A breath of fresh eir
Well, you could knock me down with a feather.
I was sitting here yesterday afternoon having a quiet bit of me-time [as they say]. I was in a half doze when the phone rang. I checked the number on the screen [“withheld”] and assumed it was a cold caller. I answered with my "don't fuck with me" voice.
It was a woman from the telephone company!
My first thought was that she was going to confirm my installation, but quickly dismissed that idea. I'm a realist.
She was phoning about the wee questionnaire they sent me after my last call. You know the kind of thing – "How did you rate the agent you spoke to", "Was your query answered satisfactorily" or "how do you rate our service". Needless to say I had gone through it with a blowtorch, rating them zero on everything [except about the poor girl I spoke to – I felt sorry for her and gave her a nine]. There was a box at the bottom for "any other comments" which I filled to the brim with invective and finally a little tick where they wanted to know if they could phone me. I ticked the latter for the laugh, sent the form and then forgot all about it.
"So you read my little survey response?" I says to her.
She laughed
"Indeed I did" says she, "we seem to have royally fucked up" [or words to that effect].
So we had a little chat. I gave her the full story about all the on-line chats and all the assurances I had been given and how I had filled in the order very carefully on their web pages and the emails that I had received, culminating in the one that told me I wasn't even a customer of theirs.
"Yes" says she. "We have indeed royally fucked up" [or words to that effect].
She apologised profusely and suggested I try on-line again to order the service.
I groaned and sighed.
"I'll tell you what" says she, "I'll do it for you."
I asked what that would do to my costings as they quoted two different rates on-line – one for web booking and one for phone booking. The web one was considerably cheaper.
She said that wasn't a problem, that she would apply the web price, and seeing as I had been fucked about [or words to that effect], she'd put me in as a new customer with a further promotional discount.
So the job is done. I even have my new account number. She has put the router in the post which I can pug in straight away and as soon as the fibre box goes live a chappie will call out to do a full installation.
Now all I have to do is wait for the post some day next week.
I'm getting used to this waiting lark.
…and as soon as the fibre box goes live…
The devil is always in the detail, GD.
Still, I wish you good luck with it all. You'll probably need it…
Apparently I am to expect a great burst of activity at the box whereupon it goes live. That has already happened. Then it has to be passed over to another section of the company which will probably take a couple of years. If I get a quarter the speed they promise I will still be in profit as I can get rid of the wireless one, and stop having to worry about trees in the way!
My favourite response to these inane surveys is to pile on the compliments about the people I spoke to (unless they are genuinely ghastly, of course), so that they don’t get into trouble, but then to point out that they weren’t in a position to do whatever it was I needed them to do because although they were doing their best and being as nice as they could, they were nevertheless working within a system clearly designed by a distant manager somewhere in a plush office far, far away from any contact with the great unwashed public, who clearly didn’t have enough to do to fill their time, who didn’t understand the practicalities of their own systems and who clearly hadn’t bothered to ask anyone who could tell them, and thus had designed a system so convoluted, complicated and unworkable that its design could easily be used as the basis for a long-running (if boring) TV farce. I usually end with the suggestion that the company should immediately investigate exactly which members of their staff actually thought up the insane system and that they should be immediately removed from their posts, or at the very least demoted to a job whereby their idiotic ideas would not be inflicted on their long-suffering customers (e.g. cleaner or car-park attendant).
The good thing about this is that often the people “monitoring” these survey results are the very people who designed the system in the first place!
I once did a couple of months work in the complaints department of a utility company in North London. Answering consumer queries and complaints on the phone was part of the job. Above the desk of our supervisor was a small printed notice: IF YOU CAN'T CONVINCE 'EM CONFUSE 'EM.
Thank goodness for the Bucket & Shovel department aka Customer Services 😀 All you'd get here is the Gallic shrug!
Sounds like you're making progress–amazing! Thankfully, after a harrowing experience of having a Comcast rep install our Internet only service some years ago (he had to go back to his company van to have a good cry when we told him we didn't want any damn 140 channels of info-mercials), we haven't had to deal with them since then except once. That was to turn in our old Comcast cable modem and wireless router for a brand new all-in-one modem/wireless router thingy that I installed since I didn't want some Comcast rep breaking down and crying in my driveway again.