So You Don't Want My Money?

It seems that this week has been about changing our technology. I have spent many hours on the phone with the land line telephone company, the cell phone company, and the internet provider. We finally cut the land line, something I have wanted to do for many years. We spent many hours rearranging cell phone plans, adding texting, and trying to get the online interface to work. But the oddest experience was with our internet provider.

I will not mention the internet provider's name in case it rings a bell, but I will say that the problem is around billing. This is not the average problem with billing; the problem is that they seem incapable of sending us a bill! I am not sure how many people call their company asking to get a bill, but I have had to do this four times since we got our service with them less than a year ago.

Don't get me wrong, the internet service is far better than what we had before. (Our options are very limited in the country.) The only problem is that they have NEVER sent us a bill. I wish that meant that we did not owe them anything, but the system seems to keep track of that part just fine. The problem is with a safety feature incorporated in their system: The store selling the service is not allowed to sell an antenna to an unserviced area. Fine. But I knew the service worked well in our area because I tried a loaner antenna before we bought ours. It is just that the system does not seem to be able to deal with rural addresses.

The solution was to put the store address on the contract and change the billing address later. I took the antenna home, and it worked great! I phoned in and set up our e-billing (great, no paper!) and all was right with the world, I thought. But the bill never came. Two months into the contract, I made the first call. "Oh yes," there seemed to be a problem with the address, but now it was all fixed up. NOT!

Today, for the fourth time, I called and begged them to send me a bill. At this point I have tried e-bills, I've tried e-mails and I've tried paper. Can you imagine a provider of internet services having to resort to paper to communicate something as simple as how much I owe them! It must be very embarrassing to admit to your customer that for 10 months your high tech company hasn't managed to do something as simple as billing a client!

There are two words in "customer service," but it the word "customer" often gets lost in the process. The internet service is great, but they forget the customer who is requesting that service. And this provider is not alone; every single corporation I have dealt with this last week has had the same issue. When a customer reports a concern, nothing is ever done about it. I have never phoned my cell phone provider when they have not been "experiencing higher than normal call volumes"; when obvious problems with a website are pointed out, the person handling my phone call is not equipped to address it. Even simple things like giving their customer service phone number as an alpha sequence instead of a numeric one are simple mistakes to fix. My cell phone (a "smart" phone--yeah, right!) does not have alpha values on the number keys so I can't dial the alpha values without looking at a house phone. Are all companies so big that they employ no one who is empowered to have anything fixed without a committee being formed? What happened to common sense?

I am now at the point of being irritated enough with one of these companies to say, "put me through to someone that is authorized to solve my problem, or put me through to your cancellation department." When I tried this with my home phone provider, they put me through to the "rewards and customer loyalty department." I no longer have a home phone! Call me on my cell. But at this rate you may only be able to get a hold of me with smoke signal by the end of the month--but check with your county first, as they may have a burning ban imposed!