I’m taking back the praise I gave Insight about a month ago. Since I wrote that entry, there have been two instances where my Internet connection has been down for several hours, and each time I couldn’t get through Insight support because all their lines were busy.
Well, I finally got through the second time after hitting redial for about 15 minutes (yes, I’m that stubborn). The menu system I had praised earlier was gone, and I was greeted by a voice message telling me that if I was calling about my Internet connection to call another number. You would think the automation system would have the functionality to have me press “1″ and get re-routed to the different line, but I guess they didn’t pay for that upgrade.
So I called the new number, and guess what? Busy signal. So I hit redial for another 10 minutes (no, I do not waiver in my stubbornness) only to wait on hold for another 10 minutes. Hadn’t I also praised them about their quick response times?
Of course, the support rep didn’t have any information for me, only that it was probably a known issue. Sure he was friendly (yes, I was friendly in kind — I’m stubborn, but not a jerk). At the end of the short conversation he offered to transfer me to tier-2 support, who might be able to verify that my connection problems were related to the broader problem. However, he cautioned that “it’s probably a waste of time”, because their lines would probably be busy, and they might not really be able to give me any more information.
Now all that’s left for me to do is explore my DSL options.
By the way, the best customer service I’ve encountered to date was from Southwest. Southwest’s customer service is so famed, there’s even a book written about it. I was caught completely off guard when I called them on speaker phone, expecting an automated attendant asking me to punch in my X digit customer code, and the phone was answered by an actual human. I was calling to get a refund for a ticket I had booked on the website, and it wasn’t quite clear to me that a refund was even possible, so I was prepped for some fruitless negotiation. To my delight the support rep didn’t give me a second of trouble, refunding my money with no questions asked. I didn’t even get to share my sob story.
I think you can guess where I’m going to look first to book my WSOP flight.
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I thought you were a little too joyful in your earlier post, I’ve never had good luck with service/support from a cable company. I haven’t called them in a while, but I found that Vonage had some of the worst support ever.
I managed to find a workable support solution via email with Dell. I found that if I emailed my exact problem and the exact part I needed, it would often be on it’s way very quickly. But if you called on the phone you would have to sit through endless scripts until they ‘diagnosed’ your problem and would send the part.
I recently had one of the best support experiences I’ve ever, uh… experienced, with Apple. The power brick on my MacBook Pro starting acting flaky. I did a little diagnostic work and isolated the problem and called up Apple. I got through to a person very quickly. Instead of having to sit through a script, I simply explained to her my problem, she asked a couple of confirmation questions and that was that. It was amazing to talk to a support person who could converse rather than just follow a script.
brock
Yeah, I think my earlier post was a result of a) my low expectations being exceeded and b) being wooed by the smooth talking Insight CEO in his commercial.
I haven’t had to call Apple or Dell yet. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Dell actually called me recently, and I thought they were being all customer-servicey about seeing how my new laptop was doing. They were just trying to sell me the extended warranty again. Bah.
I’m not a huge fan of SBC especially since they’re part of the “tiered” internet talk but I was able to get 6MB/768K service for $10 cheaper than I was previously paying ($36.99) for 3MB/512K. Everything was done online and I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I will say their customer support wasn’t enjoyable for the 1 time I had to call but dslreports.com has a forum where you can post messages to tech’s directly for less urgent but more technical issues.
Yeah, I’m not expecting any better customer service from SBC, but the frustration that’s building with Insight is unreliability. Maybe my neighborhood’s running on old equipment or something, but 8 hour downtime sessions every month or so is really frustrating. I’ve got to think that SBC is a little more reliable. And faster would be good too
Comcast is rock solid – so I don’t ever have to call them… they may have the worst customer service in the world for all I know. It will be scary to try and find a new broadband provider.
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