My travel buddy got an Express Card for her Wireless service so we can use it in my laptop when we're over seas, with global roaming.
I knew this would not be as simple as it seems, in my many years of dealing with The Company I have never had the seamless 'integrated customer experience' that their ads promise. Reluctantly, I put the CD in my laptop thinking "it won't be long before I'm on the phone" but, shock, the CD actually worked and seemed to be doing what I wanted it to do.
Unfortunately at the end, even though it had successfully tested everything to do with this connection , when I tried to connect it came up with "INVALID USERNAME OR PASSWORD". grr..
So I rebooted, then I gave it a while (i went to Coles) and when I returned home thirty minutes later I tried it again, still the same error.
It was time to call The Company.
I was hung up on twice by the interactive voice recording system, which kept cracking me up because I remember the guys who "managed" the IVR and they thought they were so great and that the rest of us had no idea, and it was fulfilling on some level to find out that they had less of a clue than me all along. Thanks guys!
On the third attempt I got through after yelling "c*nt" at the recorded person, and made it through to a consultant in like 30 seconds, impressive.
I told the guy my situation, the problem, and the desired solution and he started troubleshooting. At first he was doing some meaningful stuff like checking the connection manager but when the most basic of tasks failed ("retype the password, press ok, try again") he resorted to "well we are having problems with Authentication nationwide at the moment" and i was like "oh, really?" and let him carry on about that for a while. Having worked in several Internet Service Providers I understand the implication of a nationwide Authentication outage, but that stuff happened back in the 90's when Point of Presence for Dial Up were scattered in strategic locations around the country and not centralised like they are now.
Had I reset my password in the last 24 hours? no. He asked this about 3 times and I kept repeating the same answer.
I said "i thought that The Company would have multiple redundant systems in case of a situation like this?" and the guy was like "oh yeah, but this is pretty big". While I mentioned to him early on in the call that I had worked for The Company at a point in time, I neglected to say that I had a fairly good understanding of the systems, including the backups.
I asked him to check the event log to make sure that the system had recorded the new device to which he replied "oh yeah-- hold up... yep, yep it has".
Great - *I* was finally getting somewhere.
Anyway, he continues on about this Authentication outage, about how it started on Friday afternoon and went over the weekend and was still being worked on, as we speak.
He told me to try again in 24 to 48 hours because "someone is working on this as we speak" (I heard you the first time) and having worked at The Company I knew this probably meant that someone probably sent an email about it last Friday and then the recipient had Monday off, or something like that.
While he was doing this, I fired up my fully functional Unwired connection and checked out The Company Service Status which of course, said there were absolutely no problems with the network that I was attempting to connect to.
I said to the guy "Listen, I have checked out the service status page and it tells me there is no problem, but you tell me there has been a problem since Friday? Surely it would have hit the Service Status page by now. I'm not sure who to believe, you or the web page. I'd like an explanation".
For good measure I also tacked on a "if I was a paying customer, i would be appalled at The Company for not being able to provide the most basic of services, for which you charge a premium price".
He puts me on hold for 3 minutes, during which time I tried the The Company Wireless connection again and shock of shocks, it connected!
The consultant took me off hold and wouldn't let me interrupt, so I let him carry on about how it had only been raised in the call centre as an issue and hadn't yet been transferred to Operations (or something) and got the whole long and convoluted story about how he was right & i am wrong, but that a technician was working on it and I should sit tight. Right!
So I said to him "Well sunshine (i actually said that!), its your lucky day. It connected while you had me on hold".
He responded with several explanations but my all time favourite was "oh! ... had you reset your password in the last 24 to 48 hours?" and i was like "c'mon man... we established that i hadn't a while back. Aren't you taking notes?".
Anyway, rather than banging on any more I thanked him for his time and infinite amounts of wisdom, and hung up.
What REALLY frustrated me was how the guy on the phone thought he was just the bee's knee's authoritative source and I was some pathetic customer who had no idea, when he was talking out of his a r s e the whole time.
It is how The Company rolls these days I guess. Its all Marketing Spin and not an ounce of Service. I don't wish to paint the entire employee base with the same brush, there are some really cool people who work there, but the unfortunate majority who assume that because they work for The Company that everyone is supposed to believe everything they say without question, because that is how they operate.
I called a friend who works at The Company.
"Guess what, i have a story"
"yeah? shoot"
"I had to call The Company".
We shared experiences, she had to call last week for something similar and was being bullsh~tted to in the exact same way, but she had the benefit of reading the internal notes and catching the consultant out at his game, after eventually revealing her sources to him after he asked "where are you getting your information?".
Its funny that she was getting it from the same place he was.
Rather than just going "yeah... you caught me out, i have no idea what i'm on about" and eating some humble pie, which can be reciprocated with "its alright, it happens" - The Company mantra seems to be to spin more and more and more to make it seem like they're "in control" of the situation.
I was wondering what other excuses they use to get people off the phone, because the only time The Company wants to talk is when they are making a sale, not when they're supporting something they've already sold.
"oh, you can't connect - what colour is your hair? blonde - unsupported!"
"your phone won't work - did you have chicken for lunch - well that would be it then!"
As a way of wrapping up this overly long blog post, I'll leave you with one of the most inane situations I've encountered with The Company. Whenever I call they try to "upsell" me products which I can legitimately get for free from The Internet.
All along, this guy was trying to flog me their "firewall and security software" but the first thing he did when I rang was to ask me to disable all of my security software, and not once tell me to re-enable it after the call. So you pay, to turn it off.
The miscommunication in the place that is trusted with OUR communication is appalling, but the new ad about how easy life can be with their products and services - priceless.
1 comments:
I had to call Bigpond last night as well. I came home and all of the internet explorers in the house were coming up with a cable registration page asking for me to enter my username and password. The next screen asked if I wanted to establish a new cable connection. If I clicked no, it wouldn't let me go anywhere but if I clicked yes it took me to an error page saying my modem had already been registered to another connection.
I called and was told to delete all cookies and history in the web browser [just using Matty's laptop connected straight to the modem, leaving out the router]. I rebooted and lo and behold, same issue. I was then told to try it again, go through the same steps and ended up with the same error message.
The guy clearly had no idea WHAT he was talking about, and he kept asking me to do the same things over and over again. I ended up saying, "Look this is the fifth time I've done this and I'm getting the same error again and again. Rebooting and clearing the cache clearly is not working. I want you to fix my connection otherwise I will ask to speak to your team leader."
He finally told me he didn't know what the problem was and claimed he would have to escalate the enquiry to some other area - he was mumbling with a thick accent so I had no idea which department he was referring to. He asked me to switch off my modem and router and PC for at least an hour then try it again. If it didn't work I was to call up again [obviously waiting on hold for thirty minutes again] so the consultant could escalate the issue.
I hung up in a huff thanking him for 'NOTHING' and switched everything off. Amazingly I came back and turned everything back on and it worked?
I've never been so frustrated with a service call. He clearly didn't know WHAT to do so he just kept me faffing in the hopes that it would just work. Which it did. It just reassures me that nobody at Telstra knows what they're doing and their system is so unreliable it spontaneously decides when to work and when not to.
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