off' stage was on its way though.
Dear Vanessa (the sales person) transferred me back to technical. Only thing was she connected me to a Spanish language area. Ok, I took two years of high school Spanish forty years ago but.... So the Spanish guy realized I was in the wrong place and immediately sent me back to an English speaking area. I think that was the only intelligent and efficient thing I saw from TWC all morning.
Ok, now I get another English speaking person and ask her my first question. Ok, I'm really clueless about some things. I just wanted to know if I had the wireless installed prior to receiving my wife's laptop, would the laptop automatically detect and connect to the wireless router. Sounded simple to me. Kind of thing an Internet company's tech staff should know. Apparently I was wrong. She said she did not know and would "escalate" me to "National".
One more transfer. The guy from "National" came on (and, no, his name was not Peggy but it sure should have been) I asked him my simple question. He came back with "Are you wanting to change your Internet connection speed?" What the hell my question had to do with changing Internet connection speeds I have no idea. So, I thought and simplified the question to the point my ten month old grand daughter should have been able to understand it. He did not though. Came back with some equally non-relevant reply. By now I had completely passed through 'pissed off' and was quickly approaching 'homicidal'.
So, I thanked him for his time and told him he was completely useless and I would just figure it all out by myself and to have a nice day. The wonderful (and only wonderful) thing is that when I terminated the chat session they asked me to fill out a survey. That was so nice of them. I'm sure they will ignore it but that would be 'par for the course' with TWC. I read that the growing competition from DirecTV, Dish and U-verse was causing the cable companies to work on improving customer service because they were bleeding business like a hemophiliac. Maybe TWC did not get the memo.
So, I completed my online order and looked at the summary. WRONG! They made me choose two installation date/times and then got them reversed. So I (mentally) girded my loins and called TWC customer service.
We went though the obligatory recorded BS before they bothered to give me choices for my call. I selected 'make or change appointments'. Eventually, a very pleasant sounding young lady answered and quickly straightened out my appointment. So, I asked her if she would happen to know the answerer to my first question. She did. The computer would detect and connect but TWC puts a password on the connections so one would have to enter that password. I was impressed so I asked her is she would happen to know the answers to my other technical questions. She did. Wow!!! She made my morning with TWC.
Still, it says something about the quality of TWC customer service when the person who answers the phone because I have a problem with my appointment time knows the answers to more technical questions than the people on the technical support staff.
Damn, I hate Time Warner. But Roadrunner kicks DSL's
No comments:
Post a Comment