MAN! Sorry 2 complain/utilities,etc.

[Fuddy1952]

Just wondering how others experience is around the country with utilities, modern life, promises, etc.
Example 1: I've been with Verizon phone landline business and home over 40 years.
Retired 6+ years ago, then kept number but switched to wireless. Recently decided to go back with landline (wired) home phone, same # I've always had. Guy shows up early this morning, makes connection about a mile away (main panel box), then our road box 1/4m away, then service box at house. Yay! He calls me, phones ring, as he's loading his van I call my cell #...all is well. Guy leaves, I try to call...nothing but static!
Years ago...no problem... you call, a person answers, guy comes back. Not now! I call, go through 50 prompts, message says "one hour hold time"! So I'm listening to ("music?") an hour. That #%&@ after explaining I could have punched in the snoot! Says scheduled for a week!
I finally call corporate executive office, they call back, supposed to come out tomorrow.
Example 2: I have Dish TV. It's been acting up for months, we don't watch TV much anyway, so I call to cancel. They don't want to lose a customer, so guy comes out, says I need to cut down a large oak tree in yard.
Heck with that! So I call to cancel. Second guy comes out. "No problem! We'll move your satellite dish". He wants to put it in middle of a pasture! Long story short, we put it at an existing utility pole, it's not noticeable. I helped trench in the new line.
Dish said no problem, no charge. I'm on autopay, today I get my credit card bill and they charged it! Again, I call, on hold forever, hopefully it's straight.
It used to never be like that years ago. Sorry, had to vent. I assume I'm not alone?

 

[shovelmike]

I don't blame you, customer service most places is lousy. You call, respond to a half dozen computer prompts, listen to their lame music in your ear, every 15 minutes or so you hear a click and hope it's a human to respond to your need.....nope, just that recording: "Your call is very important to us blah, blah!"

 

[Fuddy1952]

Oh. One other thing. If you want to get to a live person faster, push prompts or say "new service". That gets me, they love getting your money but service...forget it!

 

[Maxify55]

Have any of you actually tried to get a service professional {Plumber/Electrician/Installer of almost any kind} nowadays?
If you're lucky you only have to wait 30 days for them to come out and even LOOK at your problem.
With all this COVID stuff they're getting harder and harder to get hold of or even find!

 

[grsthegreat]

That and the fact that all the people not working seem to be doing home repairs. Even though im now retired i get 3-10 calls a day trying to hire me to do electrical. My voice mail even states that i ONLY do service work on generac brand air cooled generators...no other electrical work. They still leave their name and number and what they need fixed. It gets to where i dint even want to call back to explain that im retired.

Right now i could have another 6 man crew working 40 hour weeks if i wanted to.....

But that wont happen again. I love bring retired.

also parts are scarce. The electrical breaker shelf at home depot and lowes are bare. Generac emailed me that there is a 8 week delay in delivering generators. Heck, im waiting since june 6th for some repair parts from generac.

I think i picked a good time to retire. I need to get off this ipad and go walk the dog

 

[Tomtint]

Customer service has been eroding from almost every industry for quite some time. The worst offenders are the cell phone companies as well as the other monopoly type energy companies. I will however say that one business which I'm surprised has made a significant effort to improve C.S, is the new auto dealer industry.

 

[polo1665]

We ended up having to cancel our land line through Frontier. Their customer service was absolutely terrible, almost to the point that I thought that they were purposely trying to get people to cancel. For us I think it had to mainly with their infrastructure. The lines in our area are in terrible shape, and I don't think they want to spend the money to fix/replace them. Ended up going with cell phone only, and getting a Verizon Jet Pack in the house for our internet.

We've actually been pleased with Direct TV. Bought a new Hi-Def TV a couple years back. They came out and upgraded our system (all new cables, new dish), no extra charge for any of it. They even filled us in on a new channel package that brought our monthly price down. All I had to do was mention the possibility of going to Dish Network.

 

[widefat]

My favorite: "we are experiencing a higher than normal call volume".
I don't think I have ever not heard that.

 

[PILOON]

Your call is very important, please hold for next representative.

You hold for 45 mins and 'click' an automatic disconnect!
AND the worst music!

I'm rural---
Call HYDRO to repot an outage,
They say go on line (no power so how?) check neighbors (rural) nice spiel on good service, use friendly app to report (no cell reception) enter phone #, confirm address, and get standard 3 hrs to effect repairs and 6 hrs later power returns.

So U know why I have a generator.
(We had 3 outages in a 2 week period last month.)

I did try reporting with my cell phone but by the time they finished each prompt the screen went off and I had to re boot the phone.
LOL, we have flashlights all over the place! (Love LED lights.)

Next as trees have grown (as they tend to do) I now lose Sat TV when wet and or windy.
Problem is we need a permit to cut any tree and a city bylaw says we have to plant a replacement.
We live in a forest!
The 'work around' is to cut on week ends as city inspectors are off duty.

 

[RalphVa]

We've had CenturyLink as our phone carrier from 2000 until this year. Neighbor cut our phone line 2 places a couple years ago and ultimately resulted in CL coming in and installing a new phone line over our property (ours was actually in the utility area nearly 10 ft into the teritorial neighbor's property and he insisted he had no easement for it: it's a national one), but CL could not maintain the promised DSL speed with so much traffic). Finally got the wife so disgusted that we switched to Comcast. Had Comcast for TV for about 10 years until the connect with Xfinity. Went to TV with DirecTV via CL but stopped it after about 2 years and went with Roku and SlingTV on it.

Now on Comcast internet/phone. Took a good bit of one day on the phone with Comcast to get our phones set up. They just dropped off an internet install kit after putting the cable connection in a box on the back of the house. Had internet really quickly, but it took into the afternoon to get the phones.

Dropped Sling but had troubles because I didn't do it exactly right. Had to do it again to finally shed the SlingTV charges. Only had it for ESPN, but there's been nothing to watch on ESPN as women's softball and LL world series were both cancelled. May not even restart it for football. Get air TV via little antennas on each of the 3 TVs.

Lots of good, free movies on Roku via Roku and Tubi channels. Also got a gizmo from Xfinity that allows Tubi access and has some old movies on it. Don't like it.

Ralph

 

[grsthegreat]

Your call is very important, please hold for next representative.

You hold for 45 mins and 'click' an automatic disconnect!
AND the worst music!

I'm rural---
Call HYDRO to repot an outage,
They say go on line (no power so how?) check neighbors (rural) nice spiel on good service, use friendly app to report (no cell reception) enter phone #, confirm address, and get standard 3 hrs to effect repairs and 6 hrs later power returns.

So U know why I have a generator.
(We had 3 outages in a 2 week period last month.)

I did try reporting with my cell phone but by the time they finished each prompt the screen went off and I had to re boot the phone.
LOL, we have flashlights all over the place! (Love LED lights.)

Next as trees have grown (as they tend to do) I now lose Sat TV when wet and or windy.
Problem is we need a permit to cut any tree and a city bylaw says we have to plant a replacement.
We live in a forest!
The 'work around' is to cut on week ends as city inspectors are off duty.

Holy crap...when did canada become California,......

 

[Industrial Toys]

It's all our fault. WE keep letting (BS) stuff like this expand in our lives. We have incredible power as consumers if we banded together, but it will never happen.

Like ROBO calls are pisssing me off. I can't hang up quickly enough when I hear "important call", or "do not hang up". If EVERYONE did that, robo calls would end tomorrow!

 

[kf4uda]

Like the rest of you folks I have had the same/similar results trying to talk to various customer support. Lately out of frustration I have tried the "chat" feature if available and for the most part have had more success than over the phone. You can also screen capture so you have a record of the conversation.

 

[newbury]

<snip>
Example 2: I have Dish TV. It's been acting up for months, we don't watch TV much anyway, so I call to cancel. They don't want to lose a customer, so guy comes out, says I need to cut down a large oak tree in yard.<snip>

How the heck did you let them convince you to keep it?
If I decide to cancel something they da$# well better cancel it.

I just had the phone/internet company out. My DSL modem was crapping out frequently about an hour every other day. I told them to bring a new modem. The guy comes in and tries to convince us that the phone line is kinked and I need to replace that and the modem is probably fine. After about a minute of his BS I tell him to go to his shop (an hour drive) and get a replacement modem. He then admits he's got one on the truck and brings it in.
That was over a week ago. I've been running PingInfoView 24/7 since and it's dropped about a dozen packets.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I have talked to BIG TELCO and Internet provider, employees and contractors, on various sites. Sadly, sometimes it's these guys that are getting screwed as bad as the customers.

 

[Fuddy1952]

How the heck did you let them convince you to keep it?
Good question. I guess as a long term customer, the deal they made was too good to pass up. We don't watch much TV, mainly Fox news and TCM which I can't get over the air antenna.
Amazing how many people we know watch TV 14+ hours a day!

 

[Fuddy1952]

Phones are back working. I did some troubleshooting and at least got some phones working. Verizon tech came back, got garage line active and apparently another problem was under the crawl space. He was ready to "suit up" when I suggested I'd fix it.
What's weird is everything was fine before I switched back to them, wired landline.
Only one phone out in a downstairs bedroom. I remembered an old style jack across room, tested and got a dial tone. I replaced it with a modern jack, phone to it and everything is working again.

 

[fried1765]

Holy crap...when did canada become California,......

In some respects, Canada became California, even before California became like California.
In Canada, everything that is either fastened down, or loose, is permit required, is heavily taxed, or both!

 

[Hay Dude]

I am sandwiched between 2 large cities which are about 30 miles apart in a semi-rural area. Over the last 12 years, we have tried a few different cell carriers. Verizon is the 澱est but we still only get 1 bar in my town. Its ridiculous and Verizon is the most expensive. Best deal I can get for our 5 phones with unlimited data is about $225/month! We have range extenders ($200/each) in our house with a very short range, maybe 50 feet....Go out to the mailbox or to the barn, call drops.
Its frustrating because if I go to the 3rd floor of my house, I can look out the dormer windows and see 2 cell phone towers about 1-2 miles away! I was told not all cell phone towers are turned on. Some are turned off.
Of course its not just me, everyone in the area complains/jokes about it. I could not imagine how nice it would be to have excellent coverage to enjoy on line radio, etc. without having to re boot every 10 minutes or be able to talk to customers with clear call reception.
Other carriers are worse.

 

[pokey1416]

AT&T has been trying to abandon their copper analog landline business for nearly a decade. They announced a year 2020 implementation but for those with no broadband or fiber access this is going to be problematic. It’s pretty evident that the good old phone line is being retired.