Saturday, September 12, 2009

What's The Meaning of "Customer Service"?

September 12, 2009

Today a desperation email came through from a guy saying that his business line was down, and he had no cell phone and needed help to contact Verizon to get his phone line sorted out.

I placed a call at 2:06 PM to Verizon and the customer representative said that there was a ticket already opened for the business.

So I emailed the guy back immediately and told him that if the Verizon technician does not show up by 3:04, to email me and I will get in touch with Verizon again.

So at 3:05, the guy emails me back and said that no Verizon technician has showed up yet.

So I placed another call in immediately.

After being on hold for 3 hours, hubby and I decided to do our Saturday night date by going to shoot some pool. I decided to keep the phone on the line while we went out for a few hours.

When we came home, I expected that the phone would be dead, expecting a Verizon customer service representative to have answered the call and hung up when he / she realized that no one was on the other line.

Believe it or not, music was still playing through the phone. At the time of the picture, I have been on hold for 6.3 hours.

(Above: Call to Verizon, note the 378:02 minutes call duation)

Isn't this crazy? Is this what Verizon call "Customer Service"?

*Update September 13, 2009 9:50 AM*
After 1085 minutes and 6 seconds later (18 hours later), the 50's music was still playing in the background, and still no customer service, I decided to hang up.

(Above: Call to Verizon, note the 1085:06 minutes call duation. The phone that I have ran out of of digits, so that is why it is only showing 085:06.)

Any of you have horror stories of trying to get in touch with so called "Customer Service"?

Quilt & Bitch

8 comments:

p00lriah said...

pretty bad . . . first time i've heard a hold this long.

this is a bit off-topic, but check this thing out. could work.

www.ooma.com

Quilt+Bitch said...

Hi p00lriah,

I've read about this ooma before. Thought about it too. At the time I had bundled service with the local cable company, so could not get out of the contract. Thanks for the heads up, will look into this when the contract is up.

Q&B

p00lriah said...

don't thank me, thank costco. i came across this item on their website. i love costco. if only i can figure out a way not to spend so much $$$ there . . .

voip is great, but you still have to pay for your broadband. it's kind of a wash. the + side is that u don't have to pay for long distance in the US anymore. as far as broadband i like cable the best--it's the fastest. what about u?

Quilt+Bitch said...

Oh... I use to love Costco until my in-laws yanked their Costco membership and thus we lost ours too. Costco is great, but since we live in an apartment, it's hard to buy bulk everything, bulk toilet paper, paper towels, sugar etc. because of space restrictions.

The VOIP thing, I have to do the math. I have to figure out what is the total savings. I figure that the OOMA widget will last three years before it breaks down. I'll have hubby do the math and we'll make a decision with it. For right now, we do use VOIP with our cable company, so long distance is free anyway.

The sucky thing is every once in a while, the cable company will yank our service down because they are trying to get to a wire of another apartment in the box. This means no phone, no internet and no T.V. (this just happened last week).

:)

p00lriah said...

get iphone as backup. as sucky as the iphone keyboard is, it's hard to beat the sheer convenience of it. i've played with it enough and it's a very useful gadget. expensive, but friends say that it's like a mini computer so the price is justified.

Quilt+Bitch said...

p00lriah,

Sorry to say, but I'm a Microsoft girl. :)

p00lriah said...

hehe. most people that's played with an iphone for a meaningful amount of time all became converts. it is truly convenient, except for its keyboard. i dare u to try one without liking it . . . :-P

Quilt+Bitch said...

Ah ah ah, no thanks. Way too expensive. My Black Jack (1st generation) is still working well so even if somebody were to buy one for me, I would just give it away. I have played with client's iphone, and the apps sound great, but that's about it. :) Sorry, will definitely not convert.