SoBad
@delios.com
| reply to wake up folks
Re: Has been better but could be worse
I agree that there can be bad experiences with all companies. Here's my experience with CavTel: I am a technology consultant who has been in the IT world for seven years and have dealt with at least eight different ISPs over that time. I was called in to help with a brand new client who has been trying to work with Cavalier for two years and seven months to get their Internet connection stable. This client has four 1.5Mbps T1 lines coming into the building. The longest period of time they've had stable service since signing up with Cavalier has been three weeks. The longest I've been able to see a connection has been 20 minutes. I called last Thursday and requested to be able to bypass two of the Cavalier-provided routers because they are not providing DHCP addresses. I was hoping that putting them into bridged mode might show some improvement. Customer service said they would test the lines and have an engineer call me back, which they did that evening. He said the lines were clean and that the routers they provided have DHCP turned on - in essence he said it's not their problem. The engineer told me that assigning one of our static addresses to the internal router and bypassing their equipment was an ordering issue and I would have to call back the next morning. I asked him to keep the ticket for the incident open and he said he would not do this because it was an ordering issue and that he'd already closed the ticket. I called back the next morning (Friday, 11/09/07) and waited for 81 minutes listening to a recording tell me the calls were being answered in the order received. To test this, I called on a second phone (leaving the original one connected) and I had a representative pick up within two minutes. The other line remained on hold while I was talking with customer service. The lady I spoke with gave me a ticket number, took my cell number and told me I'd be called back. I told her I could be contacted anytime day or night. I never received a call back. I called them again at 2:00 PM today (Tuesday, 11/13/07) and waited 12 minutes before having the call picked up. I was told that they had this issue documented by the ticket number I'd given them, but this was not an ordering issue and was transferred to Internet repair. I waited about 3 minutes before they picked up. The guy I talked to said he only dealt with DSL and cable and that he'd need to transfer me to the people that handle their T1 lines. I waited about two minutes before this call was picked up. The guy who answered said they only handle the East Coast area and that he'd have to transfer me to the people who handle the Midwest. He transferred me, I heard the on-hold music for about 20 seconds and was then cut off. So, I went to their website and chose to use their Internet Repair chat. I started the chat at 2:30 PM and saw that I had two people ahead of me. At about 3:10 PM the message changed to state there is one person ahead of me. It is now 4:12 PM and I am still seeing the screen telling me there is one person ahead of me. This is by far the absolute worst service I've ever seen from any ISP. I am now betting that I could remain connected to the chat and see that I have one person ahead of me tomorrow morning. The client I'm trying to help is locked into a contract with them until March, but I'm working with them to try to break this. Over the two years and seven months, the client has document 142 service calls she has placed with Cavalier. She estimates this is only half of the calls she's actually made for service to them. I don't know about everyone else, but this seems extremely poor to me. |
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SoBad
@delios.com
| Update:
I left the chat session open, but left the building at 5:00 PM. I returned this morning to find that somebody actuall did pick up the chat session. Here's the transcript of the entire session:
Logged in
There are 2 people ahead of you.
There is 1 person ahead of you.
Please wait for the next available representative to help you.
Please wait for the next available representative to help you.
You are next in line.
Travis has joined the chat
Hello
The number you should call is 877-283-3982
Travis has left.
Error: socket closed
Connection closed.
So, it took at least 2.5 hours before somebody picked up, but most likely much longer. Furthermore, the number he gave me was not a number given by any other representatives. I'm calling the number right now (7:29 AM, 11/14/07).
I got right through to a human within a minute. He's starting a trouble ticket for me and I'm being told I will be called back. We'll see. Call ended at 8:04 AM, and I was told it's most likely an ordering issue again because they're showing my client doesn't have any static addresses assigned to them, despite the belief that they'd paid for five when signing up with Cavalier (which I'll try to verify). |
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SoBad
@delios.com
| Update:
I was told I'd be called back by 10:00 AM by Cavalier. I did not get called back, so I called again at 10:19 AM. I got right through to the same person who was working with me earlier this morning. He seems like he's really trying to help and I appreciate that, but it's not looking like he's having much luck dealing with their own internal processes. He put me on hold while attempting to contact the other people who need to be involved to get this resolved. I was on hold for 30 minutes before somebody else picked up and answered that they were with DSL repair. They had to transfer me over to the T1 people, who picked up immediately. I had to explain again what I was looking for and the lady who answered said they should have called me back within two hours of the initial report (which they had recorded as 7:46 AM). She has now escalated the request. I verified they have my cell number in the ticket and she said I should be called back soon. Again, we'll see. So now I'm wondering... just exactly how do people could think this could get much worse? I suppose the people on the phones could be rude, which they haven't been so far. So that must be the silver lining, I suppose. |
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SoBad
@delios.com
| Update:
I received a call back from a T1 engineer at 11:58 AM. When we were talking, she mentioned that she sees one of our T1 circuits is actually down. While we were on the phone, she said there are now two T1 circuits that are actually down. She is going to work on getting these circuits back up and will call me back. It's now at the point where it's comical. It's lucky for my client that I'm not billing for my time wasted with Cavalier, as we'd have just passed the one thousand dollar mark with no forward movement on this issue. |
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SoBad
@delios.com
| Final update:
We never actually got this issue resolved. We've spoken with a technician on-site and a sales representative who both told us to go with a different service provider because there's nothing they can do to get the answers we're all looking for within the company. I will be glad when the client has new service in place from a different ISP. The good news from all of this is we've been told they won't come after my client for breaking out of the contract early. |
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