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Eak the Cat
join:2008-08-28
Seattle, WA

Eak the Cat to Eak the Cat

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Re: Qwest Price for Life Terms Changed?

After three tries, I was able to get my billing problem resolved. Here's what happened:

I called back today, got a very nice lady in Billing who was appalled at what I'd gone through. She did some digging in my account and discovered what had happened.

I had signed up for a 2-year contract for Qwest Choice Premier DSL (5 Mbit) with Price-for-Life. At the time I had signed up, the three Naked DSL with outside ISP options available were 1.5, 5 and 7. Price-for-Life was ONLY offered for the 1.5 and the 5 plans, but not available on the 7. May of 2007, Qwest changed their offerings to 1.5, 7 and 12. They changed my account to the 7 Mbit plan. When my contract expired, they removed my discount because "Price-for-Life was not available for the 7 Mbit plan".

The Billing rep I spoke with today, saw this on my account and reapplied my discount without requiring me to sign a new 2-year contract or hasting me, calling me a liar or being rude. Simple.

What disgusts me is that I had to go through a total of 6 hours on the phone for Qwest to admit and correct their mistake. The most appalling is Qwest's Customer Loyalty department and especially the Customer Loyalty Supervisor who I spoke with both on the 18th and (by bad luck) again on the 28th. She could have easily looked in my account, seen the error and corrected it Instead she was too busy telling me I was wrong. Oh, and I caught her contradicting herself. The first time I called, she told me there was no Price-for-Life available for standalone accounts. When I called back and spoke to her again, I read her the relevant portion of my bill and quoted the Qwest web site. At that point she said that "Price-for-Life is available for all plans except the 7 Mbit." When I said I wasn't on a 7 Mbit plan, she insisted I was and that was what I had signed up for. EVEN AFTER I READ HER MY BILL, which said 5 Mbit.

Thanks to people like the lovely lady who fixed this screw-up today, I will remain a Qwest customer. I am no longer recommending Qwest DSL to my family, friends or clients, however, because I don't want them to experience the same level of incompetence.
CopperMonkey
join:2007-12-18

CopperMonkey

Member

Why would you no longer recommend it when the root of the problem came from getting a nasty supervisor by bad luck twice? Your issue was resolved in the end and you didn't have to sign a new contract, so it ended up all well and good.

RockyBB
Premium Member
join:2005-01-31
Steamboat Springs, CO

RockyBB to Eak the Cat

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Good to know that you got to the desired result. This is further evidence that even with very large companies, everything still revolves around individual people.

On a macro level (this is true with almost all companies including Qwest), it boggles my mind that the person closest to the revenue -- the customer service rep -- receives the lowest pay, the least training, and the thus the least amount of respect in the organization. Yet it's the customer rep with the best ability to sabotage all the amazing network technology and all the high priced marketing efforts.