Dealing with customer service is like calling directly into a locked ward at the State Nut Barn. Only a lot less productive.
The Magic Elf Box that provides VoIP and Internet to my office is deader than Dick Cheney's conscience. The power light is off. I took it to a neighboring office, which has the same service, and plugged it into their power supply. The Elf Box was still in Dead Parrot mode.
I called tech support. After getting around the automated troubleshooter, I told the person on the other end of the line what the problem was. That worthy being still had to run through a series of checks... line was OK, I'd paid my bill, etc., etc. I gave up and just let the person run through the checklist, for I realized that screaming "the power light is not on, the Elf Box is dead, dead, dead" would probably not be productive.
They're sending a tech, which got me the obligatory lecture on "if the problem is the line in your building, there will be a charge". Big whoop, because the Elf Box couldn't be much deader if John Wilkes Booth had shot it.
I don't think it much matters who you call, dealing with "customer service" always seems to be an exercise in frustration. This modern age has its suck factors, and customer service is one of them.
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Now that technology is 'magic' to most people, you have to go through the proper rituals to make it work - or get it to continue to work. The 'Tech Support' people on the phone, are just the low level acolytes of the religion, making sure the supplicant has made the proper sacrifices at the appointed times and in the right directions. When the higher up traveling priest arrives, it will be once again time to go through the initial motions of supplication to the gods of silicon and electricity before they too declare that you do in fact have an ex-parrot. Then the priest will have to clear with the local bishop the proper exchange of said ex-parrot, and the proper disposal of it (along with the proper documentation), plus the provisioning into the system of the new parrot, along with placing proper marks against your account for the exchange of parrots. The workings of the silicon gods are mysterious, but the suffering of their supplicants are legion...
Yep. The objective for Customer Service, especially for big corporations has shifted to defense -- of their bottom line. The objective is to maximize income & minimize expense related to keeping their captive clients.
Comcast & I have an uneasy truce. I have a cheap plan that gives me 15 Mbps on a good day - and they keep bugging me to upgrade my (own) perfectly good docsis 2.0 cable modem to the latest & greatest 3.0. Which would have absolutely no benefit to me and my ""broadband"" service but maybe helpful to their infrastructure.
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