Please hold and we will connect you to the next available representative
Don't you hate it when people promise to do something soon, and then they don't do for ages?
This is a post explaining a annoying encounters and silly situations in the field of customer service. I understand that some things I complain about are policy and they have to do it, please recognize that I was frustrated and this was essentially a drawn out story where I was wishing for this to be true.
So I got to my house in Canada and sat down at my computer. I hadn't seen my computer in a while and I wanted to spend some good quality time with him as usual. But, when I turn him on, the internet isn't connected. After some discussion with my equally traumatized roommates we concluded that the cable connection must have been disconnected when some official dude had come to replace the power meter days earlier. Obviously there was nothing we could do about this other than call Shaw and get someone sent out to fix our problem.
Well without internet, and without a decent phone signal at our house, we decided it was a perfect opportunity to go greet our lady friends (the ones live in StarTrekGirl's house). I head over there and immediately call Shaw... Two hours later we were all discussing which of the short music clips was our favourite before deciding to give up on the call.
We tried this a couple more times in the next couple of days, but it seemed hopeless. Not wanting to give up, the next day Brodie and I sat down and began attacking every customer service route available to us. This included the phone service, their online chat service, their email, and their facebook page. Nothing helped us. The phone didn't get through, the chat server abandoned us, the email would take a week to respond, and the facebook page just had a bunch of people whining about poor service and Shaw assuring them that they were "hiring and training new people." I believe that they were doing what they could to get more people, but that wasn't going to help me fast enough.
A couple days after that I took the bus to Shaw's customer service desk. After standing in line for an hour and having a nice chat with a lady who was having troubles with her Shaw email I finally got to the front desk. I explained my problem, explained that we had indeed gone through the whole process of resetting the router a couple hundred times, and explained how all I needed was for someone to come to my house, open a box that we weren't allowed to open, and plug the internet back in. They told me that they couldn't schedule for them to come help me without finding out definitively that it was a problem they couldn't solve from their office, and that they couldn't test that from the front desk. The only solution was to call in.
"I've tried calling in, do you have a suggestion for how I could actually manage to speak with someone?"
"Well why don't you just use the callback feature?"
"I'm sorry, what? What callback feature? What can I do to make there be a callback feature?"
"Well it should show up in the first five minutes of calling"
"I have listened to the first two hours of that answering machine every time for the past week, I have never been offered a callback feature."
"Well obviously you weren't listening very hard"
I kindly bid the office farewell and left. On the bus ride home I called Shaw and listened to it very thoroughly for about 20 before hanging up. Obviously there was no callback feature and there would never be a callback feature. It was time that I went the distance and sat on the phone for as long as I needed to, and then be very cross with the first representative who gets the pleasure of speaking to me.
I called the line and the FIRST THING THAT HAPPENED was the machine offered me a callback, almost as if to defiantly say "Yeah, we totally have a callback feature you prat." 3-4 hours later the robot called me back and said that it was just going to put me on hold for a minute. After five minutes of me being legitimately worried about how long they were going to keep me on hold, I was finally surprised to hear a nice man's voice coming over the phone.
I explained my situation to the man, and he of course responded with what he's payed to say:
"Can you please unplug and-"
"Yes, I've done that many times."
"Can you do it now?"
"No, I am nowhere near it. I have unplugged it and replugged it and moved it and tried different cables. The problem isn't the router, it is transmitting fine but it has nothing to transmit. The problem came about when the power meter was unplugged, the power came back but the internet didn't. The internet cable is probably disconnected and I'd like someone to come fix it as soon as possible."
"Well let me just check... Yeah it appears you aren't getting internet. I'll have to send someone out for this."
"Ok, as soon as possible and as early in the day as possible please."
"Well the soonest is Wednesday, do you want it in the morning or-"
"Morning please, and also: I need you to write down that I will be extremely displeased if they don't show up and knock on the door. We have a bad phone signal and I've had problems with your technicians not showing up because they didn't manage to call me first."
Well they did call first, and they did get through. They then showed up, unplugged the router and plugged it back in and said "Well that's funny." Then they went over to the power box, opened it up and said "Oh, there's the problem" and plugged things back in. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Now we at the house want to upgrade our internet. I bet you 20$ that we will have no problem getting through to tell them we want to spend more money.
This is a post explaining a annoying encounters and silly situations in the field of customer service. I understand that some things I complain about are policy and they have to do it, please recognize that I was frustrated and this was essentially a drawn out story where I was wishing for this to be true.
So I got to my house in Canada and sat down at my computer. I hadn't seen my computer in a while and I wanted to spend some good quality time with him as usual. But, when I turn him on, the internet isn't connected. After some discussion with my equally traumatized roommates we concluded that the cable connection must have been disconnected when some official dude had come to replace the power meter days earlier. Obviously there was nothing we could do about this other than call Shaw and get someone sent out to fix our problem.
Well without internet, and without a decent phone signal at our house, we decided it was a perfect opportunity to go greet our lady friends (the ones live in StarTrekGirl's house). I head over there and immediately call Shaw... Two hours later we were all discussing which of the short music clips was our favourite before deciding to give up on the call.
We tried this a couple more times in the next couple of days, but it seemed hopeless. Not wanting to give up, the next day Brodie and I sat down and began attacking every customer service route available to us. This included the phone service, their online chat service, their email, and their facebook page. Nothing helped us. The phone didn't get through, the chat server abandoned us, the email would take a week to respond, and the facebook page just had a bunch of people whining about poor service and Shaw assuring them that they were "hiring and training new people." I believe that they were doing what they could to get more people, but that wasn't going to help me fast enough.
A couple days after that I took the bus to Shaw's customer service desk. After standing in line for an hour and having a nice chat with a lady who was having troubles with her Shaw email I finally got to the front desk. I explained my problem, explained that we had indeed gone through the whole process of resetting the router a couple hundred times, and explained how all I needed was for someone to come to my house, open a box that we weren't allowed to open, and plug the internet back in. They told me that they couldn't schedule for them to come help me without finding out definitively that it was a problem they couldn't solve from their office, and that they couldn't test that from the front desk. The only solution was to call in.
"I've tried calling in, do you have a suggestion for how I could actually manage to speak with someone?"
"Well why don't you just use the callback feature?"
"I'm sorry, what? What callback feature? What can I do to make there be a callback feature?"
"Well it should show up in the first five minutes of calling"
"I have listened to the first two hours of that answering machine every time for the past week, I have never been offered a callback feature."
"Well obviously you weren't listening very hard"
I kindly bid the office farewell and left. On the bus ride home I called Shaw and listened to it very thoroughly for about 20 before hanging up. Obviously there was no callback feature and there would never be a callback feature. It was time that I went the distance and sat on the phone for as long as I needed to, and then be very cross with the first representative who gets the pleasure of speaking to me.
I called the line and the FIRST THING THAT HAPPENED was the machine offered me a callback, almost as if to defiantly say "Yeah, we totally have a callback feature you prat." 3-4 hours later the robot called me back and said that it was just going to put me on hold for a minute. After five minutes of me being legitimately worried about how long they were going to keep me on hold, I was finally surprised to hear a nice man's voice coming over the phone.
I explained my situation to the man, and he of course responded with what he's payed to say:
"Can you please unplug and-"
"Yes, I've done that many times."
"Can you do it now?"
"No, I am nowhere near it. I have unplugged it and replugged it and moved it and tried different cables. The problem isn't the router, it is transmitting fine but it has nothing to transmit. The problem came about when the power meter was unplugged, the power came back but the internet didn't. The internet cable is probably disconnected and I'd like someone to come fix it as soon as possible."
"Well let me just check... Yeah it appears you aren't getting internet. I'll have to send someone out for this."
"Ok, as soon as possible and as early in the day as possible please."
"Well the soonest is Wednesday, do you want it in the morning or-"
"Morning please, and also: I need you to write down that I will be extremely displeased if they don't show up and knock on the door. We have a bad phone signal and I've had problems with your technicians not showing up because they didn't manage to call me first."
Well they did call first, and they did get through. They then showed up, unplugged the router and plugged it back in and said "Well that's funny." Then they went over to the power box, opened it up and said "Oh, there's the problem" and plugged things back in. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Now we at the house want to upgrade our internet. I bet you 20$ that we will have no problem getting through to tell them we want to spend more money.
Comments
Post a Comment