Damned the Corporations, and of course... "The Game"...

Thats right, damn the lot of them.

The two targets of my discontent (at the moment that is), Adelphia and TMobile.

Obviously, I use both of their services and at the moment am rather discontent. Hell, lets skip past discontent, I am angered almost to a level of vengeful.

As do I most often, I'm going to step back here and provide a little relevant information. I work for SBC, which happens to be a huge corporation and not all that popular even more so at the moment. Well, lets clarify that I do not work for SBC directly, I work for Brisk Consulting. Brisk Consulting is whats refered to as an SBC Authorized Distributor, meaning SBC and Brisk have a contractual agreement where as Brisk can sell and support all of SBC's products and services. Point of reference, Brisk can only offer SBC Midwest Operating Companies and SBC Long Distance Services products and services, which basically means we can only sell here in the five states that commonly compound the Midwest. In it's origin, I think the concept was good in nature. It was intended to put a local contact in place for the customer, while allowing them to bring back more and more customers. But, there was too much money to be made, and salesmen are the shadiest folk in the world. What i'm saying is that I understand at times it can be difficult to support clients, especially those that call you 5 times a week, but it doesn't mean you stop doing every damned thing in your power to assist them.

Back to the matter at hand. We'd moved recently, in doing so, we had to establish new cable service at the new address. This was actually kind of exciting, because we'd lost access to the free cable in Reserve Square about 2 months back, when Adelphia finally figured out they were giving EVERYONE free cable. Either way, the Tuesday before we moved, I called and established an appointment between 12-4 on Saturday. This was sort of difficult because we were moving that weekend. We got an early start on Saturday, to avoid cramming it all in at 4 am... Which we did anyway. But, it was twenty till high noon, and we had just finished shamming another load into the back of the van, so I sent Jay ahead of me to avoid missing our commitment.

This is where things get mighty touchy for me, it actually hurts deep down inside to know people are this incompitent / careless. Let me ask you a question, whats your day time phone number? I'll lay even money, up to a dollar to a donut that you'd of given your office number, where you can be reached during the day. Well, accordingly, putting someone's office number as their main point of contact isn't all that bright when you're scheduling them for a Saturday install. But, Carlos wasn't thinking ahead. Also, it might be a nice idea to give the install technician all contact numbers avalible for the client. Either way, Jay sat here waiting for the cable guy as I cleaned the old place with Davie Boy to avoid losing our ever precious security deposit. Accordingly, at 3 pm I became kind of concerned when we were still without a tech, so I called up Adelphia and suggested that their technician had not made his commitment of 12-3 pm. They of course informed me that the commitment was between 12-4, and he checked and indicated that we were infact still open on the technicians route, and he should be there before 4. Of course, not really to my surprise in retrospect, the 4 o'clock hour rolls around, and still no word from the tech. I call Adelphia again, and they told me we were marked "Not Home" at 12:28, and the tech attempted to contact me on the main number on the account (my office). They informed me it was too late to send him back out, and the soonest install date they could offer was the following Friday. This was obviously unacceptable, being as we made our half of the commitment.

Let me lay out a little scenerio for you. You work for some electrician/cabling company, who is brought on as a third party vendor to support and install Adelphia products and services. It's Saturday, which you're forced to work because of the over load of new installs due as a direct reflection of the current promotions offered by Adelphia. Not of course to exclude the idea that it is also Memorial Day weekend, and your wife is on your ass about picking up hamburger buns for the family cookout on Monday. So, you're doing everything in your power to get through your commited appointments, including but not limited to marking people "Not Home", because it has no direct effect on you. Even the hour bothers me, 12:28... Thats enough time to start at 12 and mark someone not home, then move to my place, and mark me not home... The timeline seems too perfect.

So, I got to spend the next 45-90 minutes on the phone doing everything in my power to get the situation ammended. I'm mighty good on the phones, and often am able to achieve my goal. Thing about these call centers is the break down, and the policies implented to make them as efficent and cost effective as possible, while removing power and culpability from the initial points of contact. It's a lot of young female minorities saying "I'm sorry sir, but what do you want me to do?". They're not empowered to actually do anything but access limited and often inaccurate information. Not to mention that they're broken down into small teams, probably to create an unnecessary bit of competition amongst the room towards numbers, which all have individual heads. It is impossible to speak directly to the management / middle management employees. That is not a blanket statement, it's a reflection of my hours of effort to get a simple problem resolved. The team leaders are always unavalible at the moment, either on their line or not in the office, but the initial point of contact would be happy to take a message and have their manager call you. This is a classic move to keep the customer from speaking to a person who is empowered to actually do anything. Statisically, customers will hang up in frustration before they even leave the team leaders a voicemail. I left 6 that evening. Finally, around quarter after 9, when i'm sitting down to dinner at a restaurant no less, i get a call returned.

Jeff calls me back, he's a team leader from the call center who drew the short straw. Keep in mind, i'm never uncivil, never. I never raise my tone, or use an unkind word on the phone. But, obviously, it's easy to detect when i'm irritated, i'll start asking repeatative general questions about process, words above the average advanced vocabulary, etc... Snide is the best way to describe it, without the downfalls of malice. Jeff is reasonable, and somewhat empowered to actually help. We reschedule my commitment for Tuesday, between 12-4 again. As soon as I get what I needed, I thank him for his time and effort and return to my meal.

We finish the weekend, and waste Memorial Day moving box after box in numerous van loads over to the new place, and settle in. On Tuesday, Jay had class between 10-11:30, but called me at 11:45 to affirm he were infact home. He waited patiently, until about 1:30 when he began to worry, because he had to work at 3:30 over at the Jake. So, I wisely give Adelphia another buzz, as I know if we were marked as not home again a truck could be sent back out to me before the day's end. I'm assured that we are on the tech's route, and he'd be there before 4. Well, it hit's 3 o' clock and Jay needs to leave to get to the Jake, so he calls me at the office and I get to miss the last 2 hours of the day at the office so I may wait for the cable tech to come. That bothered me a bit, but not enough to set me off. We perform the classic changing of the guards routine, and I get to sit and wait. Keep in mind that I needed to go to Lou's at 5, since his network was still down. So, 4 o'clock rolls around and still no installation technician. I call Adelphia again, simply inquiring as to were the technician is. I'm assured that the technician is running behind, actually, her exact words were "I'm sorry sir, but the technician seems to be running behind, but what do you want, haven't you ever been late for an appointment?" That is probably the point in which I actually became angered. I was told a tech would be out before 5, and i would be credited $20 because they'd infact missed their commitment. This is offically a combined 8 hours wasted between J and myself in waiting for the cable guy... And, they have $20.00 to offer... I actually told her to take her sachel of silver and betray another... She didn't comprehend the allusion, which wasn't much to my surprise...

5 o'clock rolls around, and still no technician. I'm told they'll contact the dispatcher, and have him page the tech to call me directly. 5:30 creeps up, and still nothing, no word from the tech, so i call Adelphia again. Eventually, closer to 6, the dispatcher calls me and tells me he can have a tech here by 8 o'clock... I think i might of actually laughed at him. I accepted cordially though, considerably, it was wait 2 more hours, or wait another 4 a different day. I have to say the tech they sent out to me was my saving grace. Technician number 753, his name was Nick. Great guy, he actually got called in from home on his day off, so i could get service established. He was nervous coming in, because i'd been conveyed to him as an irrate / disgruntled customer. He did a fine job, ran numerous wires, installed everything, and established both assets of service within 40 minutes. Good guy. Right as he was finishing up, I recieved a call from the Night Supervisior of the entire call center here in Cleveland. Because, I expected to be given a good will credit for my troubles. It's no where near unheard of in service related industries where there is too much room for error. She fought me, she fought me tooth and nail. She did everything she could to not give me any credit. I actually over played my hand with her, which left me short, simply because I was exhausted from the entire process. In the end i recieved a $61.40 credit on my acccount, for my troubles. It works out exactly to a free month of service. Not $61.40 in addition to the $20.00 missed commitment credit, because that was just outrageous in her opinion. But, it was handled, I had cable, and all was relatively well.

Well, that is until this morning. I tried calling J, to see if he was back in town yet to make his class today. Of course I'm forwarded to the automated system at T-Mobile, because my account had been suspended. Which is nice of them and all. Through my troubles with Adelphia, i'd generated $100 in overage, which in addition to my $50 monthly service fee put me over my spending limit on my account. This was a great way to start my week. I obviously needed my cell to function professionally, so I had to handle it. When calling in, I recieved another Jeff, this one much less helpful. He almost immediately began talking down to me, only followed up by his efforts to upsell me on another plan. It was nice, it really was, it touched me deep down inside... Somewhere near the gootch area, where all the warm fuzziness resides. He was an absolute cock to me. He refused to let me get a word in, then told me to shut up and let him finish, it was really nice. All I wanted, the only thing I wanted, was a detail of my usage, so as I may determine how the problem occured. Not that I didn't know, but I needed written proof to walk next door and hand Adelphia my cellular invoice explaining to them how the short comings in their system had generated this overage. The two highlights of my time with Jeff were when he mocked me for what I paid per minute for overage ($0.40 Cents Per Minute, I can call Iraq for 40 cents a minute from my office) and when he told me he was tired of playing "The Game" with me. The game, of course is me requesting he actually help me, and fufill my simple requests, and him replying with excuses and trying to change the subject, always snidely following up with "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" I really wished I could've crawled through the phone and stood infront of him... I'm not violent, ever, I've not been in a physical confrontation since grade school... I usually don't allow things to degenerate to that point, although of recent i've been feeling a bit scrappy. I just wanted to stand infront of him and watch him quiver as his annonimity and saftey feel around his feet, and watch his attitude change. That's why I'm going to call Adelphia once tomorrow morning, then just walk over there.

Thats the funniest thing about all of this, I litterally work next door to their only Cleveland office. It's right across the damned street. Let's see if I can get this resolved without getting arrested.

-Rys4K

p.s.- It's 2:15... Isn't that lovely.