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So I'm sitting at work, on a Sunday, waiting for the Comcast tech that was supposed to be here between 8am and 10am.
It is now a little after 12pm, and I'm on the phone with customer service for the second time. I was supposed to get a phone call within 30 minutes of the first time I called (at 10:40).
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I finally called back at 11:30am, and got the same run around. I've been on the phone with them for over 30 minutes now, and have talked to customer service, and am now chewing on a supervisor.
I was just told (at 12:15pm) that the ticket was invalidated and was never put through. So I've been sitting here for NOTHING. They didn't bother to tell me this when I called in 2 hours ago, or to do the courteous thing and call or email me when the ticket got invalidated. Adding insult to injury, they also tell me that they only compensate for down service, not for people sitting waiting on their non-existent technicians.
It is no wonder people hate Comcast and many other internet service providers. I remember now why I swore off using Comcast for anything.
So now, because misery loves company (and many people hate their ISP), what are your horror stories?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 21 2015, @09:58PM
OMG
I wish I had an introduction.
I am presently working with a firm that essentially hands Bell Canada contracts for anything without question. Even when presented with evidence of complete idiocy, dropping the ball, giant unexpected costs due to improper planning etc.
They are handling wifi deployment project, along with their subsidiary called Data Valet.
They had an "Emergency" wifi install that had to be done THAT DAY. I was a silent observer on their conference bridge; I was to take notes and report to management on the results, good, bad, or neutral.
They sent 8 people on-site. They talked about drilling holes in glass to mount the Single AP that was to go in (8 people -- one AP. That's 8 people to go and install that single AP). People asked where the AP they were replacing was. Where is the telco room. Who has access to it. Who can make network changes. Where, actually, is the AP to be installed? Is there a floor plan? what SSIDs are they supposed to see? No one had any idea of anything and expected to learn all of this once at the client site. There was absolutely zero preparation done by these 8 people, nor was there much in the way of guidance. They'd learn the SSIDs after the AP came online because the AP was preconfigured.
They found the telco room, found the original still mounted AP (and with some convincing, agreed to put the new AP in the same spot without resorting to drilling holes in the atrium walls), got access to that telco room, found a network person to make changes, but couldn't find the new AP. Where is the AP they all came on-site to do that was such an emergency to get done?
Someone on the same team that went on-site had shipped it priority overnight, that morning, and dropped off the AP to UPS to be delivered to the destination, that they in turn went to themselves immediately afterwards, only to ask where the AP was. They tried to pay for an expedite but it was not possible, and apparently, not retrievable either. It went into some sort of sorting center and was GONE until it wouldn't be relevant any more or it'd be the next day.
They resorted to "borrowing" an AP intended for another client; so person #9 showed up carrying it unboxed.
I do not know what most of them did besides wait around and be confused. They were charging by the hour, and the day started at 8am and ended after 5pm --40 hours for just their 8 people, plus whatever for the 9th person, and of course shipping, and probably the need to retrieve the AP that was supposed to go in.
They assured everyone the AP shipped had been preconfigured to work immediately, so the new AP -- had to be configured. No one that went on site actually were permitted to locally access the AP themselves (it phones home and is locked down and is only accessible except for remotely) and so the AP they did bring had to be set up via setting up a VPN connection and then remotely controlling the laptop to then get to the AP, after first factory resetting it, because it had some other client config on it, and...
And this was normal, I learned. Throw enough people at a problem and someone will solve it.
I found out the next day that it was a success, so I guess whatever notes I had taken really weren't necessary from a customer service standpoint. I do not know what this cost the client, but I felt guilty billing them for my time. I didn't do anything, but I did a lot less of that nothing compared to the amount of nothing Bell Canada did--and they actually found a way to get more than 9 people involved to install a single AP, mounted where the old AP was (what happened to the old AP is anyones's guess, no one remembered what happened to it because that's not what they went on-site for).