Yesterday I’m playing youtube music on my TV when it goes blank and I get a continous “Loading” message on the screen. I go check the modem and it shows no connection. Check the phone and it’s dead. I happened to look out the window and see the wire laying in the yard. Some damned squirrel chewed it off about 10 ft. from the house.
Call Century Link and after a virtual maze of “press 1”, “press 2”… (you know the drill), I finally get connected to a guy in East Bangalore who somewhat speaks english. I tell him my phone line is dead and the line is laying in the yard. He starts in with his script asking me to do this and that and he’ll run some tests. I interrupted him and said that there was no need for all of that because the line is clearly cut and laying in the yard. “Oh. We’ll have to send oout a technician.” he sez… Well yes…
“So when can you get one out here?” “Next Tuesday, September 3” I exclaimed surprise and frustration… “You’re kidding me right?” No sir, we are very busy in your area, You know you’ve had flooding due to the heavy snows" I said “ummm, that was over 6 months ago. What’s the problem?” “Sir, we’re very busy”. It went down hill from there.
This morning I spent 45 minutes splicing it back together and all is well for now. Anxiously awaiting the repair tech next week.
Xfinity is the worst, but also the only option for me, so I have no frame of reference. I guess having a monopoly on a certain area makes all cable providers trash at customer service.
As a long time Century Link user I know your pain well. I have had so many issues in the past with this service it isnt even funny. It turns out that Century Link is notorious for taking advantage of the fact that they are the only service available in a lot of remote rural areas across the nation. It is also impossible to get anywhere on the phone if you are not the person named to the account. I used to fool them and say I was my father, but now that my mother’s name is tied to the account I need to get her on the phone every time. It’s like they are dealing with a savings account and im trying to make a withdrawal. Also being on hold with them. There was a time I tried calling them and was on hold for 45 minutes, finally got a tech, and the call got dropped. They didn’t immediately call me back so I went on hold again. For an hour!
A recent story with them, though I got lucky with this one. We were forced to dig a drain because the overflow pipe for our artesian well burst underground and turned a part of our yard into a swamp. My brother was digging with the tractor, and less than a foot underground happened to be the phone line. Not one line, but two, one from an old line and one from the current (this is why I could not resplice it myself with any semblance of sanity). After jumping through their phone circuit gymastics I get a tech scheduled to come 2 days later. It turns out that the tech is a guy we used to go to church with so he knows me and my family (extended family as well). He told me that they would not dig up the other half of the line - ok, they could, but he said that I wouldn’t want to pay for it. So he told me that if I exposed the other half of the line (was currently buried under a pile of dirt), he would come after work the next day and splice it for free. Took me an hour and a half to uncover the line because of all the tree roots in close proximity to the line, but I finally got it. When the guy came back to splice the line, it turns out that they work by themselves without a partner, and that he has been working 12 hours 6 days a week for the past 20 years. I pity the guy for having a job with such a bad company.
I found a bit of a solution…
Call your local public utilities commission or whatever it’s called in your state (who ever regulates utilities, rates etc). As I noted, I was given a week out appointment which would have been Sept 3. They showed up on Friday, Aug. 30. I asked how that happened and the guy said because you called the PUC to complain. That gets their attention.
Reminds me of the time our family was staying in bangalore with my aunts. We had this company called airtel that was constantly advertising as indias best network but the internet constantly cut out. When we called them they said that they would send someone the next day and give us a time and they would never come. We would quite literally call the exact same person and they would say the exact same script, and nobody would ever come. Thankfully my aunts dont use the internet much so its not the big of a deal but man is it extremely frustrating. They dont have a customer service at all its just a masquerade
