vikingshadow
07-15-2008, 02:43 PM
Ok, rather their customer service sucks.
This is a rather long story, and as I typed it I was laughing. So, I think it's rather funny. So, here goes - Rant time!
As some of you know, I just got my roof reshingled last week. However, because the bonehead from DirectTV who set my system up years ago fastened the dish directly to the roof on top of the shingles, the roofing crew had to take the dish off, then refastened it back as closely to the original position as possible (Although they should have attached it to the fascia board...)
So, on Saturday morning, I crawl up on the roof, move the dish around a bit until we can get a signal. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any of the local channels, but we did get all the other channels we normally got on both of our televisions.
So, I spent more than 2 hours on the phone with DirectTV customer service on Saturday where we went through the thousand of procedures their handy dandy customer service notebooks allow them to frustrate us normal people with. Unfortunately, after about an hour and 45 minutes, the cool guy I was working with got cut off from me, and I ended up with "Linda."
Now "Linda" does some screwy stuff, including deactivating our account and reactivating it, which resulted in me losing ALL channels on my second tv, and we still didn't get any of the local channels on our main television. So after about 15 minutes, "Linda" (I use quotation marks because I could insert many other names for her right now) tells me that she's going to send out an order for a technician to show up and fix it for us. She asked what kind of dish we had, and after informing me that we had this "protection plus plan" on our account, that she was going to upgrade us to the new, 5-LNB High Definition dish, and since the technician had to come out and adjust after he installs the new dish, it wasn't going to cost us anything.
Cool! So we set up a day (today) and a time (between 8-12) for the technician to show up. So, I take the day off of work (yes, I've been going in and setting up for school already for about a week now), wake up early and clean the house. And then start the wait. And wait. And wait. After 2:00 and no one had shown up, I decided to call DirectTV and ask what's up.
So, I get "Crystal" and after explaining again what's going on, she looks at my account and says, "I'm sorry, we have no record of this at all. In fact, we show your account has been closed with us!" Wait, what? No, no, no!
I told her that wasn't possible because I was sitting on my couch this very moment watching the tele right now. After hem hawing around, we finally find my account and after more digging, she says that she's going to contact the ordering department.
So, after waiting a long time again, I finally got someone and went through the whole spiel again. This person said that we needed to try a few steps first to which I immediately said, "No, I've already gone through all that Saturday. I just need to know where the technician is and why he didn't call me to let me know either that he wasn't coming or that he was going to be late." I told her that I had an order number and gave it to the woman.
So, she digs around in her computer and I hear her say, "That's weird." Then she said, "I'm going to put you on hold and try to figure this one out." So began the extensive, "Are you still there? I'm still trying to figure this out," reminders for the next 20 minutes.
FINALLY, she says, "Well, I'm going to have to set this order back up. The earliest we can get someone there now is this Saturday between 4:00 and 8:00. It'll cost you $50.00 for the technician and $79.99 for the dish. Do you have a credit card handy to put this on?" Wait, what?
Oh, now the pissed off father/teacher/paintballer/buttheaded fighter in me comes out. "This "Linda" said that I wouldn't have to pay anything." I complained. "Now you're telling me that on top of taking a day off of work and losing a full day of pay, :rolleyes: , not recieving the services that we're paying for and now having to pay $130.00 bucks? Then I'm going to have to take ANOTHER day off to sit around and wait for your damn technician again? We're talking a loss of about $300.00 for me all based on this one person's screw up, which is directly linked to your company!" I wasn't finished, "You told me we have this protection plus package that we're paying for, and if it's not going to pay for protection, then what the hell am I paying it for? I'm not at all happy right now."
"I'm sorry about this, sir," she said.
I continued, "I understand the 50.00 since it was our roofers fault. I also know it wasn't you personally that screwed up. But, your company is really screwing me without lube right now. I better dang well get some compensation for this crapfest because I'm losing a LOT of money, here!" Again, :rolleyes: .
So, she says she'll try to get me some compensation, so I'm thinking maybe I'll get lucky and get a free movie package, or an upgrade or whatever. So I hear a calculator going, she's muttering under her breath doing some figuring, and gets back on. "Ok, we're going to compensate you 21.33 for the loss of the channels you can't view. The dish won't cost you anything, but you will have to pay for the technician. Is that ok?"
I laughed at her, "Ok, so you're sending a new dish which isn't going to cost me anything because of the protection plan, right?"
"Right," she said.
"A technician is going to have to install that, right?" I asked.
Again, she said, "Right."
"But," I continued, "I'm going to have to pay for said technician to come here to install the equipment that you said I can't install myself, during which he's going to have to adjust the dish so that we can recieve the channels we're not getting at the moment. Right?"
She said, "Right."
Me, rolling my eyes, "Honestly, do you see the irony here?"
"Um, what" she mumbled.
"Never mind," I said. "You have my left nut in a vice right now, and I'd really love to keep the right one. Let's just get this fixed. You know, the cable company is sounding pretty damn good right now!"
So, THEN this woman decides she wants me to run through the steps on fixing the tv AGAIN, so I humor her. Finally, after not fixing it, she says, "Well, we've done all we can do right now. Do you have any questions?"
I just laughed and said, "Nope. I don't have another 300 bucks to take care of any of the other screw ups you guys make. I'll just wait on the technician."
She says, "You have a great day. Thank you for calling DirectTv."
I reply, "Yeah. You, too."
Now, doesn't that just run your **** through washer?
The funny thing was other than that one time, I wasn't really upset. Then watching my wife and oldest daughter's faces while I was talking to her was priceless. I NEVER talk like that, much less on the phone as I try to be as cordial and profssional as possible. My daughter has heard me cuss one time in her life (though I'm not a saint away from home!)
Now, I left a LOT of the words out of my story up there that I said during my 1.5 hour conversation today for the sake of not seeming like a jerk, and the reason I threw the :rolleyes: in there was because technically, I'm on salary and I'm getting paid for the summer and not losing any money, while I am actually losing valuable time in my classroom. I realize how difficult customer service is, having many friends who worked CS. They usually spend hours cleaning up other people's messes, but in this case, it was a CS person that screwed up.
/rant
tl;dr: there is none. Read the story or deal with it!
This is a rather long story, and as I typed it I was laughing. So, I think it's rather funny. So, here goes - Rant time!
As some of you know, I just got my roof reshingled last week. However, because the bonehead from DirectTV who set my system up years ago fastened the dish directly to the roof on top of the shingles, the roofing crew had to take the dish off, then refastened it back as closely to the original position as possible (Although they should have attached it to the fascia board...)
So, on Saturday morning, I crawl up on the roof, move the dish around a bit until we can get a signal. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any of the local channels, but we did get all the other channels we normally got on both of our televisions.
So, I spent more than 2 hours on the phone with DirectTV customer service on Saturday where we went through the thousand of procedures their handy dandy customer service notebooks allow them to frustrate us normal people with. Unfortunately, after about an hour and 45 minutes, the cool guy I was working with got cut off from me, and I ended up with "Linda."
Now "Linda" does some screwy stuff, including deactivating our account and reactivating it, which resulted in me losing ALL channels on my second tv, and we still didn't get any of the local channels on our main television. So after about 15 minutes, "Linda" (I use quotation marks because I could insert many other names for her right now) tells me that she's going to send out an order for a technician to show up and fix it for us. She asked what kind of dish we had, and after informing me that we had this "protection plus plan" on our account, that she was going to upgrade us to the new, 5-LNB High Definition dish, and since the technician had to come out and adjust after he installs the new dish, it wasn't going to cost us anything.
Cool! So we set up a day (today) and a time (between 8-12) for the technician to show up. So, I take the day off of work (yes, I've been going in and setting up for school already for about a week now), wake up early and clean the house. And then start the wait. And wait. And wait. After 2:00 and no one had shown up, I decided to call DirectTV and ask what's up.
So, I get "Crystal" and after explaining again what's going on, she looks at my account and says, "I'm sorry, we have no record of this at all. In fact, we show your account has been closed with us!" Wait, what? No, no, no!
I told her that wasn't possible because I was sitting on my couch this very moment watching the tele right now. After hem hawing around, we finally find my account and after more digging, she says that she's going to contact the ordering department.
So, after waiting a long time again, I finally got someone and went through the whole spiel again. This person said that we needed to try a few steps first to which I immediately said, "No, I've already gone through all that Saturday. I just need to know where the technician is and why he didn't call me to let me know either that he wasn't coming or that he was going to be late." I told her that I had an order number and gave it to the woman.
So, she digs around in her computer and I hear her say, "That's weird." Then she said, "I'm going to put you on hold and try to figure this one out." So began the extensive, "Are you still there? I'm still trying to figure this out," reminders for the next 20 minutes.
FINALLY, she says, "Well, I'm going to have to set this order back up. The earliest we can get someone there now is this Saturday between 4:00 and 8:00. It'll cost you $50.00 for the technician and $79.99 for the dish. Do you have a credit card handy to put this on?" Wait, what?
Oh, now the pissed off father/teacher/paintballer/buttheaded fighter in me comes out. "This "Linda" said that I wouldn't have to pay anything." I complained. "Now you're telling me that on top of taking a day off of work and losing a full day of pay, :rolleyes: , not recieving the services that we're paying for and now having to pay $130.00 bucks? Then I'm going to have to take ANOTHER day off to sit around and wait for your damn technician again? We're talking a loss of about $300.00 for me all based on this one person's screw up, which is directly linked to your company!" I wasn't finished, "You told me we have this protection plus package that we're paying for, and if it's not going to pay for protection, then what the hell am I paying it for? I'm not at all happy right now."
"I'm sorry about this, sir," she said.
I continued, "I understand the 50.00 since it was our roofers fault. I also know it wasn't you personally that screwed up. But, your company is really screwing me without lube right now. I better dang well get some compensation for this crapfest because I'm losing a LOT of money, here!" Again, :rolleyes: .
So, she says she'll try to get me some compensation, so I'm thinking maybe I'll get lucky and get a free movie package, or an upgrade or whatever. So I hear a calculator going, she's muttering under her breath doing some figuring, and gets back on. "Ok, we're going to compensate you 21.33 for the loss of the channels you can't view. The dish won't cost you anything, but you will have to pay for the technician. Is that ok?"
I laughed at her, "Ok, so you're sending a new dish which isn't going to cost me anything because of the protection plan, right?"
"Right," she said.
"A technician is going to have to install that, right?" I asked.
Again, she said, "Right."
"But," I continued, "I'm going to have to pay for said technician to come here to install the equipment that you said I can't install myself, during which he's going to have to adjust the dish so that we can recieve the channels we're not getting at the moment. Right?"
She said, "Right."
Me, rolling my eyes, "Honestly, do you see the irony here?"
"Um, what" she mumbled.
"Never mind," I said. "You have my left nut in a vice right now, and I'd really love to keep the right one. Let's just get this fixed. You know, the cable company is sounding pretty damn good right now!"
So, THEN this woman decides she wants me to run through the steps on fixing the tv AGAIN, so I humor her. Finally, after not fixing it, she says, "Well, we've done all we can do right now. Do you have any questions?"
I just laughed and said, "Nope. I don't have another 300 bucks to take care of any of the other screw ups you guys make. I'll just wait on the technician."
She says, "You have a great day. Thank you for calling DirectTv."
I reply, "Yeah. You, too."
Now, doesn't that just run your **** through washer?
The funny thing was other than that one time, I wasn't really upset. Then watching my wife and oldest daughter's faces while I was talking to her was priceless. I NEVER talk like that, much less on the phone as I try to be as cordial and profssional as possible. My daughter has heard me cuss one time in her life (though I'm not a saint away from home!)
Now, I left a LOT of the words out of my story up there that I said during my 1.5 hour conversation today for the sake of not seeming like a jerk, and the reason I threw the :rolleyes: in there was because technically, I'm on salary and I'm getting paid for the summer and not losing any money, while I am actually losing valuable time in my classroom. I realize how difficult customer service is, having many friends who worked CS. They usually spend hours cleaning up other people's messes, but in this case, it was a CS person that screwed up.
/rant
tl;dr: there is none. Read the story or deal with it!