[OT] Just had the most horrible service from SBC...

[jdong]

For those who aren't familiar with SBC, they are the largest phone company in the United States. I just filed a complaint with them.


To whom it may concern:

I'd like to file a complaint about an SBC service representative who called us today (01/06/05). I'd also like to file a complaint about your unsatisfactory repair service we've had to deal with.

For a 5-day period around New Years, our phone service has dead. We reported this issue to SBC on New Years Day. Two repairmen came: The first one fixed the problem, and we were quite happy to have working phone service again! However, later that day, another repairman came. We told him that the service was ALREADY RESTORED, but he stubbornly insisted on checking the phone lines. Whatever he did, he managed to BREAK OUR PHONE SERVICE again. It took a few more days after that before our phone worked again!

During a period when we need to make important phone calls to friends and family, YOUR SERVICE LET US DOWN. We are extremely upset with the unprofessional conduct of the second serviceman.


If that wasn't bad enough, a few hours ago today, we received a phone call from SBC, advertising a number of optional services to us. I politely told him that we are not interested in the services and the charges, then I told him about the poor service we've received recently. Suddenly, your telemarketer harshly THREATENED to immediately disconnect our phone line if we didn't agree to these charges.
This is absolutely wrong. You, as our trusted phone company, have no right to threaten to take away my phone services. This incident makes us even more upset with your phone service. Why should we stay with your company, if not for more reliable service? There are plenty of local phone services who have much lower charges.

I want an apology from SBC for the behavior of the SBC telemarketer, and I want appropriate compensation for your poor services to us.

[Quest-Master]

Haha. That's pitiful and low.

Shows what "big companies" value as customer support.q

[az]

Bell Canada sucks as well.

We ditched bell for our local phone service. Years later when we wanted broadband, no other company is able to service us due to the fact that bell canada owns the infrastructure on the phone lines. There is a class-action suit about this...
It even took bell 45 days to get the internet to work. During the last ten days, we were told that the interet was working. It was not.

It was a painful experience to deal with the minimum-wage stupid customer service people who went through the obligatory checklist before switching the call over to a technician. The last question was always "What OS do you use, Windows or mac"

Linux

What? Windows?

No, linux.

Linux?

Yes, linux.

Oh! ..... Oh (They just saw the entry on the bottom of their screen for linux) Bell sympatico high speed does not support linux. We can give you the service, but if you have a problem, no one is going to help you..."

Anyway, on the last day before the service was actually started, we were told the a technician would be dispatched to our "remote" and that service will begin. We would be refunded the money we were already being charged...

Our phone line was cut off that day and it took more than 24 hours for it to be restored. We have two young babies. You need a phone with two young babies! It took an hour of cell-phone yelling to the customer-service twits to get a technician (we are not bell residential phone service customers, su go fsck youself) The supervising technician found our phone service wire unplugged at the remote and never apoligised.

Another twit at the customer service center told me that the 45 dollars I spent talking to the other customer service twits was not refundable because it was my choice to have such a cell phone package with such a high per-minute rate.

They gave me two and a half months free service eventually.

I am still stuck with them as my ISP.

[panickedthumb]

Jeez... I can't believe what lengths people will go to to make a sale. Or how completely idiotic technicians can be. I had a bit of that when Charter came by to set up our cable internet. The technician didn't really believe I was capable of doing anything until he said...
him: "OK close out of whatever that is that you're using and open up the control panel."
me: "I'm using Linux, there isn't exactly a control panel"
h: "You're using what?"
m: "Linux. I'm not using Windows at all. I can't just go back to it, it's not installed."
h: "OK, well how do you set up network connections?"
m: "It's already set up for dhcp, which is what I need for Charter. I've set up a few networks for people using Charter."
h: "dhcp?"
m: "just trust me it's fine, see?"
*opened up firefox, went to charter.net*
h: "ok, good deal"

[Quake]

ROFL! Man that's just hilarious.

[jdong]

Let's spice up the humor:

He was telling me of a "calling card fee" that runs for about $150 a month, and said that even if I wasn't an SBC customer I still have to pay them the fee.

DO I HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY? Why the heck would I donate $150 a month to SBC if I don't have local phone service? ;)


I'm seriously considering dropping local phones and using cell phones purely.

[Quake]

I once called Rogers Hi-Speed *Cable Internet* because my speed was at 700 Kbit, WAY below the 3 Mbit promised. And the tech support's reply was rather funny: "They are a lot of people in your neighborhood, we are not perfect"

[poofyhairguy]

I once called Rogers Hi-Speed *Cable Internet* because my speed was at 700 Kbit, WAY below the 3 Mbit promised. And the tech support's reply was rather funny: "They are a lot of people in your neighborhood, we are not perfect"


The trick is to get a cable modem in an area with retired people. Most of them buy the service to basically do email and webbrowsing.

That means you get the local bandwidth all for your Linux distro (or worse) habbit.

(Note: I know I am generalizing, but really most older people (65+) don't know how to saturate a line. My mother lives in one of these districts and her Cable internet is 4x as fast as mine even though mine is advertised to be faster. The main difference is that she lives around retirees and I live around college kids. )

[HiddenWolf]

The trick is to get a cable modem in an area with retired people. Most of them buy the service to basically do email and webbrowsing.

That means you get the local bandwidth all for your Linux distro (or worse) habbit.

(Note: I know I am generalizing, but really most older people (65+) don't know how to saturate a line. My mother lives in one of these districts and her Cable internet is 4x as fast as mine even though mine is advertised to be faster. The main difference is that she lives around retirees and I live around college kids. )
I love dedicated fibre :-)

[deception]

NTL (UK Cable Company) Home Technician.

Tech: "What's that on your desktop?"

Me: "Linux, different operating system."

Tech: "Oh, your cable wont work with that, we cannot condone not using Windows as your Operating System!"

Me: "I'm sorry? Of course the cable will work with it, you use DHCP yes?"

Tech: "Ummm, I think so."

Me: "You do, and look it works" *Opens browser*

Tech: "Oh... must be a fluke or something, our tech support won't help you though, you've probably violated our TOS."

Me: "I don't need your tech support, only when your service goes down."

Tech: "Ah! But what if you get a virustrojan?"

Me: "I'm not going to bother trying to explain."

[nocturn]

Telco/ISP companies are so depressing.

I have both phone and Internet from the same company (only one of two in my country actually offering phone, while the carrier networks are also owned by the same two).

My so called 'broadband' connection is rated as the fastest in Belgium (Telenet Cable). I get maximum 512 kbps downstream and 192 kbps upstream.
On top of this, I am limited to 10 GB per rolling 30 days, of which only 2 GB may go upstream.

For this I pay around 45 € (Inet only).

I have had several phone-outages lasting for two to three weeks. Calls to tech support result only in 'we are working on it'.

The problem is if I want to switch, I have one other phone company (which is not much better AFAIK) to choose. Any other ISP is limited to ADSL offers over the second companies lines (so you have to sign up with them first). All of those connection come out at less then 500 kbps in consumer tests..

All in all I pay around 70 € a month for both services, I make calls for about 1 hour per week.

[Quake]

Nocturn, They are no cable ISPs in Belgium?

[nocturn]

Nocturn, They are no cable ISPs in Belgium?


Only the one I'm currently with (Telenet). They have the fastest connection in Belgium measured between 500-600 kbps.

The problem is that there are only two available media for ISP's, telephone lines for ADSL and Cable. The telephone network is owned by one company, the cable net by the other.
Telenet (Cable) does not allow other ISP's on it's network.
Belgacom (Telephone) does, but you need a telephone subsciption with them and they charge those ISP's a bundle for using the network.

This pseudo-monopolies makes it interesting for these companies to provide 'crippled' services (slow, capped) for a lot of money.

If I look about 18 km from my home over the border (The Netherlands), I can get ADSL uncapped at 1.5 mbps for about 1/3 of what I'm paying. But there is some real competition on that market.