I am stranded. It's amazing how much you realise something impacts your life when you lose that one thing.
We are living without broadband.
We have been without broadband for nearly two weeks now. Initially we thought it was just a phone line issue. We had a close lightning strike one night that seemed to fry our line. We got that fixed within one day of calling our phone supplier. When we found that our DSL connection was not working, I called that in too, and (after faffing around performing various tests such as changing phone sockets and removing the splitter/filter) eventually was told to expect a call within the next 3 days from a technician to arrange a time to look at our connection.
4 days latter, after no call, I called customer support again, to be told that the technician had us on their list for 2 days time. I was miffed, but accepted it and expected the call from the technician to notify us of what time, exactly, they would be coming round. Both my wife and myself work, so (like many people) we do not have the time to sit around at home for hours on end waiting for a technicial to turn up.
Still no call.
That night I called customer support AGAIN and was told that they would look into it and get a technicial to make a house call, but that there may be a $99 charge for the call, if it is determined that the fault is our doing, or caused by equipment not belonging to them.
It was getting worse.
The next day, I received a call from customer service expressing concern that our connection had not been fixed up yet. They were going to credit our account the same amount that it would cost for us to be using dial up, so that we can connect through dial up while our DSL is fixed.
OK, not fantastic, but at least we are online again. Even if we are chugging along at 56kbs. WhoooooooHoooooo!
Now the experiences above (phone line, and DSL broadband) are very different. You would expect that I am dealing with two different companies. But NOOO!
Our phone is provided by Optus. Our DSL internet connection is provided by Optus.
Why is is so difficult to get both aspects of the one company to behave in the same way.
Now, I know that different parts of a company can be very different from each other, even to the point of being outsourced to other separate companies. But, this is no excuse. A large company will value its brand. It would not appreciate any aspect of public experience that was a negative experience towards its name and brand.
So, why would Optus have two very different customer experiences for the same customer?
4 comments:
There's the rub: it's pretty bad customer service despite it all being the one company - but it would be WORSE if you we're dealing with two companies.
One line jumped out at me: customer service called you back (!!!). That's miles better than anything I've ever had from my phone company, internet provider, or bank. Unless they're calling to sign me up for something, that is ;)
oops - typo. can everyone ignore that stray apostrophe?
It's OK. We just won't tell apostrophe man.
I guess it was good in a way that Customer Service called me, but I got the feeling that it was a smoothing over call. Something to keep me from kicking up too much of a stink. I was getting a bit grumpy to the service guy on the phone the night before.
The worst is when you have to deal with English as a Second Language types over a crappy phone line.
Don't get me wrong. I respect people's right to earn a living. And I respect that India is a great country for cheap IT support. But it still shits me having to deal with a thick accent as I re-explain their shit service to yet another tech for the 28th time.
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