Customer Service Epic Fail

If you’ve been keeping up (and speaking of keeping up, I’ve missed a few days and I apologize, I’ve been a little under the weather), you know I just switched to DirecTV and am saving 50 dollars a month. This excites me. What does not excite me is the headache I’m getting from the television service provider I was previously using.

Once I knew my DirecTV was working perfectly, I called to cancel my former service. I was immediately thrown into the pits of automated menu hell. After punching more digits than my social security number squared, I got a live person, Eric, who asked me for my account number, address, and phone number to verify my account and then told me he had the authority to add services but not delete them. Geez, but OK, fine. “Please connect me with someone who can help me.” And back into the pits I went. Enter Ryan. Ryan, who also made me provide my account number, phone number, address, and my first pet’s name to verify my account and then he told me he couldn’t delete services but had apparently picked up my call by accident. Lovely. “Please connect me with someone who can actually help me.” And it occurs to me that “actually” is one of those words I use when I’m annoyed.

So, off we go, trip three down the red hot path of automated menu dungeons and dragons... where we meet Connie.  Connie gets all of the aforementioned numbers and tells me she can cancel my service but then she tells me she can give me six months at the “introductory” rate, if that will keep my business. Now, please tell me, if I could have had that rate all along, why didn’t I have that rate all along? I’d been a customer of this company for over ten years; the decision to cancel did not come lightly and it would not be undone that easily either. As Connie tried to convince me to keep this overpriced service, it became apparent that she did not tuck in her horns before coming to the office. When I asked if someone needed to be home for the technician’s visit to pull the plug, a simple question or so I thought, Little Miss Customer Service said, “Did I tell you someone needed to be there? No, I don’t think I did.” Wow. I had no more words fit to use. I also had no more dollars fit to spend with this company.

And today, I get a phone call recording that says I need to be at home at a specific time on a specific day to meet the technician. What? Connie Customer Service said, in her Queen of the Dungeons & Dragons way, I didn’t. So, here we go again, through the swirling vortex that is the automated menu to figure out if I need to be home or not. Grrr.

And, in the course of the last few hours, I’ve had three, count them, one, two, three phone calls from this television provider asking me what they can do to keep my business. By the third call, my patience was non-existent. What I really wanted to say was: “If your company didn’t employee people who can add but not delete services, AND people who can delete services but can’t politely answer a question, AND people who get paid to regain customers that you’ve already lost, you might not have to charge quite so much in the first place.” But, I, unlike Connie, did tuck my horns in this morning so I simply told them I was content in my decision. And, with that, I became a full-fledged DirecTV girl saving 50 dollars a month...