O Canada! > Canadian > TekSavvy > Teksavvy Installation Nightmare - Letter to CEO

reply to travisc

Re: Teksavvy Installation Nightmare - Letter to CEO

reply to Simpletwist
The Australian answer might provide the need for speed, but you can bet your bottom dollar it will get all bogged down in bureaucracy too.

But it doesn't solve the problem of customer service.

The requirement here is a better SLA between the incumbent and the TPIA and that will have to be either mandated, or the incumbents will need beating around the head with a healthy 2 by 4 that the TPIA business is still good for them and that they should treat the TPIAs better.

With Bell 10 years ago, I'd have said this was possible with them, but not with Rogers. Today, both companies' indifference to prompt customer service is nothing short of pathetic. I remember Rogers techs coming out at 9 pm after being called at 6. I remember Bell working until 11pm on a snowy winter's night to restore phone service reported that afternoon. Those days are gone for their own customers ... generally it's 24-48 hours for their own customers to get service. And 48 plus for TPIA customers.

That's the part that has to change too!

And I'll agree with the comment anti the "no right to an opinion" issue. Everyone's entitled to an opinion. How much that opinion is worth is dependent on many things. I remember living in the US, paying my taxes just like an American, then being told that I had no right to an opinion about anything "American".

It's called "Free Thought" and "Free Speech" ... not "Free Thought for only Americans" or "Free Speech for only TekSavvy customers".

TPIA should have never been mandated without a sla. I run (in comparison ) a minuscule network, and have a spare for my 100/100 Internet connection.

How teksavvy operates in such a BS environments beyond me.

reply to travisc
There is NO solution. It is what it is. This is the business setup that is in place if you are a company that wants to sell internet service in this neck of the woods. As a TPIA provider, you deal with a Rogers or Bell and work with the system that is in place. As a customer of these TPIA providers (and paying less for a better deal), you sometimes forfeit the advantage of i) Smooth Installs, Smooth Transfers, Clearer Customer Service, Etc., Etc.

Not to say that Bell or Rogers own customer service is always that stellar, however the point here is that dealing with TPIA providers sometimes comes with risks.

Again, it is what it is so deal with it!

Nuff Said

reply to sbrook
Sbrook, I don't think there can be a better SLA because of a simple reason: greed. By providing a lower quality service for the TPIA businesses, Rogers is making sure the headache alone will make the customers switch to Rogers.

And don't get my started about the CRTC. If it wasn't for the government's intervention, Bell would've got what they wanted. So the solution is to consider the internet as an essential service to the economy so that we would have a better infrastructure. There was a study that concluded the internet contributes greatly to the economy »www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11635318.

So unless the government gets involved (with the tories at the helm... NOT A CHANCE), the 3rd parties ISPs, in my opinion, will still have a problem with customer support.

reply to Simpletwist
ok. I've gone through it all.

So, here's what I've done.

I've gone back to when the OP originally signed up with us at the end of the year last year to see the entire relationship up to now.

The original signup had major issues also, and I'm writing this only because I think it's affecting the present situation.

Happy customer:
The OP cancelled from incumbent and called to signup with us, all is good. We book him for install date 4 days later.

OPs first install date is missed/not so happy customer:
but at the time the incumbent had recently changed policy and demanded 10 days to activate. Order was summarily cancelled by incumbent and we are told to resubmit new order after time period.

New install date missed - very upset customer/wants to talk to manager - manager doesn't handle it the best:
OP calls, tech no show. incumbent reason - tech had no access to wire room in building, left w/o talking to customer. OP naturally upset speaks to CSR asks for SRA then ask for MOD(manager on duty) - MOD should have been sympathetic but was not - both MOD and OP feeling powerless. lots of emotions = bad situation. all we can do is open new ticket with incumbent. OP not happy with that but there's simply no other way. Agrees to escalate.

Finally installed two days later and online. OP = sour taste

Faithful OP:
Now, fast forward to early/mid august. OP wants to move to location that already has incumbent service. Received cancel date 30 days out from incumbent. Called us with date to coordinate new install. Some confusion since he has to cancel his service that's already with TSI, new location has to cancel also with incumbent and new service started at new location. Either way it's sorted, OP is cordial, nice conversation all good. OP will get email with new date soon. couple days later gets email with install date in a month. Order is placed all good.

OP gave wrong address
OP calls in next day to provide correct address. We cancel original and book new order completely. No problem, lots of time left to deal with everything. a week later we send confirmation for install in a couple weeks.

OP calls very upset on install date
incumbent field tech shows up at wrong address. calls OP. tech and OP and TSI all on phone. Field tech can't complete his order since it's wrong so he can't do the work (though, could he have hooked him up and just close the order as wrong address?, I don't know), OP has no service and calls us.. CSR takes call, gets Mac involved. Mac is there ahead of his shift trying to help out. Mac and CSR look at info submitted with incumbent to try to figure out why field tech has wrong info. They discover that we submitted it correctly to incumbent but that the response back confirming still had old address. i.e. we did it right but some how incumbent crossed the info, we're assuming a cookie issue of some sort and the result is that tech has wrong info. looking at the info myself in the reply from the incumbent we did indeed submit it correctly.. mistake was on incumbent side. OP is pissed. especially after first install the previous year.. really unfortunate event with his friend. moving into new location.. very stressful = ka-pow! I get an email and here we are.

***************

So, I've spoken to Mac, I've spoken to the MOD who was there when Mac dealt with this. Mac actually spoke to the MOD right after the call with OP. Mac did *not* yell at the customer. I looked at who was sitting near him. I tried listening to calls of ppl sitting near him if I could hear anything in the background.. Mac does have a voice that sometimes is loud but having listened to the call before he got on the call.. Mac was not upset or anything like that. I could not listen to the call due to the way it was transferred. So, it's possible that he yelled but Mac is always very friendly and he's been with us for two years. If anything, I'd say he handled the situation very well, he caught what had actually happened and knew how to fix it. So, that's my take on Mac. Frankly, I think it was just a frustrating situation and I don't know that it much matters after everything I've seen.

With the Mac issue out of the way. What I've seen is that the OP was legitimately right about this all being a bunch of BS. This is just not how customers should be treated. In the first place, his service was messed up, through no fault of his own and he wanted what seemed to him to be a reasonable request.. ok.. you messed up - fix it! I'd even say he was pretty patient and certainly after the first time it happened he came back and moved and brought us with him.

I would say of the OP though, that I think that that call with Mac, he wasn't such an angel himself on that call but with everything else that happened, his friend, moving, no internet... shit happens sometimes and that was one of those calls.

I think that the bigger issue is that our hands really are tied in these situations and we end up having to do and say things to ppl that we would otherwise never do or say if we had the ability to deal with this properly. I do think that we can improve in the area of better checking the responses we receive from the incumbent and we could perhaps have found this error sooner. So I'd say that we're guilty of not finding that error sooner even though we didn't make the error.

My final verdict is that this time around, we actually did do everything right but that still didn't get us to a flawless install in this case. The OP having been burned once already plus the circumstance at the time. Especially that the field tech was right there.. was legitimately pissed off.

The take away is that I really sympathize with the OP, secondly we will double down on looking at the responses we get from the incumbent and third we need to keep trying to find ways to improve the interactions with incumbent which we do have something in the works for that.

As for the OPs request.. I think he's gotten a ton of attention to his problem. On the money front... we already have 6 weeks on the table. I'm prepared to offer him something for his previous headache from last year... I'll leave it to him to respond to my email I sent him.

For what it's worth. None of the interactions the OP had with us touched a single one of our techs/TSR as this was all install related issues.

I haven't re-read this because it's freaking long and I've been at it all day and I've spoken to a couple dozen ppl to make completely sure, I had all the facts and also to see where we could improve.. so if there's a lack of coherency.. I'm sorry about that too.

So, OP. I'm sorry for all your troubles, thank you for highlighting this and I hope we can keep you as a customer and I hope you can see that this hasn't landed on deaf ears.
--
Marc - CEO/TekSavvy

reply to Simpletwist
I don't mean to derail here, but I'm going through a similar he said she said thing with Teksavvy, Bell, and Primus (my phone provider). Called in to be bumped from 6mbps to 15mbps, and the following fiasco happened (I already posted in the Direct forum, this is abridged):

First set of techs (Bell then yours) came to set up 16mbps, phone line went out but we reached download speeds of 18mbps. Bell guy didn't even bother contacting us, leaving your third party guy clueless.

After taking to Primus (tried Bell first, basically told us screw you, let Primus deal with it), second tech came out, repaired phone line. Getting solid 18mbps and working phone line for 4h, then both knocked out. Told later this was due to loose wires (he even left our NID wide open).

Third tech came out restored both internet and phone, but internet barely reached 3mbps.

Called into Teksavvy, they had Bell fixed some mismatched pairing of sorts and we got the 6mbps we originally started with.

Today a senior tech came out, ran some tests at the NID, and said that our line can only handle 9mbps, if that at all (and be able to support phone at the same time). He said that his "boss" that he talked to on the phone knows all the lines. However, hypocritically he told me to switch to Bell to get fast speed and "easier to deal with" service. And it's weird why the lines wouldn't be able to handle it, because it's a new house in Milton, which should have this infrastructure set up being one of the fastest growing towns and all.

This leaves me angry and confused. I've had Teksavvy cable at another property and experienced bull with Rogers, and had Teksavvy DSL at two others, and have always had issues when setting up or changing service, but this weekend's 5 day experience of tech hell has taken the cake.
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...hop...hop...ribbit...KABLOOIE!!!

reply to TSI Marc
wow time for a long nights rest after that one... sounds like that's all you did today. A complaint in this case simply cost the OP days of pay and in my no so honest opinion cost Marc (teksavvy) quite a bit of money in productivity lost. Not that it fixes things but really, truly looked in to the issue and that had to have been a PITA to dedicate a full day + previous days to.

reply to TSI Marc
Wow what a reply. Great work Marc with getting down to the bottom of everything. I applaud your effort that you and your company do everyday.

it sucks that your hands are tied in situations like these. I hope that this changes

reply to TSI Marc
I have to applaud you for the effort you've undertaken to get to the bottom of this problem. And I hope you've learned some useful information about how to communicate better with Bell and Rogers.

reply to TSI Marc
Thank you.

reply to Simpletwist
Interesting, just discovered a nice mention on my twitter and here:

»www.reddit.com/r/ottawa/comments···ersbell/
--
Marc - CEO/TekSavvy

reply to Simpletwist
So nice work Marc on clearing everything up as best you could. It still doesn't solve the overall problem that your business model is basically broken. Your relationship with Bell and Rogers needs to be better. I know that's easy for me to say as some guy on an Internet forum, but it's the truth.

Every time this happens, complain to the CRTC. Send 'em 10 complaints a day until they pay attention. Their new mandate lately seems to be to help the consumer, allegedly anyway, and what better way than to put some regulation with teeth into your relationship with the incumbents?

I hear you and can see how you'd say that but I don't think it's broken, I think it's still in its infancy with this incumbent... with others we're not seeing this level of problems.
--
Marc - CEO/TekSavvy

reply to Quake110

reply to travisc

Re: Teksavvy Installation Nightmare - Letter to CEO

quote:

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10 a day? Well, we usually see 1 or 2 complaints a day on the TS forums here, and chances are that there are PLENTY of people that don't report this stuff on the TS forum. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 15-30 Shrobellustronco related problems at TekSavvy each day.

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