A wicked and often WRONG tale of my life in general, or a diary if you will of how a simple world can be harsh to someone that has a diffrent view.
My story starts on February 24th when my phones had no dial tone. My wife called the tech support for help in getting it fixed. The people there were rude to her and gave her NO help about resolving her problems in a timely manner. I submitted an Internet request for service only to be told hours later that it would be resolved after 6:00 pm. The phone lines in our division have multiple problems. Several neighbors have complained about hearing each other’s conversations. Our next door neighbor knows everything about my wife through the interference with the phone lines including our dislike for her.

Then on Tuesday February 31st our Internet connection went out. We have been an Internet customer since April 2005. Comcast used to be my provider until they could not provide us service for 3 days, so I dropped them and went to Bellsouth. My wife again called tech support only for them to tell her that it’s our fault. When I got home I stayed on the phone for 3 hours with tech support only for them to create an appointment the next day. The tech assured me that the person coming out was supposed to CALL MY WIFE BEFORE HE CAME, and bring a modem. The appointment was from 1 pm to 5 pm. That day my wife saw several Bellsouth people come by and none of them called or even went to the door.

I called at 5pm again and asked what happened. I was told the tech came out and did something from the outside and left. I asked for the supervisor and demanded they send someone back out. After a hour of being off and on hold I was told they are upgrading the copper wires to fiber optics and did not notify anyone about it. The service should be working the day after.

On the next day the service was still not working, my wife again called to see what was going on. They told her the upgrade should have been finished the day before and service should have been restored. She again asked for them to send someone out and they told her they could not as there was already an appointment in the system. Again she was told the tech that should have come out the day before had rung the door bell and no one was home (A complete lie). She then has been trying to get someone to come out and help us and so far she has been given the complete run around. As these conversations are going on a tech outside our house was listening in to our conversation but refused to help.

I AM SICK OF THIS, My wife and I have been lied to and have our time wasted trying to solve something that was simple, like check the line from the house. I am not at all happy about this situation, and I will find a way to cut this contract loose with or with out a laywer.

Comments
on Mar 02, 2006
At least they're consistant. My problem was the tech they sent out couldn't find his ass with both hands. I had to explain the proper order needed to recycle the modem, router, etc.
on Mar 02, 2006
Then on Tuesday February 31st


I just wanna live somewhere that they HAVE a 31st of February.... (even a 30th would be cool....)
DD


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on Mar 02, 2006
i used to work tech support for Hewlett Packard...i LOVED it when people would call angry and threaten me with lawyers. in fact, i made it a point to mess with angry callers, somehow they assumed that you personally have wronged them, not the company that may have bad policies and procedures. if you are rude to the person answering the phone, absolutely they will lie to you just to get you off the phone at any cost. be calm and ask for a supervisor..."calm" being the key word...if the supervisor isn't able to help you, answer by cancelling your service. making "demands" does no good and will only make the situation worse.
on Mar 02, 2006
I had a rough time with my phone company before. I was charged for calls I didn't make and was charged at over a dollar a minute for calls to Canada when the plan was for 9 cents a minute. After three months of calling them about the wrong charges and them telling me they are sorry and everything is fixed now I finally cancelled the service. Excpet even then they kept sending notices for the unpaid balance (which they have supposedly taken care of many times) and also new charges for a service I no longer had.

I spent another 2 months calling and them telling me that they will fix everything and not to worry any more. Finally I taped the conversation I had with them and the next notice I recieved in the mail I called back, played back the taped conversation and told them that if i recieved another notice from them I will be contacting a lawyer and charging them my contract rates for all the lost hour I spent becuase of their mistake.

After that I didn't receive anything in the mail from them again.
on Mar 02, 2006
It's been my personal experience that most "Support" isnt "Supportive at all *Sigh*

Recently a friend of mine went through the process with his ISP to change his PW for his DSL account because it had been sooooooo long since he had actually logged into it he had forgotten it..
Well, the PW was changed for him and everything seemd cool, untill he tried to log in via the "Stored PW" on the local machine...of course it would not work, the PW had been changed on the server.... The "Support Tech" that he finally got ahold of had him disabling firewaals, shutting down AV and SW progs to finally come to the conclusion that windows was corrupted ((*Shakes head in disgust*))

After he explained all this to me it took less than a second to get him back up and online again....
Moral- Most support techs are Morons!

The "rude" part, im sorry but I would not put up with 2 seconds of it, too many ISP options to choose from...
on Mar 03, 2006
Hey Sir lantec - I have bellsouth DSL, What IS the proper order for recycling the modem, router????
on Mar 03, 2006
What IS the proper order for recycling the modem, router


I don't know that this is the *proper* order but here's how I do it and it always works for me.

1) turn off computer, modem and router (this usually means unplugging the router)
2) turn on modem (wait for it to establish a connection)
3) plug router power back in wait for a few seconds
4) turn computer back on

Sometimes turning the computer off isn't necessary but I've found it makes the process work better, for me at least!

Oh, and for the OP, the best way to voice your disappointment is to talk with your wallet. That's about all big companies understand any more. You can call and yell at the little guy (who has nothing to do with your problem, BTW) or you can tell the company to bugger off. Even better, call the tech folks, ask to speak to a manager, explain your problems you've been having tell them why you are upset at their response ask him/her what they can do to fix it. If you are satisfied with their response give it another chance, if not ask them to transfer you to billing so you can have your service disconnected. Not sure if you have the option of a cable modem in your area but I have a cable modem with a digital phone from Time Warner and I haven't had any problems at all. Well, other than their crappy digital voice mail, but that's not really an integral part of the service and it was a breeze to just cancel it.

Good luck and take what Scion said to heart, you're taking your frustrations out on the wrong people. If you feel you must yell at least ask for a manager, they are paid a little better to take the abuse..
on Mar 09, 2006
I sent this story to the high people of Bell South .. the corprate types.. they LOVE to hear how I think about thier company for FREE!
Dealing with supervisors and managers is worthless and time consuming.. they only listen at the corprate level..at least that is what I found to be true.

And as for getting someone else.. I have comcast in my area.. and i'm not going back to them.. thier service is VERY bad.. even when it was working(and not).
on Mar 09, 2006

Your problem clearly stems from the system failure on the 31st of Feb.

Such failures are only rectified on the 12th of Never.

You SHOULD know this.....it's bound to be in the contract somewhere...

on May 01, 2006
I like what you do, continue this way.
on Sep 15, 2006
Hey, I'll tell ya what sucks big giant balls. This one time, this sneaky guy that goes by some handle that sounds like "diaper"... he put this lame blog on my server without telling me about it. Yea, he did stuff like that back in 2004 to his employer too, the tax payer. Whew, luckily nobody ever read about the events of FEB 31ST. If visitors would have flocked in by the droves I wouldn't have known why my bandwidth bill was so high. Now that I'm back to checking on things, I'll have to remember to kill this little puppy when my pipe charges go above the minimum.

Oh, yea... BellSouth blows way more than dyper sucks