It’s Fathers Day. I usually don’t go online and rant, but today, I will make an exception.
I have been unhappy with AT&T. In the past, I was unhappy with AT&T because their service max’s out at 6/0.7 Mbps and because they refuse to complete the install of U-verse in Bartlett. In AT&T’s defense, the Bartlett government had a little to do with this since they dragged their feet in approving the install, but it is what it is. With that said, I have been happy with their reliability so I have lived with slower speeds than what I could get with Comcast. That was until the last few days.
Our internet has been very spotty over the last few days. It still works, but websites just wouldn’t come up until you hit refresh a few times. Then it would work fine. So… time to call AT&T. Yes, I expect to have someone answer the phone that knows nothing and my beliefs are confirmed when the person on the phone has no idea what a whole house filter is. With that said, it doesn’t take more than about 20 minutes to get to someone that I can actually have an intelligent conversation with. This person is helpful but cannot fix the problem. She stated my line was “very saturated”. I asked her clarify that statement and she said the line had a lot of traffic on it. Ok, that made sense to me. Probably a problem in the central office. Sorry, more detail than I had intended. Let me make the rest of this part of the story quick.
The technician came out the next day. He checked everything… in the field. He checked the NID, the box in the backyard and the connection in to the house. He replaced the card in the box in the backyard, changed out the DSL modem / router, swapped pairs and rebuilt the line (deleted the configuration and rebuilt the path as I understand). This rebuilding the line did improve the situation, but did not fix it. The tech they sent out didn’t do any work in the CO and his shift was up. I was told I would get a call with an update. Yeah, right! I called back today and the person I spoke with had no information. And then, I think the person just told me that someone would call me back by 5pm today. I won’t hold my breath.
So, why not change to Comcast. Well… that is a whole other story. To keep this one short, I had called repeatedly to have them put the cover on the box correctly. The techs and people who bury the lines in our area never replace the box cover. This causes the inside of the box to fill up with water every time we get 2 inches of rain or more. Guess what… When the family behind me wanted to have Comcast installed, the box was completely inoperable. Big surprise. Comcast had to come out to replace the innards of the box. And when they came out to bury the cable, they did not put the cover on correctly AGAIN. Why does this bother me? Because it is a pain to mow around it as the cover bounces around when I hit it with the mower. This wasn’t so bad when no one had service from the box, but now that someone does, I don’t want to knock out my neighbors service (although I am actually mowing this neighbor’s yard as the previous owner fenced off the utilities to make it my responsibility to mow this part of the yard. But I digress…)
Anyway, my neighbor who has had Comcast for a year is not happy they made the change as the service is not reliable and the time to restoration is days.
I know it took a long time to get to this point, but why did I write this blog post? The barrier to entry for ISP’s should be less. The ISP’s in our area either have fair customer service but subpar product or they have a great product with the lowest of the low customer service. Competition would be good.
Also, competition has always been a good thing. Also, I feel like this country has lost the idea of “service excellence”. Providing a customer with a good reliable service breeds loyalty. Providing a great experience for a customer when they do have a problem breeds RABID FANS. These are the type of customers that will lead customers to your door step.
So, who get’s this? DirecTV does! I have been a customer of theirs for about 10 years. Yes, I do get rain fade. Is it frustrating at times? Yes. So, why do I stay with them? Because they have taken every opportunity to exceed my expectations when something goes wrong. EVERY TIME! The last issue we had was when our service went out. This was not a problem they caused directly. We had a cable outside that had become kinked and eventually failed. Should the install have been a little better? Maybe. When I called them, the person read from a script that it would cost $50 to have someone come out. I asked when the last time we had needed someone to come out and if they could waive that fee since we had been a loyal customer. I think it was about 10 seconds from the time I asked until they agreed to waive the fee. This didn’t blow me away but I was happy.
The tech came out and I showed him the problem. He said he would replace the cable to fix the problems. He also said he would replace the LNB’s in the dish to make sure they also weren’t the problem and to make sure I didn’t have a repeat service call. I also asked if he could clean up the install. He asked how I wanted it run. I gave him a basic idea. He did the work and asked me to come out and ok the work. He did a great job. He gave me his cell phone number in case there was a recurrence of any problem. Not only that… Here was the small thing he did that made it so I will most likely never leave DirecTV… Our remote for our main TV wasn’t working very well. We joked that it had one to0 many things spilled on it. I had fixed it once already. He politely excused himself, came back a few minutes later with a new remote, didn’t say anything while he was programming the remote to match our TV and just put it on the chair. I asked “is that ours?” He sheeplishly said yes. I said “No charge?” He said yes. I know it was such a small thing, but it was step I didn’t expect. It meant a lot to me since I wouldn’t hear the rest of the family complaining about how the remote didn’t work.
For the few people that are still reading at this point… I know that this stuff is so small as compared to problems other people have in their everyday lives. A friend of mine just had brain surgery to remove a tumor. His prognosis is good but it won’t be an easy recovery. This is so lost in the noise compared to what he is going through. I get that.
At the same time, corporations/employees need to find ways to excite their customers through providing great service. Why do people have such a hard time putting yourself in other people’s shoes? If you think about what they want and you can provide it, why not do it? For me, the satisfaction of a job well done is no greater feeling at the end of the day. Of course, that can only happen when you work for a company that will allow that.
Thanks for letting me get that all off my chest. Enjoy your Father’s Day.
Max Voltage Cycling 