Saturday, March 22, 2014

My Unfavorable WOW Experience

I've spent four long (very long!) evenings with no Internet service. No connection with my blogging friends, no email, no FB, no nothing. WOW, my service provider, has customer service (or technical support as they refer to this group) issues. Big time issues!

Last Monday I spent over 45 minutes on a service call - 25 of those minutes were on hold listening to how I should recommend WOW to friends and family. Hmm? Tuesday morning was a trip to the local office to exchange a modem - a perfectly fine, functioning modem I now know. Tuesday evening the replacement modem did not "work" and I learned  from my new duplex neighbor WOW had spent from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Monday connecting her new service. Hmm? .

So, dumb me, placed a second service call - wait time over 20 minutes, listening to the same "refer us" recording. I should have waited and gone back to the local office Wednesday morning. The people there do listen. But, no, I called. I got an actual OR SO I WAS TOLD scheduled service call on Thursday morning between 8-10 a.m. (nothing was available earlier??!!??)!

Thursday morning I sat and waited. I had arranged to possibly be late to work, which I definitely was. 10 a.m. arrived. No service man. I spent the 30 minutes driving to work on service call number 3. I was NOT happy. I got less happy when I learned the Thursday service call had been cancelled by the customer service representative who took the scheduled the appointment. BAD! is the word I will print! There was No notification to me. I suppose my telephone number was not visible on my account or perhaps their system was experiencing such high call volume there was no time to call me?

The unacceptable "solution" was to call customer service when I got home Thursday evening and they would escalate the matter. Seems I have to be home. I arrived at work so angry I was fighting tears.

My boss - bless her! - had a cell phone number to a higher up sales manager. I called. I still had to be home when the service man came BUT I was assured he would be here first thing Friday morning. I am the one who could not do Thursday evening.

The service representative did arrive shortly after 8 a.m. Friday morning. Guess what? WOW had accidentally disconnected my service when they installed the new neighbor. Hmm? You know I actually understand this was not done to sabotage my week - it was an accident and should have been easily fixed (was easily fixed once the service man arrived).

What I do not understand!!!!!

Simply canNOT wrap my mind around is why it took what it took for WOW to acknowledge the issue and send a service man. The service man was wonderful, the employees at the local office were friendly as well as helpful and I greatly appreciate the assistance of the sales manager. Of course, I would not have made it to the sales manager had my boss not have had his telephone number.

My entire rant is about the inability or refusal of technical support to assist me - the customer!

And, that is all for now ....
Ms Cha Cha Cat says thank you, thank you, thank you. Her now knows from experience that when there is no Internet connection her human has more time to "catch" her "tricks" and the conversation consists more of stop that or NO than pretty cat. Her prefers the pretty cat talk! lol



2 comments:

QuiltSue said...

That really is awful. Sometimes I wonder what sort of criteria companies use when choosing their customer service staff. Glad it's all sorted out now though.

Ruth said...

My son and DIL had this same thing happen to them once a few years ago - different provider. They were very disgusted with all the run around they got too.