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coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw to linicx

Member

to linicx

Re: My most recent CL experience

said by linicx:

Customer abuse, Senior abuse, and handicap customer abuse should not be TOLERATED.

Was the rep specifically abusive, or just not helpful? They're different things. Both are bad, but I think you may be amplifying the story a little bit for the sake of telling it here.
said by linicx:

Then I talked to a telephone system engineer for 5 hours.

A CL employee, or just somebody who is a telephone system engineer? I can talk to Frontier employees until my face turns blue, but they can't do anything on CL's network or to CL's equipment.
said by linicx:

It did not work!

I'm in tech support myself. Typically when a customer says "It doesn't work!" and that's the end of the line for them, the call is over and the customer's not going to get anything. Did the original phone rep try to ask questions about the situation? In many large companies providing such diverse services, they sort of have to dig for a little bit before a specific problem becomes apparent...

Especially if....
said by linicx:

The bottom line? The modem was replaced.

Do you own the modem or does CL lease it to you? If CL leases it to you, it's their responsibility to take care of it, if you own it, then they have to take your word for it if you insist that the modem isn't broken, and it takes a truck roll with a field tech plugging in their test set or their own modem.

If I were CL, and you owned the modem and insisted that it was not your modem's fault, then I'd probably charge you the truck roll fee. If CL owned the modem and failed to see signs of it failing or agree to ship you a new one as a troubleshooting step, then they deserve to eat the truck roll fee.
said by linicx:

CenturyLink needs to take a different tact with seniors and handicapped clients.

I mean, you really can also e-mail them from a mobile phone or use the chat option at a neighbor's house or public library.
said by linicx:

NO CLIENT SHOULD NOT HAVE TO WAIT 8 HOURS AND WASTE NEARLY 3 HOURS ON A PHONE TO PROVE WHAT CLIENT KNOWS: IT DOES NOT WORK.

Did you tell them anything other than it doesn't work? It costs a lot for CL to do a truck roll, and typically there's a queue for such a thing. If CL can avoid a support truck roll, that field tech or installer can provision a new customer or maintain lines, and if you work with the agent on the line, it's often true that they can get the problem solved for you more quickly anyway.

Support necessarily consists more of you calling and saying "It doesn't work" and them having an immediate fix. I guess if you want to pay the truck roll fee, you could just ask for a truck roll to save you the phone time.
said by linicx:

CenturyLink can do better and they do, but only when prodded. Hopefully my experience will prod them.

I'll never disagree that an organization or company can improve their support. Even at a 100% satisfaction rate (I work on a desk with something like a 92 or 96% satisfaction rate, waaaaay above the industry standard), there's other things that the team can do to increase efficiency and that the overall organization can do to improve.

At the end of the day, and the post, an e-mail to talktous or to the CEO's e-mail address may be a better place than here. This group is inevitably going to have our own conceptions about tech support, and as somebody who works tech support, mine are that it sounds like you were unwilling to work with the agent from the start. It's impossible for me to know for sure, but nothing you wrote makes me feel like you were interested in working with the agent from the start.

Anyway, my actual advice is to e-mail talktous@centurylink.com or glen.post@centurylink.com with this information.

Unrelatedly, I've had good experiences every single time I have spoken with CenturyLink on the phone.

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

Don't make assumptions. You weren't there. You didn't do the testing and you didn't hear the conversations.

Tech #I whispered. I identified myself as deaf and stated I could not hear him. I told him why it didn't work and I asked for a trouble ticket. He responded by announcing he didn't want to talk loud because he had to talk for another TEN HOURS; talking loud strained his voice. He was rude about it when he should have handed me off to a tech who could talk. He reminded me frequently how he didn't want to talk when he was asking the questions. He made it very clear from the start he did not want to talk loud. He did ONE test and declared the problem was in the house. He refused to send a trouble ticket. Quite frankly, I was tired of listening to him whine.

I apologize to no one for vision and hearing loss. I do not feel guilty.

Tech #2. I identified myself the same. I asked for a trouble ticket. He refused. Instead we tested for 2.5 hours. He finally said the DSLAM was not provisioning. That was 10 hours and 2 reps after the modem stopped, before the trouble ticket was sent.

Neither tech suggested my call should be bumped to the next level.

The local plant was closed Good Friday. 3pm Saturday the local repair came. Two hours later I was online. .

About 42 hours later, a taped CL message announced that support had been to the house. If it still wasn't working I should reboot my computer. What ???

I was after-hours tech support and mobile support for my local ISP. If it was a computer issue I would have known this LONG before I made the first call.

It is wonderful that you have perfect experience with CL in Flagstaff. We don't have it anywhere in rural America from any national company. CL isn't any worse than AT&T and Cox, or Suddenlink and Comcast when it comes to basic tech support.
Anyone who has ever been in the business knows it.
brad152
join:2006-07-27
Chicago, IL

brad152

Member

First off, you should not be getting hostile with anyone on here, he's just trying to help.

Now, about CenturyLink, they do have an online chat function that helps if you are hard of hearing, i've used it when i'm at work and have successfully made tickets. they also have a system online where you can make tickets yourself.

»selfservice.centurylink. ··· ookup.do

Try that next time, and usually it goes directly to level 3 who can just get the tech to fix the issue

CenturyLink has been by far the best provider for me to deal with, and I've dealt with Time Warner, WOW, Comcast, Brighthouse, AT&T, and god awful Windstream (by far the worst).

The only provider i'd say was better than CenturyLink about fixing things was Insight but time warner has bought and ruined them as well, so i'd say RIP to them.

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

I am not hostile, but I can be. One cannot make tickets or chat, without some type of access to said site, any easier than one can defy gravity and magically appear inside a house to physically replace a CenturyLink modem.

CL and I have had a running battle over equipment that did not work for years; it will continue for years. But it has gotten some what better in the last couple of years.

CenturyLink does not want 4000 clients spread over 25 square miles in 50 small enclaves and two towns of less than 2000. It needs density to survive.

I cringe when I have to call tech support. It is always the same song and dance. "I don't see any problem with your connection. It's in your house." They can't find it, they can't fix it, they refuse to escalate the call, and they refuse to put in the trouble ticket. It has been the same thing for years: multiple calls, multiple tests, anything to discourage clients and not resolve an issue or send a ticket. The plant is 6 blocks, but the nearest office is 200 miles round trip.

TAZ
join:2014-01-03
Tucson, AZ

TAZ to linicx

Member

to linicx
said by linicx:

Tech #I whispered. I identified myself as deaf and stated I could not hear him. I told him why it didn't work and I asked for a trouble ticket. He responded by announcing he didn't want to talk loud because he had to talk for another TEN HOURS; talking loud strained his voice. He was rude about it when he should have handed me off to a tech who could talk. He reminded me frequently how he didn't want to talk when he was asking the questions. He made it very clear from the start he did not want to talk loud. He did ONE test and declared the problem was in the house. He refused to send a trouble ticket. Quite frankly, I was tired of listening to him whine.

Come on. You can't seriously expect the CSR to scream into the phone for you?
said by linicx:

I apologize to no one for vision and hearing loss. I do not feel guilty.

There are some cases where it's reasonable to expect others to be willing to make some level of accommodations for handicaps. This is not one. If not being able to hear people on the phone who are speaking at a normal level is a common problem for you, that's a problem _you_ can easily resolve - get a louder speakerphone or headphones with volume control capable of loud volumes.

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

Before YOU judge ME try reading the first three words. I hear conversational normal voice. I can adjust the volume on the phone. It is the job of the CSR to be heard not to WHISPER! I did not ask him to scream. I asked him to speak a little louder. I will give you 10-1 odds he either had a sore throat or he is a singer. He whined HE still had to TALK for TEN HOURS! This is not my problem. It is CLs problem; they hired him.

He could have handed me off to someone who could speak in a normal voce but HE CHOSE NOT TO DO SO. He did NOT suggest it either. .

Please do not lecture me about phones or headsets. I have the best I can find.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw to linicx

Member

to linicx
My apologies for the delay, but I wanted to point out also that Flagstaff, where I live, is decidedly not urban. We're not rural either, we have 60,000 or so residents and we even have a Best Buy, but it's not a high density urban population center.

My support experience has been good, and my line is fairly solid (and decidedly midrange) but I'm definitely still on a 1.5 megabit package because CL hasn't either deemed my neighborhood worth upgrading, or possibly, because of the particular challenges faced in my town, gotten permission to trench a fiber out to the SAI/DSLAM in my neighborhood. The remote terminal I am on, which CL implied I was lucky to even get service out if, is fed by some number of T1s, so regardless of what type of dslam there is and how far I am from it, they'll only sell me 1.5 megabits.

Of the neighborhoods in Flagstaff, mine actually makes a lot of sense for a VDSL2/FTTN transition, because the feeder loop to our SAI is on a pole (they shouldn't actually have to trench anything to get fiber to us, unless installing the fiber underground is their new standard) and our streets are relatively sane -- a lot of customers in two neighborhoods would be within reasonable distance for some of Qwest-CL's highest speed tiers, and of course, even the farthest reaches of my neighborhood should be able to get 12 and 7 megabits off of VDSL2, which is a huge improvement. It's even reasonably dense.

If you are on fiber to the node in your location, the technology CL has given you is far ahead of what I've got and to me that implies CL isn't actively interested in dumping the area. If they were you'd likely already be a Frontier/Windstream/etc customer, maybe not that much better.

If the attitude you have is that no telco wants rural customers, you could leave the telco. Though, I'd argue that if they put a ZyXEL modem on your desk and gave you fiber to the node (what speed do you have?) that they're reasonably interested in you as a customer.

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

My speed is 10/1. Higher speeds are available in a town closer to their regional office that was closed. I venture to say our speed is because of the hospital, college, number of small business and churches, plus it is a county seat and port city. Cell service is not all that great but it is slowly improving.

Leaving is not possible. There is no other telco. Cable is not that superior plus it is more expensive. $200 for 15/2 is not realistic for me.

CL is awesome when it is working properly. When it is not it is a nightmare. My repair guy says my portable phpne system is the best he has ever seen. It's crystal clear when it works. When it doesn't it is horrible. It is almost as good as POTS, but not as reliable 100% of the time.

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski

Premium Member

What cable company charges $200 a month for 15/2?

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

I rather no name names. It is a very small company in a very small town in Illinois. The price includes the top tier cable. There is no choice. Bare bones is 13 channels and 4/1 for $90. 4/1 does not support good phone quality where I live.

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski

Premium Member

Are you using VoIP? 4/1 should be fine.

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

No, 4/1 should be but it is not where I live. I am the last house in the 'hood. Cable was not any prize.

When I was a client I took a week trial with 10/2. VoIP was wonderful. The cable side was washed out an not very good. Channel lineup was awesome.