Foo - Two people who are going to have bad nights...

1) Some poor customer service rep at Best Buy's phone center.

2) Some poor customer service rep at the Dallas Time Warner Cable phone center.

Go get 'em, Cuda2k! :D

3. Person who actually thinks customer service hasn't dealt with 1000s of people who are just like them.

YIKES:eek: , that was kinda scary just reminded me of my boss!!

I'm not really mad at Best Buy. Sure, they were supposed to send me a gift card, couldn't find my address (wtf???) and then returned the giftcard to themselves and credited the two giftcards I had used to purchase the item that was supposed to come with the gift card. Problem: I no longer have those original giftcards.... Hopefully that one won't be a bad day for anyone.

Time Warner on the other hand is going to get a serious piece of my mind if what I was just told by my wife is true. On Saturday my cable goes out. It's 37 degrees out and raining so no way I'm going to ride (and BF's was down too). Call them through out the day and can't get through to the customer service line at all. Sunday finally get in touch with them, and arrange to have a service guy come out today.

Wife calls me after the guy leaves. Either the cables is cut, or the cable was cut and rerouted elsewhere (ie: my new upstairs neighbor). The kicker... the next avaliable appointment is on Feb 2nd. :eek: :mad: If my upstairs neighbor doesn't call TW in the next... 40mins, and approve for them to come in and take a look, apparently that's the next time they can come out and look at it.

Usually I'm not a difficult person to get along with. I'm fairly easy going, but to have a nearly 2 week interuption in service is absolutely unacceptable. I will be more than happy to take off my "easy going guy" hat for a few minutes and chew my way up the chain of command over there till I find someone who can get things done.

Oh yeah baby I would be pissed too!! :)

THAT SUCKS Cuda- I hope it gets figured out soon. :)

1 down... a new Best Buy giftcard should be mailed in the "next 5 to 10 business days." It wasn't too painful, though it took about 4 attempts to explain what happened even though they had the order number right in front of them.

next... TWC... and their convienent ability to have a 'busy signal' on their Customer Service number. I'll just keep calling...

- man, i wish i had your cable problem... i *hate* cable TV... in fact, i hate TV altogether... why hate cable? here are a few reasons:

- no ala carte ordering of channels, which means $$$ (expensive) 'bundling' of useless feeds in expensive 'packages'

- noise-level variations between channels, contents and ads that are in violation of FCC standards (blasting audio during commercials)

- with the advent of digital, forcing customers to proprietary hardware for recording, ordering, etc. (monthly payments for equipment rental necessary for digital reception; yes, some folks are capable of homebrewing equipment or can pay for Tivo)

- marketing of phone (VOIP), TV, and Internet connectivity in an artificial monopoly sanctioned by local government (i.e., most communities only have one cable provider)

- inclusion of channels focused on minority mainstream religious and/or culture (such as Muslim [Islamist]- or Hispanic-focused shows), but no alternative or open-channel programming (i.e., soapbox free speech facilities for open subjects)

- i'd be having a *fantastic* time with no cable TV! but alas, i cannot... my wife watches all evening long, and now that we have her mother with us for the winter, a TV is on somewhere in the house 21/7...

:-(

3. Person who actually thinks customer service hasn't dealt with 1000s of people who are just like them.

I can usually throw a kink into the conversation. Seeing as I am IT, I am rarely left with level 1 support for long. I can usually tell them what is happening and they usually sound of a "ahhhhh I a dumb" muffled sound and put me through.

Like dealing with this one software vendor (this one took 3 days), every day I told them what was wrong. They thought for sure I didn't know how to map a shared network drive. Finally I got someone who could think outside the FAQ they read from, and listened to exactly what I said "Your linux shares on your server box do not show up on my windows computers. Your samba service (cron whatever you wanna call it) is not running. Without Samba my windows network can't see your unix network."

His response was...really thats cool, let me look into it. 30 minutes later, he read a manual outside the standard 800 FAQ questions and blamo it was working. I sent an email to his boss complimenting him on his outside the box thinking. I also commented on the other two support people who were signifigantly less than helpful. I pay big bucks for support, if they can't help then I will pull my contracts.

1 down... a new Best Buy giftcard should be mailed in the "next 5 to 10 business days." It wasn't too painful, though it took about 4 attempts to explain what happened even though they had the order number right in front of them.

next... TWC... and their convienent ability to have a 'busy signal' on their Customer Service number. I'll just keep calling...


Another reason why I love Direct TV.

Maybe this is what happend?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/h2omojo/stuff/stealinginternet.jpg

I couldn't do without my cable.....

Broadband phone, cable, internet, all cheaper than I could get DSL and long distance for.
Phone $24.95/mo...including unlimited long distance to US, Canada, Western Europe, and the Philippines
Internet: 10 meg UL/DL...$30.00/mo
Programming: $45.00 a month for 124 channels including 9 premium channels and it's not a "special".

Internet: 10 meg UL/DL...$30.00/mo.

I really hate hearing things like this. Afterall, I'm stuck on dialup! My only option is through DirectWay, $600 to hook up and about $80 a month. Just not worth it. Looks like I'm stuck with AOL dialup for a while. :mad:

1) Some poor customer service rep at Best Buy's phone center.

2) Some poor customer service rep at the Dallas Time Warner Cable phone center.


drop em like a bad habit:rolleyes: .

They're slowly building a city-wide WI-FI cloud here. As soon as they reach my neighborhood and it looks stable, good-bye to Quest and all its works. :D

Track down where the call center is with your browning rifle, make sure it has a good scope, lay in wait on the roof top next door. Tell a funny joke to the guy on the phone and scan for someone laughing through the windows.
Figure out something witty to say cause that'll be the last thing they hear..

I'm not really mad at Best Buy. Sure, they were supposed to send me a gift card, couldn't find my address (wtf???) and then returned the giftcard to themselves and credited the two giftcards I had used to purchase the item that was supposed to come with the gift card. Problem: I no longer have those original giftcards.... Hopefully that one won't be a bad day for anyone.

Time Warner on the other hand is going to get a serious piece of my mind if what I was just told by my wife is true. On Saturday my cable goes out. It's 37 degrees out and raining so no way I'm going to ride (and BF's was down too). Call them through out the day and can't get through to the customer service line at all. Sunday finally get in touch with them, and arrange to have a service guy come out today.

Wife calls me after the guy leaves. Either the cables is cut, or the cable was cut and rerouted elsewhere (ie: my new upstairs neighbor). The kicker... the next avaliable appointment is on Feb 2nd. :eek: :mad: If my upstairs neighbor doesn't call TW in the next... 40mins, and approve for them to come in and take a look, apparently that's the next time they can come out and look at it.

Usually I'm not a difficult person to get along with. I'm fairly easy going, but to have a nearly 2 week interuption in service is absolutely unacceptable. I will be more than happy to take off my "easy going guy" hat for a few minutes and chew my way up the chain of command over there till I find someone who can get things done.
Yeah, good luck with that.

Back in early October I upgraded to digital cable with DVR, because their website (http://www.timewarnercable.com/dallas/products/cable/dvr/dvr.html) says they have dual-tuner DVR capability, and there are two shows on at the same time every week that my wife and I want to watch. I placed the call for upgrade on a Tuesday, they came out the next day & installed it. Thursday rolls around, and we try to record one show while watching another, and it won't do it. Turns out that our area isn't dual-tuner capable, even though their site says so. So I call and keep working my way up the ladder of supervisors trying to get it resolved. They made no effort to make me happy. I had a couple different options that I was willing to accept, and they refused them all and pretty much said I was SOL. One person did tell me that our area is scheduled to be dual-tuner capable sometime in April. But then she told me to do a search on their website for a very specific term which yielded an obscure press release which stated that not all areas are dual-tuner capable. I told her that they can't expect a customer to do that search, and that it would be a hell of a lot easier if they'd just place an asterisk next to it with a disclaimer below of "not available in all areas, contact your local office for details".

So on Tuesday, after a half-dozen calls, and discussing it with my wife, we decided to cancel the digital cable, and get a TiVo. I made the call and had an appointment scheduled for Thursday evening. We then researched the TiVo and discovered that it can't deal with our cable lines, because we have both A-cable and B-cable. We'd need to have digital cable to get a dual-tuner TiVo to work. So I called TWC back and changed our appointment to a downgrade to digital, no DVR. They confirmed the appointment for Thursday evening.

Thursday rolled around, and the appointment time coame and went. I called TWC to find out what was up with the tech. They informed me that I didn't have an appointment for that evening, that I'd cancelled it and rescheduled it for the following Tuesday. I explained that I wouldn't have done that, as I had a dr. appointment Tuesday late afternoon, and I didn't know if I'd be able to be home in time. I also asked about the cancellation. I was told that "someone from your number called and cancelled it." I asked when that occurred. They said 5:54pm. I told them that was when I initially made the appointment, and that I called back at 8pm and changed the service, but not the time. They showed that too, but that it had been canceled. So I said, "let me get this straight, I made an appointment at 5:45, then called at 8pm, then went back in time to 5:45 and canceled it?" I got no response. Some customer service reps refused to put me in touch with a supervisor, as they were all on the phone. I even asked them to simply write a note stating that they had a severely pissed off customer on the line and passing it to a supervisor, they refused. I finally got someone who was willing to see about getting a technician to stop by earlier 5 days. She wasn't able to, but agreed to refund quite a bit of the charges.

What ultimately pissed me off the most about the whole ordeal was that when the Tuesday appointment came up, two technicians arrived. Surely one of them could have come on Friday.

If we weren't in a 100+ year old historic building, we'd have a dish. Since we're on the 2nd floor, and the roof is the 9th, it's kinda hard to run cable to our loft. And we can't have it outside our windows, and our windows face North & East anyway.

Track down where the call center is with your browning rifle, make sure it has a good scope, lay in wait on the roof top next door. Tell a funny joke to the guy on the phone and scan for someone laughing through the windows.
Figure out something witty to say cause that'll be the last thing they hear..

Maybe a little over kill, but I never rule out any options.

Track down where the call center is with your browning rifle, make sure it has a good scope, lay in wait on the roof top next door. Tell a funny joke to the guy on the phone and scan for someone laughing through the windows.
Figure out something witty to say cause that'll be the last thing they hear..
I could be wrong, but I think society frowns on such things. Besides, do you have any idea how much paperwork that would cause? :rolleyes:

Reminds me of Verizon math. Stupid people shouldn't be left in charge of solving problems.

Reminds me of Verizon math. Stupid people shouldn't be left in charge of solving problems.

Just remember when talking to stupid people. They will just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Track down where the call center is with your browning rifle, make sure it has a good scope, lay in wait on the roof top next door. Tell a funny joke to the guy on the phone and scan for someone laughing through the windows.
Figure out something witty to say cause that'll be the last thing they hear..
I think gun ownership is illegal in India. That's where my cable company has thier call center, and they are a small local company.

Elo mi na'me es baob!

I think gun ownership is illegal in India. That's where my cable company has thier call center, and they are a small local company.

If he PM's me and gives me the coordinates, I'd gladly lend him a few seconds of time on my warbird class orbital weapons platform.

My Best Buy giftcard is on its way. :)

My cable is still out and TWC has had their 48hrs to call me back with a revised appointment time. Tonight will be another call to them after I get home from class.

Most Cable companies have an exclusive contract to serve a given area. Find out what "government body" approved the contract. If 'they' will not help you put pressure on the cable company you know who not to vote for next time.

Ken, good point. Here in the Dallas area we used to be with Comcast, but it was recently switched over to TWC. Compared to Comcast, everything about TWC really blows. Their website is impossible (I think I could have done better design my first year in college), phones rarely actually ring (it's a call center of what, 2 people it seems, I get a busy signal half the time I call!) and unhelpful people once I do get someone on the phone. Uhg.

What gets me is that since I've been in Dallas, it's gone from TCI to AT&T to Comcast to TWC. They all had the same staff & facilities. When it was Comcast, I never had an issue that wasn't resolved to my satisfaction within minutes of my call to them. The technician was actually early for the installation appointment. Now they're TWC, and no one seems to give a $#!+. I laugh every time I see one of their "customer service is #1 with us" ads.

1 down... a new Best Buy giftcard should be mailed in the "next 5 to 10 business days." It wasn't too painful, though it took about 4 attempts to explain what happened even though they had the order number right in front of them.

next... TWC... and their convienent ability to have a 'busy signal' on their Customer Service number. I'll just keep calling...
Hhaa dude.
The Texas DPS has been busy signal for 5 ****ing days straight. Calling at random times int he day when they shouldn't be busy. also too busy to bother sending out new texas ids. Almost a whole month now. Won't respond to e-mail. Don't even acknowledge that an e-mail was sent.

I would like to put businesses that think they can ignore customers justbecause they have your money and a service that nobody else can offer either because theyare the ultimate "god" or because they put everybody out of business and make sure legislature is in place to eliminate any competition.

What gets me is that since I've been in Dallas, it's gone from TCI to AT&T to Comcast to TWC. They all had the same staff & facilities. When it was Comcast, I never had an issue that wasn't resolved to my satisfaction within minutes of my call to them. The technician was actually early for the installation appointment. Now they're TWC, and no one seems to give a $#!+. I laugh every time I see one of their "customer service is #1 with us" ads.
Yeah TWC blows.
I've never had a "good" experience with TWC. If something "stopped" working, it usualy started working long before anybody ever showed up, if they actually bothered to show up.
Oh but if you owe them money they are "so" willing to help, get your money.

Update:

After my 10 day wait for the repair guy to show up, it still isn't fixed. Apparently my upstairs neighbor was not reached by anyone at TWC, nor could he be reached by the leasing office today, to get approval for them to go in and do the repair. So now I'm sitting here waiting for my neighbor to show up so I can talk to him. I'm going to make myself a drink...