Poor customer service has been a pet peeve of mine now for several years. , I am convinced that This week I got a dose of what really bad customer service is.
After much discussion about our channel lineup that includes half hour to hour long commercials, shopping channels, religious channels and reruns of reruns of shows from the 70s and 80s, we decided to use some holiday gift money for a modest investment in an Amazon fire stick. The rationale was that what we pay for a year of Amazon Prime barely covers one month of internet and TV. Amazon Prime, includes services we were under using like select music as well as some pretty good streaming shows and movies, many that are Prime Original. So we decided to go basic with our cable and lower the bill.
On Sunday, I logged onto my online cable account to see what was available. Unfortunately, unless you are a new customer, there just isn't anything there. So I decided to answer the chat window which pops up from an agent offering to help. After a 45 minutes circular conversation which went no where, the agent typed "Haan!". I then typed "???" to which the agent replied "Please just hold on a minute." After looking up "haan", I found out this translates to "cock" in Afrikaans. Wow, I just was sworn at by customer service. Really?!? Goodbye chat agent!
At this point I looked up the customer service 800 number and called it, hoping for a better experience. Eventually my call was picked up by a gentleman who was unsure what to tell me about downgrading my service. After 10 minutes with this agent, I was transferred to someone in customer retention. Another 10 minutes and finally got my TV downgraded, internet still the same. Oh happy day! It only took an hour and a half out of my Sunday evening and will save us $17 a month. Hey, $17 is $17, right?
On Wednesday, I to make the favorite list of the channels that we now receive. I had logged into my account to view my channel lineup and noticed there were channels that we had not never gotten before. Rather than risk being sworn at in Afrikaans through chat again, I called the 800 line right away. All I wanted to know was how long it would take the channels that we now pay for to show up in my channel lineup. Simple enough, or so I thought. Silly me, not so, wondering if customer service has a problem with the English language. After a long and circular 45 minute conversation, two resets of the cable box, it was determined there might be something wrong with the cable box and I would need a technician to come out and see what was going on. A service call was scheduled.
Less than an hour later I received a call from customer service regarding said service call while I was in the shower. I returned the call thinking it was a call to confirm the technician coming out to check the cable box. Once again, silly me. This person wanted me to go and check a bunch of stuff to my TV. I told him I was unable to do that right then, could I call him back. He said he would call me back in an hour. Ok, fine.
An hour and 15 minutes later I got the call back from the agent who after a forty five minute conversation informed me that the channels listed in my channel lineup were not channels I should be getting and therefore was not getting. After asking the agent several times where I can find a list of the channels that I do get, he began mansplaining to me about how the channels for all the tiers were listed on the website, and the blue dots in the little boxes under basic cable were the channels that I get. He then started listing all the channels I should be getting and began having me change the channel to each and every one. Enough already! I told him this was not necessary and I would figure it out myself. He then said he would be cancelling the service call to which I replied that he might as well because I would probably be cancelling my account with them very soon. I then thanked him for his time and hung up.
This entire "customer service" fiasco started at around 12:30 p.m. and the last call ended somewhere around 3:45 p.m. Maybe I am old-fashioned but this is not what I call customer service in any way shape or form. This morning I am off to scroll through the channels I do get, using the chart with my TV package on top and the little blue dots in the little boxes to make a new favorites list that I will probably never use.
