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adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

My letter to Colleen Abdoulah

sent just now:

- - -

Ms. Abdoulah,

I will be frank: I cannot express the disappointment I have at WOW's business over the last month or so and at your sad attempts to smooth things over with what were your loyal customers.

I was one of them. I've been with WOW for 10 years, and up until November I was a huge cheerleader for WOW. I asked, WOW delivered, WOW competed well in the marketplace, and I was happy to tell my story to friends and neighbors.

WOW has taken those ten years of goodwill and burned them to the ground. That a company has a problem is not the issue; it's how the company responds to the problem and recovers that tells all. After your very weak communications, I am firmly convinced that WOW is not truly interested in solving their customers' problems here. I think I have some idea of what's going on, and it has exactly nothing to do with a quality experience for us end users.

Do you want to take care of the customers? If so, then you need to communicate clearly and plainly exactly what happened, what went wrong, and WOW's schedule for giving end users the experience they had up until November. But because of the nature of today's "big business" (a category I never assigned to WOW in the past, by the way) and the fact that WOW is owned by venture (vulture) capitalists who care solely about tomorrow's returns and nothing else long term (let alone those of us who actually provide your revenue), I am fully prepared for you to disappoint me in this regard and completely ignore my suggestion and this communication as a whole.

I will take this opportunity to remind you that WOW has competition in the marketplace. Until the last few weeks, I swore I would never do business with Time Warner Cable ever again. Well, I have to admit I was wrong. I am actively gathering information from all sources so that I can get back to a quality service organization--at least, one with as much quality as is available. It sure seems like WOW went straight from leading the pack in that all the way to rock bottom.

I tried to remain patient in all of this, but your most recent communication to your customers tells me that my patience will not be rewarded, and all I will continue to do is be a blind sucker providing another month's revenue for the venture capitalists that own WOW.

WOW can recover, but your recent and misguided attempts at soothing the customers have backfired completely. Now you have to work harder to recover, and I honestly don't know if you can. But you can start by being completely honest and up front with the people who pay the bills--the customers.

Absent that, I have to tell you I will cancel my WOW service. I will, however, continue to be an ambassador on behalf of WOW--one encouraging people to leave WOW and move on, because the party's over.

- - -
MrMonk
join:2012-11-28
Cleveland, OH

MrMonk

Member

Well written, and I agree. Part of me wants to print it out and send it registered mail to her, and maybe other executives. I mean really, this is getting to be more than a temporary minor inconvenience.
Gerard1234
join:2012-04-03

Gerard1234 to adam1991

Member

to adam1991
I have already left WOW and now have Xfinity and they answer the phone right away, there customer service has improved alot of the last several months.
MrMonk
join:2012-11-28
Cleveland, OH

MrMonk

Member

You left wow, yet still have an all 100 review for them.

chachster
Premium Member
join:2002-08-07
Westerville, OH

chachster to adam1991

Premium Member

to adam1991
Well said. I've switched from U-Verse to WOW and now regretting it. I won't go back to U-Verse as I am happy with my Media Center/cableCARD setup, but I do have Insight available, but think I will wait (well, as long as my service remains up) for that to fully get converted to Time Warner. If and when you do switch to TWC, I'd be interested to know how they play with cableCARDS.
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991 to MrMonk

Member

to MrMonk
said by MrMonk:

Well written, and I agree. Part of me wants to print it out and send it registered mail to her, and maybe other executives. I mean really, this is getting to be more than a temporary minor inconvenience.

Feel free to copy any of that post verbatim and use it in any way you like.

If--IF--you find a postal address for her, let me know. I looked, but couldn't find one in my quick lookaround this morning. I honestly believe that snail mail is paid attention to by executives, and I *will* send this via snail mail once I find her mailing address.
MrMonk
join:2012-11-28
Cleveland, OH

1 edit

MrMonk

Member

Here is their main Colorado office, not sure if any executives are based there or who is there.

WideOpenWest Holdings, LLC
Company Information
7887 E. Peakview Ave.
Englewood, CO, 80111 United States
(720) 479-3500
»www.wideopenwest.com
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

You are correct! The WOW corporate page on LinkedIn has it:

»www.linkedin.com/company ··· wed_name
grantsa4
join:2007-08-15
Naperville, IL

grantsa4

Member

I'd be interested to know if you got a response
wowcoder
join:2010-03-04

wowcoder to adam1991

Member

to adam1991
said by adam1991:

You are correct! The WOW corporate page on LinkedIn has it:

»www.linkedin.com/company ··· wed_name

The BBB page has the address (same as LinkedIn) - however the LinkedIn page does not have the suite number, this one does: »www.bbb.org/denver/busin ··· 59000684
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991 to grantsa4

Member

to grantsa4
No response to date.
Expand your moderator at work
keknapp
join:2012-11-21
Rochester, MI

keknapp to adam1991

Member

to adam1991

Re: My letter to Colleen Abdoulah

Last night I had a Wow! technician out to my house to swap out a bad HD DVR receiver and an old Webstar cable modem for a newer one. While he was there, I asked him about what he'd heard regarding all of the problems and this is what he stated: "Because WOW bought 2 other companies that span 6 states, they didn't realize that the volume of support would be so great. Now the WOW support staff that had been doing a great job for many years had to cover an additional 6 states worth of support calls which has completely overwhelmed them. That's why they're adding another 250+ support staff by February. They're training them right now." He further stated that in his opinion, "Management really dropped the ball big time". I think if the letter of apology had simply said something similar most customers might be more understanding perhaps. By the way, the service I received both from customer support and from this technician was as great as I've come to expect from WOW (past 10 years).
MrMonk
join:2012-11-28
Cleveland, OH

MrMonk

Member

What about the existing support those companies had? Those people couldn't train? As HORRIBLY STUPID of an idea as it is to major system upgrades and buy and try to absorb other companies at the same time, the ONE advantage is all your support including the new people from the other companies can all be trained at once and be on the same page for wows new system. I still fail to see how months of almost non existent phone service, and adding labor costs can be called an upgrade.

But again, in the tech world, system upgrades of this level are done with at least 2 backup plans if something goes wrong, ideally one of which is if possible a complete roll back, and they are done during times of having the least impact. Long weekends, time periods where support calls are lower, etc...

NOT during the holiday season when everyone has more days off, unused vacation time adding up they need to use, etc..
ESPECIALLY, when you are already in the process of trying to bring 2 other different systems merged with yours while upgrading yours.

EVERYTHING about they way they did this from a technical standpoint and strategic standpoint for major upgrades, was done wrong. They either needed to absorb the other 2 companies and get things working 100%, THEN do it. OR, finish and have the upgrade in place before you absorbed those companies, so they are coming right into the new system.
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

...all of which cost more money than the venture (vulture) capitalists were willing to invest.

"Screw the customers, it's cable TV, we know they won't leave."

breese
Premium Member
join:2000-05-10
Arlington Heights, IL

breese to adam1991

Premium Member

to adam1991
I have had on again and off again issues with WOW for some years now. The last major issue was back in Oct. I went so far as to write Emails to each and every person I could find on their web site... The only presonal response I got back was from Steven Cochran. Because I caused such a stink, they did follow-up within 36hrs and completed Everything that needed to be done.
Here is the letter I sent and Steve Cochran's response.
----------------------------------------------------------

Mrs Abdoulah and Mr Cochran You both have information on the WOW Management Team web site that would make a non-wow-customer think your company has something special going on. It is not until I took the effort to contact both of you, Mr Hagen, and Mr Furst did any kind of communication and action start to take place.
If you were to look at your records of our account, you would see
1 – We have been with WOW sense the Ameritech change over, 2 – Have never canceled our account to go with another supplier. 3 – That this is not the first time we have had to replace the cable but have had to wait weeks, months and the last time, years to get it completed.
Being a senior systems engineer in the banking industry, I truly cannot understand how service to the home that requires field support personal to repair and issue can have such poor communication between departments.
Conversations with the Customer Support phone people have informed me they do not have the ability to escalate to management levels, the information on their screens does not show information on when things like the locators have been called, and their supervisors Promise a call back to me when They call the local offices to get an update.
I requested an escalation on Tuesday and was Promised by a supervisor that someone would get back to me… To date, nothing happened.
We are a small house. My wife and myself. Because of the financial times, we only have basic cable. It has for the most part done us well. While I can get better picture quality over my OTA Digital Antenna, I have never called or complained because we are a basic service customer.
To what ends do your customers have to go thru to get decent service? Does your company even care about the long term customer? We have neighbors that have switched company’s more times than I can count.
As I said at the beginning of this message and will now complete, do you actually believe the information provided on your Management Team web site? p.s. because of the mass mailings I have done today, the cable is being buried today (thanks to Me) and hook-up tomorrow (sat).
----------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. #####,

I am truly sorry we have provided such poor service to you. We do take what we say on a web page very seriously, so it is disappointing to get a note like this. I do believe we provide a better customer experience than our competitors and I can promise you that we strive to do that, but there are times when we drop the ball as we obviously did in your situation. Trust that our team is now well aware of your situation and will work hard to try to keep you as a customer. Thanks for your loyalty to date and please let me know if there is anything else that I can do.

Steven Cochran
President
WOW! Internet, Cable & Phone
720-479-3503 Office
303-641-0129 Mobile
scochran@wideopenwest.com

jtl
Premium Member
join:2002-02-14
Chicago, IL
Netgear CM1100
Netgear Orbi

jtl to adam1991

Premium Member

to adam1991
You expressed yourself well in the letter, although frankly the term "vulture capitalist" strikes me as unnecessary and takes away from your already-strong message. Not all venture capitalists are evil, and name-calling doesn't strengthen your argument.

That said, I agree that Ms Abdoulah and her team haven't handled this well at all, for all the reasons pointed out in this thread. Anyone with an IT background could write a textbook on how not to plan upgrades and expansion based on this case.

In the middle of all this tumult, I came home on October 31 to find my WOW service had been cut at the pole-- by a *Comcast* tech who was installing service next door. It was clearly a case of malice on the Comcast tech's part, as it was very obvious whose drop went to which house. To WOW's credit, they sent someone out the next day to restore my service.

(My complaint to Comcast went as far as a form-letter response from their Chicago-area manager, but I am pursing this further with my local municipality.)

I appreciated the fact that WOW responded quickly to a problem that wasn't caused by themselves, so I'm still a happy albeit somewhat frustrated customer.
starkwead
join:2012-12-18
Southgate, MI

1 edit

starkwead to adam1991

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to adam1991
Null

Jon Doe0
join:2009-07-11
00000

Jon Doe0 to grantsa4

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to grantsa4
You won't get a response. The Wow culture only supports a positive way of thinking. You letter, as honest and well spoken as you feel it was, has a negative attitude and will not get a response.

I applaud you for writing your letter, it gets attention whether you hear about it out not.