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Jason had a great post earlier this year about his experience with his cell phone provider’s customer service dept. But because we all have to suffer through these kinds of experiences on a weekly basis, I felt enough time had passed that we could revisit the subject.
Now I’ve had horrible experiences in the past, too. In fact, my DMV story, which went on for—are you strapped in to your seatbelts?—4 years! was so pull-your-hair-out awful, I was almost driven to tears (seriously). And I’ve heard my fair share of customer service rat-a-tat from the cable company, as well as the local gas company.
But they were all ultimately resolved in my favor; I may have lost sleep and hair, but at least I didn’t lose the battles. That is until now.
My land-line phone company, an Internet phone company called Sunrocket.com seems to have up and rocketed off into the sun and disintegrated. One day I was chatting on the phone to my mom and POOF! – the line went dead. When I called customer service from my cellphone, these are the words I was greeted with from the company whose motto is (no lie) “the no-gotchya! phone company”: (click here for a recording of the actual recording I heard).
Now I ask you: what am I supposed to do with that? Oh, and you should also know that with these Internet phones, you have the option to prepay for the whole year, which lowers the monthly cost. As it turns out, I recently paid up for another full year!!!! So I guess I’m just out a couple hundred and now have to get a new provider.
Feel free to empathize/sympathize or start your own rant below, especially if you, too, have had your phone line cut by sunrocket. And whatever you do, DON’T believe a word customer service tells you. Ever.
Comments (16)
Comment
Hey! I work in customer service for a utility company and I don’t lie to customers! (I am told it could cost me my job).
Having said that, I do not like my job and am only working my way through college to work up within the company.
posted by AimeeD on 7-27-2007 at 4:41 am
Um, I don’t think you can blame customer service on this one. I’m sure there are plenty of people out their who would be perfectly happy to answer your questions about Sunrocket’s demise, but about the same time you lost your phone service, they lost their jobs. This doesn’t make losing a couple hundred dollars any easier, but it should put it in perspective.
The quality of customer service is usually as good as the job itself. So, if your receiving miserable customer service you can count on the fact that the customer service worker you’re dealing with is miserable in his or her job.
posted by Adam on 7-27-2007 at 6:38 am
Wow does that ever suck. At least they “realize this is a very difficult period for the SunRocket customers.”
I love how all the buttons on their web page brings you back to the home page. I think if I were the webmaster I would’ve had a little fun with that aspect of things, knowing my employer was screwing over a bunch of people and I was soon to be unemployed anyway.
posted by Dave on 7-27-2007 at 6:42 am
Thanks for keeping my Sprint story alive. I get 2 or 3 emails each week from similarly screwed people begging for advice. Maybe this is my calling.
posted by Jason on 7-27-2007 at 7:59 am
You call your mom! How sweet of you!
posted by Turk on 7-27-2007 at 9:43 am
You can call your bank and dispute the charges. All the banks were notified of this and it should be fairly easy for them to get it back in your account or on your card. (At least with the bank I work for.)
posted by Caroline on 7-27-2007 at 10:13 am
Hey! I work in customer service too and I agree with AimeeD. I know it’s frustrating but us customer service people don’t make the rules and I honestly go to work WANTING to help people and end up in tears at how rude and angry the customers become. Please remember that as frustrated as the situation may be we are poeple too (and most of us are not on some kind of power trip).
posted by Julia Rae on 7-27-2007 at 12:09 pm
I used to work for a computer game company for 8 years..many of those were in the CS dept…we didn’t want to lie to our customers, and most of the time we didn’t…but in some cases we were told NOT to tell the customers there were bugs in the game (even after the game displayed ‘bug’ on the screen where the customer obviously saw it)…its no fun being on that end of the phone, getting reamed every day…I stay off the phones now a days and rarely ever answer my cell, even for personal calls…I’m burnt out on CS for the rest of my life…ugh…
posted by donner on 7-27-2007 at 12:10 pm
Thanks for the tip, Caroline! I too had recently renewed my sunrocket annual account and figured I was just hosed. I sent a query to my bank (Huntington) and hope they can help. My only concern is that the charge ocurred in early May and they may feel too much time has passed.
Here’s hoping!!
posted by creesto on 7-27-2007 at 12:16 pm
SunRocket is helping transfer accounts… saw this news story and it triggered remembrance of the thread. I can’t post the link, but it’s on Yahoo! news or, more easily, you can find it on pcworld dot com slash news.
posted by Jeffrey on 7-27-2007 at 4:10 pm
Just wanted to throw my Customer service 2 cents in, too. Customer service people get a bad rap. I, too, am in customer service, for the largest internet retailer in the world, and our motto is all about being Customer Obsessed. My bonuses are based on how many customers I make happy in any given month. I, too, have reached horrible cs reps ~ the trick is ~ be polite. The nicer you are, the more people will be willing to help you. If the person is unwilling to help, or unable to help, ask for a supervisor. They’re there, and more than likely, they’ll give you whatever it is you want, just to get off of the phone with you. Seriously.
posted by becky on 7-27-2007 at 7:10 pm
I work in a number portability group, and I can honestly say those of you who got screwed over by sunrocket are going to have to wait some time to port your numbers. My company (unnamed so you all dont think I’m plugging them) has an agreement with them to expedite this process to 5 days instead of 14. I just feel bad for all of you yearly subscribers! I sincerely wish you the best of luck with getting your dinero back!
posted by Bunny on 7-27-2007 at 8:44 pm
I was also affected by the Sunrocket fiasco. But I found a new provider and they had ported my number in about 2 days.
posted by Mike on 7-28-2007 at 12:30 pm
I have a strong feeling that the CS employees that frequent mental floss probably aren’t the CS I’ve dealt with. I say this knowing that most mental floss readers I’ve met are a bit smarter than the average bear.
posted by Matty on 7-28-2007 at 9:04 pm
I’m moving to a new house down the street, and have been trying to get phone service there from Michigan Bell. No, wait, that’s Ameritech. No, wait, that’s SBC. No, wait, that’s AT&T now.
Anyway, here’s the comedy of errors:
Thu, Jul 19: I go online and set up a move. Current service? Leave it on until mid-August to be safe. New service? Install ASAP. They give me a new phone number for the new house and set the “on” date for Monday, Jul 23.
Mon, Jul 23, morning: I wake up to find no phone or DSL at our current house. CS gives me some BS about how they can’t have two DSL services on the same line. I explain it was 2 separate lines at 2 different addresses. Anyway, they mess around all day and finally get the phone & DSL service back on shortly before midnight.
Tue, Jul 24, evening: DSL goes out at our current house. CS explains that the order to cancel DSL there was still valid. (We never placed such an order.) They’ll see what they can do, but it’s late.
Wed, Jul 25, morning: CS cancels all service at new house, and puts in a new order there for phone/DSL to be installed on Thursday. He also promises to reinstate DSL at current address within 2 hours.
Wed, Jul 25, afternoon: Seven hours later, DSL returns, albeit at a small fraction of the speed I had before.
Thu, Jul 26: I bring a phone to the new house – no dial tone. I call, they tell me to check the gray box out back. I do — the plug is out. The guy installed the service and left the plug out.
Fri, Jul 27: I bring a PC to the new house; no DSL. I called asking about installation, they assure me it was installed on Thursday. I keep trying. Finally, they admit there’s a problem in the line, and they’ll fix it ASAP.
Sun, Jul 29: Still no DSL there. Of course, I’m sure I’ll end up with some huge installation/repair bill, and will be billed for service I didn’t have, and that they’ll wait until October to turn off the service at the old house. (But only after they turn it off at the new house once or twice.)
And folks? This really is the Cliff’s Notes version. I didn’t mention the time that one CS had THREE other AT&T employees on the line in what sounded like a Marx Brothers routine, when none of them knew what to do and each kept blaming the other for not doing his/her job. And I didn’t mention the FOUR times that people either never returned to the phone, hung up on me, or transferred me to the wrong location. (And for the record, no, I didn’t get loud or abusive even once during this whole deal.)
Now that there are plenty of options as far as phone & Internet service goes, you can imagine what I’m thinking. I’m not about to pay them $120/month for this kinda service. They’re going to have to come up with something special if they want to keep me as a customer.
Of course, when I change over, they’ll hit me with some “early cancellation” fee.
Sigh.
posted by Sandy on 7-29-2007 at 8:41 am
I work for a credit card company, in the disputes department. I have dealt with sunrocket for the past couple of months. If you paid with a credit card, you should be able to dispute the charge as services not rendered…you may be able to recoup some of that cash…Just FYI
posted by Lacy on 8-19-2007 at 1:24 pm