Customer Service is a Fallacy

[2wheel]

Customer Service is at an all-time low! The above stories I hear from all TV, satellite, Internet, phone, cellular, etc, companies. They just suck at it.

These days, if you have a business, and just do halfassed customer service, your customer's will think you are a god!

[dieziege]

Net phones and cell phones don't work in a power outage

Cell phones usually do....and they are a lot more reliable the rest of the time.

I have a land line (for DSL) and my favorite part is that the %$#*& thing will lose dialtone/stop ringing (doesn't play a disconnect message or anything) every 2-3 months... but the DSL keeps working! They make some hoo-ha about how it is probably my in-house wiring (my entire wiring is a 4' length of line from the exterior box to the DSL modem/cordless phone...everything else has been disconnected) and they will send someone in 24-48 hours but I will be charged if it turns out to be my wiring... and 20 hours later it fixes itself. I've never seen a telco guy actually show up.

[CNF2002]

Net phones and cell phones don't work in a power outage

Cell phones usually do....and they are a lot more reliable the rest of the time.

I have a land line (for DSL) and my favorite part is that the %$#*& thing will lose dialtone/stop ringing (doesn't play a disconnect message or anything) every 2-3 months... but the DSL keeps working! They make some hoo-ha about how it is probably my in-house wiring (my entire wiring is a 4' length of line from the exterior box to the DSL modem/cordless phone...everything else has been disconnected) and they will send someone in 24-48 hours but I will be charged if it turns out to be my wiring... and 20 hours later it fixes itself. I've never seen a telco guy actually show up.

Cell phones only work in a power outage if the station for the cell ('cell' as in area cell, not cellphone cell) you are calling in at the time happens to have power. These phones 'work' because the outage is localized. Any major power disruption to a significant area and cellphones are useless.

Your problem might BE internal wiring. Out of curiosity, why would a landline play a disconnect message???

Dont let the phone guys do it. They are overpaid. If you have 1 or 2 lines in your house, its literally as simple as red/green and yellow/black wires. 2 wires hook up your phone, follow them from the NIC box through your house and doublecheck all connections.

Dont know why DSL would work if the dialtone was gone, don't use DSL and never will. Maybe your problem is with your phone...is it a portable? Try an actual landline (it physically plugs into the wall - no power cord).

And yes ALL of the utility companies customer service sucks. Its because the government lets them hold a monopoly over any given area. You have ONE choice for cable, ONE choice for phone, ONE choice for internet...sure, you can buy through some distributor, but it still comes back to the one company, who you end up having to deal with anyway. They dont care about customer service because no matter how crappy they treat you, you simply have no choice but to keep shoveling your money at them.

[Myself002]

tis ashame

[dieziege]

CNF2002... that is all good advice. Sadly, in a past life I had to deal with analog telephone wiring entirely too much. It warped my fragile little mind. As a result, as soon as I suspected the wiring in my house I disconnected it all. I hooked my butt set directly to the terminals on the MPOE (or whatever they call it in residential wiring...), and still had the problem. By definition it is at that point a telco problem.

I then left the house telephone wiring disconnected. Talk about out-dated technology! Blehg... I have my network "center" mounted on directly on the inside of the wall where the telco-supplied MPOE/interface box is mounted. All of the telephone equipment is quarantined there... the entire in-house wiring is a telephone, a DSL filter, a splitter, a DSL modem, the inside box, about 12" of wire going out to the MPOE. There is also an ethernet switch, firewall, and a few other odds and ends there, all hooked to a UPS.

DSL is sadly my only option for decent internet at an acceptable price. No cable companies service this area, so no cable TV or internet is available. $atellite is too expensive. I could get a frame relay circuit, but again way too expensive. So I'm stuck with DSL.

My theory is that something cooked at the CO and telephone traffic takes a different route through their network than data...but I have no facts to back it up.

When the CO is really cooked and they know it (it has happened a few times out here) they start playing "this service is temporarily unavailable" to callers who dial affected numbers... really bright of them, since it sounds almost exactly like the "this customer hasn't paid their bill" message.

[CNF2002]

When the CO is really cooked and they know it (it has happened a few times out here) they start playing "this service is temporarily unavailable" to callers who dial affected numbers... really bright of them, since it sounds almost exactly like the "this customer hasn't paid their bill" message.

LOL. Well sorry I doubted you! I recently had a problem with my phone when moving into a new house. The guy before us had a digital setup, with a router in one room and the whole house wired with cat5. Phone company came and hooked up the phone, and none of the jacks in the house worked. But all the wiring at the NIC was there.

So when I went into the attic and traced the line, I found the original wire just hanging there from a rafter

Eventually I suppose I should hook up the cat5 again and run it out to the NIC but I dont have need for it right now since I have cable. Sorry you are stuck with DSL, but believe me it took 2 weeks fighting with the cable company just to get them to come out and install their junk.