I’m having a hell of a time with my current ISP (sitting at 18 days now without a connection) and I’m having to bite my tongue every time I’m talking to them (Remember The Human and all that)
Whilst the front line support are nice people and answer the phones quickly they are honestly pretty useless and they never really sound like they know what they’re talking about, also seemingly none of the departments seem particularly good about communicating what’s going on so it’s hard to get a straight and useful answer out of them.
Have you ever lost it with a rep? What happened? and did it ever help push things along?
I had a flat tire at midnight once. Tried for about an hour to change it myself before calling a tow truck company that said it was open. Got routed to a call center who said they had to contact one of their freelance trucks, after paying $250 over the phone. A little more back and forth and about 90 minutes later (when they said it’d be 30 minutes), no truck ever appeared. The call center (third rep that night) called and said the one person they had working tonight broke down outside of cell service, can they come out in the morning? I said that won’t work, I’ll just cancel and get a refund. They said it’d take 3-4 business days to get the refund and there’d be a $50 refund processing charge.
I didn’t quite blow up at them, but any time I have to stand up for myself I get shaky and struggle to keep the anger out of my voice. I explained (several times) that there was no way that was acceptable and that I would like to speak to their manager. “I spoke to my manager and there’s nothing we can do, that’s just the cost of processing a refund.” Well I paid for services that I didn’t receive, due to no fault of my own. Let me speak to your manager. Another hold. “My manager is willing to pay the refund himself this one time.” Yeah ok sure thanks bye.
20 minutes later my tire was changed by a different tow truck company who had a real employee answer before the second ring, had multiple trucks on duty, didn’t even ask for payment until after the work was done, and it was about $80. I fully expected to have to issue a chargeback for the first company’s charge but fortunately it never showed up on my card statement.
Not on the phone but I had to threaten the Bitdefender E-Mail rep with a lawsuit in order to get my money back.
A few months into my 2 year subscription I changed my e-mail associated with my Bitdefender account. Thereafter all mail I got from them went to that new email, as it should. A short while after that I switched over to Linux and my “need” for an AntiVirus evaporated entirely between Linux’ workflow not really requiring one anyway and me learning how little AntiVirus Software offers over the default Windows Defender. Queue forward to the end of that 2 year subscription (whose auto-renewal I had disabled before leaving Windows exactly to prevent what happened anyway but alas I have no proof of that anymore) I notice a really weird charge while reviewing my credit card statement. A charge that by all accounts should not have been there and one I was not made aware of beforehand. Guess what, those fucks sent only the mail about the upcoming renewal to the old email account which I had no reason whatsoever to suspect would still receive mail from them. Curiously the mail about them cancelling the renewed charge after I went off on them was sent to the new email again…
Initially the customer service said “oh well can’t do anything here’s a 50€ discount” until I lost my cool and threatened to sue them for theft because by all reasonable standards I could not have expected them to inform me on my old email about this upcoming charge.
On that note my stance was reaffirmed: Between and AntiVirus and an actual Virus I’d pick the latter, at least those are upfront about their motives and intentions instead of pretending to provide you with a service.
My answers below, but for your current issue, put in a complaint with the FCC or email the CEO of the company directly. Most major companies have a process to resolve issues that normal agents can’t access if you can get to the right level. Emailing the CEO works with many companies, but telecom companies are sensitive to FCC oversight and would rather fix your issue than deal with the FCC.
Yes, the agent agreed with me that the company owed me money, but told me they couldn’t do anything about it. I told them I understood, but please put in a ticket to someone that could do something about it. They just kept telling me they couldn’t help until I got mad. They eventually relented and put in a ticket, which was then denied without reason a month later. I resolved the issue by circumventing the call center entirely and getting directly to an escalation team similar to what I recommended above.
Yes and yes. It just depends on when and how it’s done. It worked wonders with my medical insurance. My Doctors weren’t too happy yet my health improved.
Yes. There was a new streaming service that I signed up for. I used an email alias and the confirmation email never arrived. They had no way to change my email address or activate my account except for me clicking the link in my email.
After a month my free trial expired (without me ever being able to log in), they added a second month of free trial while trying to activate my account. This went on for 5 months, finally the 6th month they did not give me another free month and I was charged. Still no solution for the situation. 7th month arrives and I get charged again. The 8th month I lost it. I knew most of the support and customer service reps at this point as I had talked with also all of them multiple times a week for months. But with no solution in sight and being charged for multiple times months I finally lost it on one of the CSRs. Surprisingly while I was on the phone with them they were able to cancel my account and issue a refund.
Define “help” I’ve blown up on unsolicited cold-callers like military recruiters, and political campaign fundraisers multiple times and it helped me feel better. If I’m calling for support then I’m already vulnerable and blowing up is like biting the hand that feeds so no, that doesn’t help. Power dynamics matter when taking your anger out on others. Self control matters so you don’t have to
I’m certainly close right now. I bought a laptop from System76 in December (the Pangolin). It has not, any any point, worked acceptably. First the USB ports would frequently disconnect and reconnect. Then the trackpad started freaking out, registering constant false clicks and not letting the cursor move.
The first time I sent it in, they shipped me back someone else’s computer.
When I did get my own laptop back, I found that the trackpad issue hadn’t been fixed. Then it stopped waking up after being suspended.
So I sent it in again, and got no updates from them for 30 days. They said their usual turnaround time was 7-10 days. And the first time I sent it in, it took them about a week to send it back. Well, to send a computer back. So something was wrong here.
On top of that, the support ticket has a “Last Updated” timestamp, and it kept changing every couple of days. I asked them for details, and only received generic “sorry this is taking a while, we’re working on it” responses. I specifically wanted to know why the “last updated” timestamp was changing every few days, because of course I’m imagining that they’ve shipped my computer to someone else.
I finally responded in all caps, asking where my computer was for that unexplained month, and why the timestamp kept changing. The support agent replied:
Your computer was at our warehouse waiting to be worked on.
Bless up,
(Support agent name)
Bless up? Fucking asshole.
I always want to be patient with those working in customer support. It’s difficult and often thankless job. I know how unfair it is when a customer blows up at someone in customer service, not to mention how unhelpful it is. And usually the customer is yelling at someone with no power to fix the situation. But this System76 thing is getting ridiculous. They’re literally just not responding to emails and dodging questions when they do respond.
Once I decided to end my contract with Virgin Media and they kept asking me why I was leaving, so I kept saying I didn’t want to explain, I’d just cancel (because I knew they’d do their best to talk me around) and it got to the point where I became firm, but I didn’t shout, though I wanted to.
Tangentially related: after I’d signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, I knew that the only people ringing me to sell stuff were doing so illegally, so if they persisted after I’d made that point, I used to just verbally abuse them. Right cathartic.
