Nothing really gets consumers seeing red more than the perception of a lack of respect when dealing with a company.
It can be either in communication or wasting their valuable time with missed appointments or the run-around.
Unfortunately, that's what happened to my family recently when we canceled some of our services with Time Warner Cable and switched back to AT&T.
I do this very rarely, but today I'm venting about our recent customer service nightmare. Frankly, all of the frustration we experienced as consumers could and should have been avoided with good customer service.
I share it mostly because while the public relations officials have told me my situation was ''unusual,'' I'm sure a lot of you have had similar customer service experiences with the companies involved or could name myriad other companies.
In our case, we really didn't experience the notion of ''the customer is always right.'' Or even, ''try to keep the customer's head from exploding from frustration.''
Let me back up first.
A year ago, we signed up for a 12-month promotion from Time Warner for digital cable, digital telephone and high-speed Internet for $99 a month. Before that, I was a dinosaur and still had dial-up service, since we live in an area where I can't get AT&T's DSL service or other high-speed Internet choices. But we finally switched for the cable — from Dish Network and after years at our other house of Time Warner expanded basic — and added the digital phone and high speed.
By the time all of the fees for DVR Please see Home D3
services and boxes and taxes were added, our average bill was about $130.
Throughout the year, I'd see promotions that Time Warner was running or I'd call the company to see whether there was any way to reduce my bill for them to remain competitive. I was always told that I didn't qualify for any other promotions and, in fact, toward the end of my 12-month time period, my bundled discounts would slowly go away and I'd start paying more. But I was also told by the customer service representatives that I couldn't call and ask about any new promotions until my 12 months was up.
So that brings me to earlier this month. I called Time Warner and told the representative that my promo was up and I was paying $130. If she would keep me at the $130 level, I'd be willing to stay as a customer, but I'd be even happier if she could give me a better deal since I was considering shopping around and leaving.
That's when the customer service representative got an attitude and said that I had a very good discount at $130 and I couldn't have that again. I could have the same services for $155.
So, I could have the same services that I already had for $25 more?
When I told her I'd be shopping around for a new service, she got more attitude and told me that she had done the research herself and I wasn't going to find a better rate withDirecTV or Dish Network. She and I went over a few other pricing options — available if I would reduce my services — to try to get me below the $130. I thanked her and told her I'd be back in touch.
When I told my husband what was going on, he said he'd been considering suggesting that we get rid of our paid TV services for the summer and that this was the last straw for him. He suggested that I do some research on other companies and we could decide together.
A cheaper phone rate
So I did find a cheaper telephone rate with AT&T. Instead of paying $44.95 for digital phone (which did include free long distance and many features we probably never used) with Time Warner, I was going to pay $25 a month for local service with Caller ID and Call Waiting and 5 cents per minute for long-distance calls. That was fine with us, since we mostly use our cell phones for our long-distance calling.
In addition, because I was coming back to AT&T, it was offering me a ''win-back'' offer of a $50 gift card. It also offered me a DirecTV package that would have been cheaper than the Time Warner comparable package and included more premium channels, plus more ''win-back'' money. But at that point, we had already decided to drop the paid TV (that's a whole separate subject, which I'll write about another time).
So I called Time Warner back to cancel my cable. We did not cancel our Internet service because I have no other choice where I live. I also didn't say I was canceling my phone service because I wanted to transfer my phone number and AT&T would contact Time Warner to do that.
But curiously, when I pushed the button on the phone to ''cancel,'' the representative I got apologized that I was leaving the company and offered to let me keep all three of my services for $111.
Already frustrated with the company, I told her that it was too late and too bad that the earlier representative had insisted that I couldn't even keep my $130 rate. I told her that the company had shot itself in the foot because if I had been given the $130 rate in the morning, I would have remained its customer. Instead, I was now ready to go.
The rep apologized and said the first rep should have been able to give me at least the $130.
When I called Time Warner spokeswoman Heidi Mock earlier this week to tell her my saga, I asked her to find out a few things for me. Why is it that a customer like myself has to get a runaround about prices and is offered different prices only when I actually push the button to cancel? Isn't the company interested in being competitive and keeping customers happy? And will customers get a different pricing structure if they actually push the button to cancel?
Mock apologized for the experience I had.
''Based on what you've told me, the [original] customer service agent acted inappropriately. She should have been able to work with you and that's the general theme. We're willing to work with customers on pricing and packaging,'' Mock said. ''You asked for $130 and that should have been the conversation.''
Mock also said that all customer service representatives in the company have the same offers for customers. By pushing the cancel button, the customer is directed to the retention group, which might have employees who are more aggressive in trying to keep you, but the offers are all the same.
But Mock couldn't explain why I was offered $111 instead of the $130 from the retention representative. The company does have a $111 package that would be a stripped-down bundle of what I had, but I told Mock the representative indicated I would be able to have the same package I already had for $111.
I also asked Mock about promotions during the year and how existing customers often complain about companies not offering them promotions advertised to new customers. Mock said special new-customer promotions are not unique to their business and are designed to attract new customers.
Troubles with AT&T
After my husband and I made the decision to switch to AT&T for the phone service, we thought that was the end of our bad experiences with customer service. We weren't so lucky.
What should have been a seamless switch of telephone service from Time Warner to AT&T instead left us without a working phone for eight days. We had numerous missed appointments from AT&T technicians, who never bothered to show up or call to tell us not to sit around the house and wait. And we got runarounds from customer service representatives who were unable to follow up and failed to call us back numerous times when they promised they would.
In the meantime, we had to run up our cell-phone minutes mostly waiting on hold with AT&T and using them in place of our land line. We have debated in the past dropping our home phone service and only going with cell phones, but our cell-phone service in our house is patchy and I'm just not comfortable with the lack of a land line with two young children.
I finally got a manager at AT&T on the phone on Day 6 without a phone. My husband was instructed to go into a small crawl space in the attic to find out whether it was an inside or outside problem. My husband discovered an open phone box with wires sticking out — unfinished work from the first technician who had come to our house on the first day and had left saying he'd be back. He never returned.
So in the end, there were eight days of getting the run-around and AT&T saying it was an inside and outside problem. It turned out to be a problem that should have been handled the first day.
I purposely waited until my problem was fixed before calling AT&T's public relations department because I did not want to use my position as a reporter to influence my service.
When I phoned AT&T spokesman Chris Bauer after the phone service was restored, he expressed his apologies.
''The delay in getting your service working properly is not acceptable and this is not the kind of experience we want our customers to have. We apologize for your inconvenience and we learn from these issues to deliver the best service possible,'' he said.
For my part, I'm just happy to have a dial tone. And you can be sure I've already contacted AT&T and asked for credits on my bill. The company said my bill hasn't been generated yet, but a customer service representative agreed to give me the equivalent of one month's service free. We'll see whether it happens — or whether I see more red.
