Wednesday, January 05, 2005
phone phrustration
I just read Jalpuna's post about his problems with MCI. My dealings with Cingular last week don't quite match the pain and suffering he has gone through for the past month, but I thought I'd share...
I learned last week that apparently the best way to deal with cell phone companies is... in person! My husband had gotten us new Cingular/AT&T cell phones via the Internet, only they weren't activated (although they were supposed to be).
So I called the 800 customer dis-service number. After getting a recorded voice to tell me (3 times in a row actually) that "I'm sorry, there's no service for those numbers", or some such fact that I already knew, I was told (by the Voice) that wait times were about 8 minutes to talk with a real human. Cursing, I opted for the wait (the one good thing is owning a speaker phone... makes waiting much easier.)
Oddly enough, rather than annoying hold music or advertisments for service, for the first 6 minutes of holding I heard... nothing! How curious that a phone company doesn't have their hold set up for music or something to know that someone is still there. A really faint ad did come on about minute 7. Apparently Cingular hasn't figured out the volume controls for their hold function. Not that I'm a fan of either crappy hold music or ads, but something other than dead air might be nice.
At about minute 8 I made it through to a real person. Who checked my phone numbers, told me what I already knew (it's not active - no shit!), said she needed to transfer me to a local rep.
And I realized my mistake instantly - I didn't get the phone number she had transferred me to. I call this the Rule of Infernal Disconnection. Anytime you've been waiting for more than 5 minutes and then get transferred to another department, you are bound to be disconnected. I was.
After swearing at the phone again (granted, my little speaker phone was innocent in all of this, but I needed to vent, and beating the dogs didn't seem nice) I called back the 800 number, and had to go through the whole process again. This time, when the Voice said my hold time would be 7 minutes, I hung up and decided to call 411 to get the local number myself.
I procured a local number, dialed it and was greeted by the message "this number has been disconnected".
WHAT?! It's a phone company, and their number is disconnected?
Thinking there was a mistake, I call back 411 and explained that the number I had just gotten was disconnected, and could they check for a different one? Instead of keeping a human on the phone, a recording came on and gave me the same damn number. Great, so now I've paid twice to my home phone company for a number for my cell phone company that has been disconnected.
I commenced screaming at my phone. The dogs ran and hid. At about that time, my husband called and I explained my cellular runaround and asked him to please, please, please go to the local phone store to get it worked out, since using the phone wasn't going to work.
He did. The guys in the store were very helpful, especially in light of having to solve mistakes made by others far far away. It turned out that the reason why our phones didn't work in the first place was that a big batch of cell phones that were mailed right after Christmas were mistakenly programmed for New Jersey or something instead of for Oregon.
Bravo.
I've had AT&T Wireless for the past three years and have been really happy with them. However, this whole experience bodes ill for Cingular. Maybe it's just the holiday madness. Maybe it's the merger still sorting itself out.
Whatever it is, it makes me frustrated yet again that we have to use huge corporations for services such as these. And makes me fear for the imminent privatization of just about everything in this country under King George.
Privatize the postal service? Great, we'll have to pay $1 or more per letter, the CEO (and other execs) will make a million a year, and we'll probably have ads on the stamps. Brilliant.
¶ 10:17 AM
I just read Jalpuna's post about his problems with MCI. My dealings with Cingular last week don't quite match the pain and suffering he has gone through for the past month, but I thought I'd share...
I learned last week that apparently the best way to deal with cell phone companies is... in person! My husband had gotten us new Cingular/AT&T cell phones via the Internet, only they weren't activated (although they were supposed to be).
So I called the 800 customer dis-service number. After getting a recorded voice to tell me (3 times in a row actually) that "I'm sorry, there's no service for those numbers", or some such fact that I already knew, I was told (by the Voice) that wait times were about 8 minutes to talk with a real human. Cursing, I opted for the wait (the one good thing is owning a speaker phone... makes waiting much easier.)
Oddly enough, rather than annoying hold music or advertisments for service, for the first 6 minutes of holding I heard... nothing! How curious that a phone company doesn't have their hold set up for music or something to know that someone is still there. A really faint ad did come on about minute 7. Apparently Cingular hasn't figured out the volume controls for their hold function. Not that I'm a fan of either crappy hold music or ads, but something other than dead air might be nice.
At about minute 8 I made it through to a real person. Who checked my phone numbers, told me what I already knew (it's not active - no shit!), said she needed to transfer me to a local rep.
And I realized my mistake instantly - I didn't get the phone number she had transferred me to. I call this the Rule of Infernal Disconnection. Anytime you've been waiting for more than 5 minutes and then get transferred to another department, you are bound to be disconnected. I was.
After swearing at the phone again (granted, my little speaker phone was innocent in all of this, but I needed to vent, and beating the dogs didn't seem nice) I called back the 800 number, and had to go through the whole process again. This time, when the Voice said my hold time would be 7 minutes, I hung up and decided to call 411 to get the local number myself.
I procured a local number, dialed it and was greeted by the message "this number has been disconnected".
WHAT?! It's a phone company, and their number is disconnected?
Thinking there was a mistake, I call back 411 and explained that the number I had just gotten was disconnected, and could they check for a different one? Instead of keeping a human on the phone, a recording came on and gave me the same damn number. Great, so now I've paid twice to my home phone company for a number for my cell phone company that has been disconnected.
I commenced screaming at my phone. The dogs ran and hid. At about that time, my husband called and I explained my cellular runaround and asked him to please, please, please go to the local phone store to get it worked out, since using the phone wasn't going to work.
He did. The guys in the store were very helpful, especially in light of having to solve mistakes made by others far far away. It turned out that the reason why our phones didn't work in the first place was that a big batch of cell phones that were mailed right after Christmas were mistakenly programmed for New Jersey or something instead of for Oregon.
Bravo.
I've had AT&T Wireless for the past three years and have been really happy with them. However, this whole experience bodes ill for Cingular. Maybe it's just the holiday madness. Maybe it's the merger still sorting itself out.
Whatever it is, it makes me frustrated yet again that we have to use huge corporations for services such as these. And makes me fear for the imminent privatization of just about everything in this country under King George.
Privatize the postal service? Great, we'll have to pay $1 or more per letter, the CEO (and other execs) will make a million a year, and we'll probably have ads on the stamps. Brilliant.
¶ 10:17 AM
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Two things our Gubbermint does well:
1)FDR's Social Security
2)Deliver the mail. (No,I'm not kiddin')
We used to be good at lots of stuff, but that ended four years ago.
A damned $40 million coronation? Bringin' back the triumphant spirit of late 1930's Germany.
How nostalgic.
1)FDR's Social Security
2)Deliver the mail. (No,I'm not kiddin')
We used to be good at lots of stuff, but that ended four years ago.
A damned $40 million coronation? Bringin' back the triumphant spirit of late 1930's Germany.
How nostalgic.
yeah, what ever happened to showing some restraint during wartime? Oh I guess it brings up the "s" word that Bushies don't like: sacrifice. It's ok for them to make other people sacrifce their lives, but god forbid they cancel some inuaguration parties.
And you're right about the postal service.
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And you're right about the postal service.
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