Customer service

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PaulBags

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#887323 31-Aug-2013 11:00

kawaii: This isn't much consolation but these days it is about choosing the one that sucks the least in the area that concerns you most. Every ISP has its issues with some sucking more than others but honestly the best experience so far has been with Snap, Telecom is pretty good but alot of the hate directed at it have been from off spring of parents who remember waiting 6 weeks for a telephone hook up hence the hatred seems to have passed down like DNA through the off spring with people hating Telecom today if for no other reason that their parents did.

I remember having great service with telecom in the past, temporary dial up with the sign up fees waived because something went down on us, coming out to splice cables within a couple of hours, and I can't remember a previous bad experience with customer service. Have been with telecom, for our phone service at least, for at least two decades. But a year ago telecom lowered it's adsl prices and ran a campaign for free sign up for a 12 month contract, about the same time orcon switched to requiring phone or voip with them and the old plan we were stuck on getting more and more expensive compared to others. What telecom didn't point out was that they were splitting with chorus and so no longer owned the lines, that left a bitter taste in the mouth, it was half the reason for sticking with telecom. Now, about a year later, we get told things like 'chorus will be out to fix the line sometime in the next two and a half days' and, more or less, 'your dsl link is up so there can't possibly some other problem on our end, so you better rearrange your entire household to test a jackpoint further down the daisy chain despite the fact that your connection went down suddenly in the middle of use and nothing whatever about your line or equipment has changed or gone poof, and if you don't we'll threaten to send out a technician and charge you for it if theres nothing wrong, which there wouldn't be because the fault is on our end.' And then without a single apology admit that there is a fault, and not transfer to the supervisor as asked.

So yeah, kinda lost all incentive to stick with telecom. That's not to say telecom is bad, their internet, as far as I can remember the last year, has been rock solid. And none of these faults have been telecoms.

webwat

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#887989 1-Sep-2013 22:32

1080p: 1) Start your own ISP and offer all these features.
2) Become worn down with the tight profit margins and often worthless customers.
3) Align your features slightly closer to those offered by other ISPs.
4) Repeat.

And don't forget that your new ISP must accept all liability for sending Chorus technicians out whenever customers promise they have checked every single thing.

You would be suprised (or not) how often the helpdesk guys find out their troubleshooting instructions had been ignored until they disclose the cost of getting it wrong. And how often people complain about the no-fault-found fees after a technician goes and proves it to the customer's equipment. Hes not going to fix the faulty equipment either, sometimes just tests his own modem at the demarc without even going inside.

Time to find a new industry!

PaulBags

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#888008 2-Sep-2013 00:09

webwat:
1080p: 1) Start your own ISP and offer all these features.
2) Become worn down with the tight profit margins and often worthless customers.
3) Align your features slightly closer to those offered by other ISPs.
4) Repeat.

And don't forget that your new ISP must accept all liability for sending Chorus technicians out whenever customers promise they have checked every single thing.

You would be suprised (or not) how often the helpdesk guys find out their troubleshooting instructions had been ignored until they disclose the cost of getting it wrong. And how often people complain about the no-fault-found fees after a technician goes and proves it to the customer's equipment. Hes not going to fix the faulty equipment either, sometimes just tests his own modem at the demarc without even going inside.

Not really since they pass no fault found fees on to the customer. Also what if the fault is in the premise wiring and w&m fees are paid up, testing at the demarc then would be inadequate. Also the ISP should be able to figure out if their connections have gone tits up, not ignore everything you say and blindly follow a script.

I'm sure customer service reps have a different experience, but every single time that I know of anyone I know (not just me) has called customer service about internet down, the fault has been with the ISP or chorus (formally telecom) equipment. I've never had a dead modem/router in my life. Many was the time in past when an ISP wouldn't even know their equipment was down until we told them, but in the past they used to actually figure it out. At the end of the day threatening a no fault found fee when the isp haven't even bothered to check their end is ridiculous, no matter what troubleshooting scripts they have to follow.

lucky015

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#888010 2-Sep-2013 01:16

PaulBags:
the ISP should be able to figure out if their connections have gone tits up, not ignore everything you say and blindly follow a script.

I take it you have discovered some sort of magic ball which tells if the customer is telling the truth and exactly what the issue is rather than the real world tests which give a rough estimate of the cause of the issue based on basic electrical readings?

PaulBags:
I'm sure customer service reps have a different experience, but every single time that I know of anyone I know (not just me) has called customer service about internet down, the fault has been with the ISP or chorus (formally telecom) equipment. I've never had a dead modem/router in my life. Many was the time in past when an ISP wouldn't even know their equipment was down until we told them, but in the past they used to actually figure it out. At the end of the day threatening a no fault found fee when the isp haven't even bothered to check their end is ridiculous, no matter what troubleshooting scripts they have to follow.

I certainly agree there are a lot of issues which do come about as a result of network issues, Be it area outages or a fault on the line of a single customer.

As for determining the issue all they can do is check notifications regarding outages in the area, run a little test which gives that rough estimate I mentioned before, Check with the customer to confirm nothing there is the issue and then have a tech come out and assess the lines.

At this point unless the lines outside the property are faulty someone is going to get charged, If the customer has W&M then any legitimately degraded wiring in the property will be repaired free of charge, This excludes Intentional damage, Replacement if required due to the scale of the issue as well as repair of things that never worked in the beginning.

W&M Does not cover a no fault found fee, It covers repair and diagnosis of an issue with telephone wiring installed in the property to the JP.

Should the ISP be paying the $140 fee to confirm there is nothing wrong with the network every time a customer is too mentally incompetent to plug their modem in properly?

Or should the ISP simply not be warning the customer of these charges prior to sending the request?

Or should the ISP be sending out a tech free of charge every time the customer has an issue bearing in mind that this charge likely matches closely too or often exceeds the profit made from this customer in a year?

These are the options left available to an ISP under the contracts they are required to sign to get to provide a service at all, There are a handful of basic tests that can be run remotely which give a small amount of information, There is a system in place to request a tech out if the issue can not be directly with the customer, This leads to large charges when no issue is found on the network.

TLDR; an ISP has control over their end, Issues that occur there are usually found fairly quickly and repaired with no risk of charges to the customer, The lines to the property are outside of the direct control of the ISP and set processes to have any issues within resolved by a tech at considerable charge if no issue is found, And then there is the customers end, The part that gets poked, Prodded and messed with around the clock, How would you run things?

PaulBags

809 posts

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+1 received by user: 184
Inactive user

#888450 2-Sep-2013 18:20

lucky015:
PaulBags:
the ISP should be able to figure out if their connections have gone tits up, not ignore everything you say and blindly follow a script.

I take it you have discovered some sort of magic ball which tells if the customer is telling the truth and exactly what the issue is rather than the real world tests which give a rough estimate of the cause of the issue based on basic electrical readings?

PaulBags:
I'm sure customer service reps have a different experience, but every single time that I know of anyone I know (not just me) has called customer service about internet down, the fault has been with the ISP or chorus (formally telecom) equipment. I've never had a dead modem/router in my life. Many was the time in past when an ISP wouldn't even know their equipment was down until we told them, but in the past they used to actually figure it out. At the end of the day threatening a no fault found fee when the isp haven't even bothered to check their end is ridiculous, no matter what troubleshooting scripts they have to follow.

I certainly agree there are a lot of issues which do come about as a result of network issues, Be it area outages or a fault on the line of a single customer.

As for determining the issue all they can do is check notifications regarding outages in the area, run a little test which gives that rough estimate I mentioned before, Check with the customer to confirm nothing there is the issue and then have a tech come out and assess the lines.

At this point unless the lines outside the property are faulty someone is going to get charged, If the customer has W&M then any legitimately degraded wiring in the property will be repaired free of charge, This excludes Intentional damage, Replacement if required due to the scale of the issue as well as repair of things that never worked in the beginning.

W&M Does not cover a no fault found fee, It covers repair and diagnosis of an issue with telephone wiring installed in the property to the JP.

Should the ISP be paying the $140 fee to confirm there is nothing wrong with the network every time a customer is too mentally incompetent to plug their modem in properly?

Or should the ISP simply not be warning the customer of these charges prior to sending the request?

Or should the ISP be sending out a tech free of charge every time the customer has an issue bearing in mind that this charge likely matches closely too or often exceeds the profit made from this customer in a year?

These are the options left available to an ISP under the contracts they are required to sign to get to provide a service at all, There are a handful of basic tests that can be run remotely which give a small amount of information, There is a system in place to request a tech out if the issue can not be directly with the customer, This leads to large charges when no issue is found on the network.

TLDR; an ISP has control over their end, Issues that occur there are usually found fairly quickly and repaired with no risk of charges to the customer, The lines to the property are outside of the direct control of the ISP and set processes to have any issues within resolved by a tech at considerable charge if no issue is found, And then there is the customers end, The part that gets poked, Prodded and messed with around the clock, How would you run things?

Well firstly if your going to assume all of your customers are lying then why bother having customer service at all? Secondly if you can't poll the network to check that it's running correctly then your doing it wrong. If choruses network really is that poorly monitored then what would be wrong with an ISP setting up a few test connections around the country, poll them to see if the network is responding. At the very least they could suggest to people that if they truly believe that it's a network fault, that they ring back later thereby giving chorus time to notify of outages.

Surely problems with plugging modems in properly happen around sign up time or moving equipment, not in the middle of the day while browsing the internet and not having moved the modem in 11 months? If customers lie about their situation and end up with a no fault found fee then that's their problem, ignoring all context and blindly follow a script that doesn't make sense in the circumstances just because you refuse to believe what the customer is telling you isn't good enough. And no amount of customer bashing will convince me otherwise.

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