Transitional Thoughts

I’m in Vermont in a place where there are limited internet options.  Basically, there’s marginal wireless service through AT&T and satellite available everywhere, with some locations where you can get fixed wireless and DSL.  Hating AT&T and not wanting a metered option, we decided to go with DSL through Fairpoint, now Consolidated.

I called on the 1st and after giving them all sorts of information, I was told that the installation would happen on the 15th.  No specific time.  Two weeks seemed a little long, but it’s a large service area with low population density, so it’s understandable.  On the morning of the 15th, I call Consolidated’s customer service line to see if I could get a more specific window of time.  A friendly woman helped me to setup an account PIN and security question and then informed me that I was on the schedule, but it hadn’t been assigned, so her best guess was that it was going to be in the afternoon, somewhere between 8am and 5pm.  She said that should we need to go out, we could just leave a note on the door.  We decided to stick around.

Needless to say, 5pm rolls around and nobody has shown up.  The morning of the 16th, I call to ask when the installation is going to be and the very curt customer service representative said that the installation was going to be on the 25th.  Incredulously, I asked what had changed and she indicated that it has always been that way.  When I placed my order on the 1st, it was in the system as the 25th and has not been changed.  I asked her to look at the account and see who made the change to setup the account PIN and security question and she saw who it was, and I asked her to speak with her about the 15th, but she said that the rep from the 15th must have been mistaken.  When I pressed about the rep who took my order on the 1st, the rep on the 15th and I all having the same fantasy about the installation on the 15th, she could not offer an explanation, only that it is very busy and there was no way that she could expedite the installation.  When I called back and asked another rep about the installation situation, she said that she would have a supervisor look at the order, but that produced the same response.

Basically, the attitude that I got from the customer service reps on the 16th is that they’re the phone company and you’re lucky that they’re coming out at all.  I remember feeling that way in the 80s when I had to deal with the likes of New England Telephone and GTE.