Posted on 06/02/2004 9:05:53 AM PDT by Bob J
There is a business in my hometown that spends literally millions of dollars each year on advertising and promoting future sales. If they would spend a few dollars to improving customer support they would increase there their bottom line revenue by a factor greater than they could ever realize. I am talking about my area cable services provider. This company spends massive amounts of money getting new customers and then they feel that a 5+ minute hold while waiting for a representative to answer the telephone in completely acceptable. If you hold long enough you will eventually get a representative on the line and he or she usually can only confirm that your service is not working.
Let me share with you how I am taking back my life and costing my EX-service provider a few hundred dollars a year in return. About two months ago I had a disagreement over my monthly statement. I had paid my bill, but they had incorrectly applied my payment to another account, which was subsequently over paid. The simple solution would have been to debit one account and credit the other, but that would have been too easy.
I called their "customer service" number and after minutes of listing and selecting the correct options from a myriad of choices I finally heard the familiar voice saying, “All of our customer service representatives are busy at the moment. Please hold for the next available operator."
Minutes ticked by. I know this because I use a cellular telephone service charges by the minute, and my telephone has a timer display to show me how much I am going to have to pay for the call. After five minutes listening to the recording, “Your call is important to us. Please be patient. Your call will be answered by the next available operator,” I began to wonder just how important my business was to these folks. I held another minute and decided that my time and money was more important to me than an anonymous voice recording on the telephone. I hung up my telephone and will never looked back at my decision.
I broke out my trusty old "rabbit ears" antenna and hooked them up to my television. All of the local channels came in remarkably clear. It only took me a week to realize that the local television channels have very little information programming other than their evening news programs. After the first week of withdrawals from constant news, sports, and weather information, I quickly realized how much time I had been “slaughtering” re-watching these news and information programs from all the different perspectives just to be able to say that I was informed. In reality these "news and information" programs are no more relevant than the situation comedies on the broadcast Television stations.
I looked around and found several good books that I had been saying that I wanted read. After only three weeks I have now finished 4 novels and am enrolling in a class from the local university. If you think I will ever go back to being spoon feed by a cable TV service you had better think again.
In summation I guess I owe my cable TV service a big thank you for being so inconsiderate.
Comments to msw@gulf1.com
"I looked around and found several good books that I had been saying that I wanted read. After only three weeks I have now finished 4 novels and am enrolling in a class from the local university. If you think I will ever go back to being spoon feed by a cable TV service you had better think again."
I'll just point out this gentleman has a PhD....it sounds to me he is a "professional student".
I'll also point out that the cable company, which undoubtedly makes tens of millions of dollars each year in profit won't miss his couple of hundred bucks.
This is more about the author than it is customer service, in short. Just my opinion.
Gave up on cable 14 years ago. Gave up on TV news long before that. If I want weather or news, there's the Internet.
I agree that for many companies customer service stinks. However, I have to give credit to my local cable provider. Their service has for the most part been excellent. They have corrected problems, shown up for service calls when they say they will and rarely have I had to wait on hold to talk to customer service reps. Some companies do get it right.
I work for a small Midwestern electronics company that distributes and sells off-air antennas and accessories for HDTV. I have been in the business for almost 20 years. In the last 5 years or so, customer service from our vendors has gotten dramatically worse. What once used to be handled with a friendly voice and quick response is now a nightmare of unknowledgeable sales people and red tape. I sorely miss the good old days.
It works like this. You spend on 1st class customer support to hook up the high income, money is no object early adopters. As time goes on, and you've hooked up all but the last few holdouts, you try to get those people by offering a really low price and customer service suffers, but that does not matter as the customers you have hooked are hooked.
I never bother with that. Just hit '0' and most systems will take you straight to a live person.
I would consider cancelling my cable service, but I don't think I could make it without FoxNews.
"...I never bother with that. Just hit '0' and most systems will take you straight to a live person...."
That DOESN'T work with Dell, and it DOESN'T work with Verizon. Already tried it.
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I wonder why the cable companies 'bundle' channels in such a way that the consumer must take certain channels they may not want, in order to get the few they may want? Why can't the cable companies taylor the channels completely based on ONLY the chaneels the consumer wants in their home (considering children being in the home, for instance)?
Better late than never, funny though (if this story is indeed true) that the brilliant doctor had to suffer a run-in with customer service to make him realize that spending time doing almost anything is better spent than watching TV (broadcast or cable).
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