geek

If you were starting an angry mob, I would heartily suggest that you put frustrated DSL customers in the frontline.  We can get vicious.

It’s no secret — in our country, currently, there is no one true answer for your DSL needs.  The connection that is hardly-ever-down and has respectable speed will always have contractors that take forever to get to your house.  Or maybe you’re of the early-adopter kind; the connection was fast and reliable the first few months — ’til more and more people found out about it.  Or you could even be the sunny kind — connection’s good as long as rain clouds don’t appear.

Lately I’ve been having problems with Globe’s broadband services.  What used to be “ol’ reliable” has never been quite the same after the storm from July, Bashang.  The contractors have said that they’ve replaced the fiber optics and have done the necessary repairs, — I even got my modem replaced! — but it’s just not the same.  I keep glancing over the modem to see if the “DSL” light is on.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve become phone pals with customer support — I call them every week now.  A prime example is last week’s debacle: I woke up Monday afternoon with NO connection.  Called customer support right up to get it looked at — left the house to get some internettin’ done.  Got home and still nothing.  Called customer support to follow up, and woke up early, just in case the technicians dropped by in the morning.  (This was Tuesday.)  By 5 and with no sign of anybody coming to fix my internet, I called up again, only to have yet another job order filed for the next day.

Wednesday: I called early in the morning to confirm if anybody was dropping by, the customer support I talked to told me that my job order was scheduled for 1-5 in the afternoon, so I went back to sleep and woke up at noon.  Then the waiting.  1:30, feedback called to ask if my internet was fixed.  I told them no technician dropped by, and that I still didn’t have internet access.  She pressed on that the technicians reported in that they already visited.  TIMEWARP!  Did I miss anything?  I was told that they’d be calling the technicians to follow up with my lack of internet.

By 2:30, I called up customer support again, only to be told that the job order was still open, and that someone will come to look at my internet by 5.  No one did.  I called up again and asked for an explanation.  I gave the reference number for my job order but was then told to double check; my job order apparently ceased to exist.  I wasn’t so much concerned if anybody was going to fix my internet that day — I was looking for a reason why the last customer support would tell me to wait up for nothing, or why my job order would disappear from my records.  The customer support agent couldn’t answer, so I asked for anybody higher than her to explain better why the communication between the customer support department, the support center and the contractors was so bad.

I got in touch with a supervisor who assured me that by the next day (Thursday), someone would come and fix my internet.  There would be a matter of prioritization (so, not every customer is a priority?), personal emails from both him and his co-supervisor and personal guarantees from him and the agent who answered.  From Monday to Wednesday, I have gotten personal guarantees — and yet I still didn’t have a connection.

Thursday, no one dropped by.  For some reason though, the internet was back.  I didn’t have the energy to waste more time listening to “please hold” advertisement, so I didn’t report it.  By Friday, at 7 in the morning, waking me up from my week’s lack of sleep, technicians dropped by to look at my internet.  I told them that I had connectivity from the prior day and they told me that they were just “double checking.”  Rrrrrriiiiigggghhhhhht.

This week, as I’m told, the whole region was under network restoration.  Intermittent connection ’til it finally gave out at around midnight.  Called up customer support again and was told that network restoration had been done, so it was a genuine concern.  I was told that since it was after 12, the job order will have to be scheduled for the next day, regardless if I called it in at 12:01 AM, the technicians will be scheduled for a visit by the next day.  I had been assured that rebates from the outages would reflect on my next billing statement  —  I didn’t want money that was already mine — I want to be connected, with as little interference as possible.

As I write this, the other DSL company for whom I applied for have still not returned.  I think about all the customer support agents of whom I’ve gotten to talk to over the last 2 years and I start to feel horrible — they have exercised extreme restraint and patience — their job is to be yelled at by dissatisfied customers looking for a reason.  For now I’m not quite sure for whom.

I’d like to think that customer support agents think about my situation as a consumer, that there’s some kind of prioritization going on when I don’t get to use the service.  But I don’t believe it.