Since joining, I've been constantly and consistently amazed by just how poor their customer service really is - it honestly seems like their aim really actually is to alienate and frustrate their customers, or possibly compete for some super-secret anti-customer service award.
Having finally had enough of their poor service and complete lack of customer service, and finally becoming motivated enough to actually move to another ISP, I decided to finally lay a formal complaint and request my early termination fees be waived, but once again, they managed to exceed my extremely high expectations in lack of service.
I'd assumed that a formal complaint would be taken at least a little seriously, and perhaps warrant an actual response, but as usual, it seems to have been ignored - I sent the following email on Sunday the 8th, yet aside from the automated reply confirming it had been received and that I would hear back from them within 2 business days, I've heard nothing.
Hello,
At this point I have been with Slingshot for 10 months, and from the beginning, I have had nothing but trouble with your services, with more issues cropping up over time, and a complete refusal by your technical department to even attempt to diagnose the problem, let alone solve it.
The main issue, which we have consistently had since joining is with an unstable line. Occasionally (varying between three times a day and twice a week) our connection will either just drop, or begin having a downstream packet corruption rate of around 50%. If the router is reset or does drop the connection and reconnect, it will either do so extremely slowly (for example, around 30kbps, compared to a normal connection speed of around 3mbps), or with continuing downstream packet loss of around 50%. The only way this can be fixed is to unplug all devices from the phone jack for a few seconds and then plug them back in. In addition to sometimes randomly resetting for no reason, it happens frequently when the phone is used - around 30% of the time there is an incoming or outgoing phone call. When this happens, the phone is also often practically unusable because there is so much background noise. Although unplugging everything from the jack and plugging it back in will often get the internet working again, attempting to use the phone again will almost invariably cause the issue to return immediately again.
We've contacted the help desk about this issue a number of times, with various responses, including "Until the connection drops more than 7 times a day, I won't even run a line diagnostic", several "We'll look into it", or on one occasion we were told a technician would be sent out to investigate, and then informed the issue had been fixed, however there was no change whatsoever.
On the off-chance that it would help the situation, I also asked for a central splitter to be installed at my house, however that was around 7-8 months ago now, and still nothing, despite asking at least once when calling about the main issue when I could expect some action to be taken there.
In addition to the main issue, which makes our internet and phone extremely unstable and inconsistent, we have now also been having an issue over the past month or two with World of Warcraft frequently becoming completely unplayable due to extreme latencies ranging up to 30 seconds, with the help desk not being able to provide any assistance whatsoever. A brief look at your forums made it quite clear that it was a consistent issue that all Slingshot customers are facing, with zero action on your part, with the recommendation of one of your own network support team, Bevin Smeith, being "Unfortunately this means that Slingshot is unable to provide you with the service you are asking for, My Suggestion is to call the Help desk state your reason why you believe it is far that the ETF's should be wavered and move to another provider.".
I've been consistently and constantly frustrated by your complete lack of support for the entire 10 months I've been with you, but because we could limit the issues to occuring on average once a day or so by avoiding using the phone, I was unwilling to take the time and effort to make a complaint to the consumer affairs disputes tribunal, however this most recent issue is the last straw, and at this point I am more than angry enough to make the time.
I'd therefore like to request that the early termination fees on my contract be waived, as the contract involved you providing me with working and usable phone and internet, which has clearly not been upheld, and your support has been nonexistant - in addition to the fact that you've either flat out refused to help or fobbed me off with platitudes then failed to act on the occasions I did manage to get a call in, any attempt to receive any email support has been met with a form letter telling me that if I want the support department to do anything I must ring; whenever I've tried to ring I've remained on hold at least an hour, despite the automated system claiming an 8-10 minute wait time; and the few times I've accepted the automated offer to ring me back, I've never once been called.
Yours sincerely,
<Name removed>
I realize there are already a multitude of Slingshot horror stories floating about and my story is by no means unique, but still, if even one person is warned off by this, at least something slightly positive will have come of it, and if not, at least I've gained some catharsis.
Trusted
