I hate calling my cable company

J

JohnnyX

Veteran XV
So. My internet is mildly broken, severe packet loss, which in turn is causing all sorts of lag spikes and high latency, but I can't bring myself to call Time Warner because I just so much dislike being put on hold for like 40 minutes only to be put on the line with one of the opening service reps that will tell me to clear my cookies and shit... UGH.

I've been praying for the last week that it would clear itself up, before I had to call in and nerd it up with talk of traceroutes and stuff. I hate being on the phone, I hate holding, I hate retard CSRs, and I hate looking like a nerd even if I am one.

One of you has to work at Time Warner or Level 3 or something, fix your shit already.
 
Comcast has pretty good people on the phone and I think they are even local to me atleast. They even have this thing where it saves your spot in line and then calls you back when it is your turn.
 
I've had both TW and CC and never had too much of an issue. When you call in don't be a dick and just follow along with the script. Once they clear that stage out it goes fast.
 
When I've done my homework on an issue and still wind up needing support from customer service, I've decided to completely cut the bullshit and have them send me on without needing to talk with them much.

We'll see how it works when I actually try it. I came to this conclusion last week after spending an hour and a half on the phone with Adobe (and failing to have my question answered).I then emailed the North American Tech Sales Manager and got an answer from their lead engineer within an hour.

My line will be something like this:

Hi, here's the account information you need blah blah blah.
them: asks question about the issue
I'd like for you to connect me to the highest point of escalation you are capable of providing me. This is nothing against you and it is not a complaint of any kind. I have just found from all my past issues that I am never able to be helped until I've reached a manager or tier 3 support of some kind. I have done a lot of work on research on this issue and would need only for you to escalate my issue as it takes excessively long to explain the problem repeatedly.

I'm sure I'll have people arguing with me that they can't escalate an issue until they tell me what it is, but I figure it'll take less than half the time to bitch at someone to escalate an issue compared to trying to explain the issue to someone who obviously has no clue what the answer will be.
 
Yeah sometimes that works, but a lot of times the rep seems resistant to just passing you along. I would assume it's discouraged, or they assume it reflects poorly upon them.
 
Dealing with AT&T for my Uverse issue was an absolute nightmare. Multiple calls, hours talking to people, multiple different people promising me the issue would be resolved (and even promising confirmation w/in 24 hours, which I was later told they never do), etc. In the end I had to argue with a Customer Retention rep for 45 minutes until he (after asking me if I worked for AT&T) connected me with a high level tech who solved my problem in 5 minutes.

I've heard that swearing can result in an instant escalation, so next time you call you might try opening with "fuck you, I want to fucking talk to your fucking supervisor!"
 
JohnnyX said:
Yeah sometimes that works, but a lot of times the rep seems resistant to just passing you along. I would assume it's discouraged, or they assume it reflects poorly upon them.
Click to expand...

In general, escalation is heavily discouraged and is really only supposed to be a last resort. The ones that don't mind escalating usually have several layers of escalation before you are actually talking to anyone who can do anything. So it will be like

Level 1 Rep
Senior Level 1 Rep
Supervisor of Level 1 Reps
Level 2 Rep
Senior Level 2 Rep
Supervisor of Level 2 Reps


Those companies are jerks though. I worked in a support center for 3 years, I actually didn't mind it all that much but it's probably because I got like 4-5 promotions within the first year to end up servicing business clients that were assigned directly to me rather than being in a simple call center. I was always busy though, but I kind of miss that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top