Month: September 2008

Recently i’ve decided that i’m the worst customer ever

So why am I the worst customer ever? Well for one I demand that I get an answer. The answer that i expect needs to be grounded in something remotely believeable. For instance, Im having some latency and speed issues with my internet connection today (I have comcast business class internet) Step 1 the tech wants me to do is reset the gateway. its a SMC something that comcast provides. I ask him nicely why it is that we should need to do that. Since in theory there should be nothing on the device that should be fixed by a powercycle so long as its accesable, which is is things are just slow. He says he doesnt know why its just on the list of things that he has to go through. I suggest to him that any issue should be fixable without needing to reboot (a hard lockup being the exception), the claim i get back is that it just needs to be done. At that pointI asked to be bumped to a higher level of tech who I could work with. (Though i doubted it would happen. I also dont have much faith in level 2 techs there) I was told that its not possible without going through all of the steps. I can be very stuborn and really only wanted to take the connection down if really neccesary. After he told me that was not possible, I asked for his supervisor. When the lady got on her phone I explained the situation to her and said that as a last ditch effort I would powercycle the modem, I also explained that I dont see how resetting the modem would help since everything could be reset on the device without the need for a power cycle. I said that i wanted to explore things like load on the network segment i am on, congestion in other parts of the network, basically any other plausable thing causing the issue im seeing. The response from here was that sometimes you have to reset the modem just like any other electronic device. when she specifically mentions computers in her device list I said thats not true and that i have and have had computers with uptimes of over 2 years, to which she claimed it was highly unusual. long story short, she claimed that the reason that the modem needs to be reset is to flush the caches and that 9 out of 10 times it fixes the issue. So i said what your telling me here is that the software on the modem is buggy and rather than fix it you put additional burden on the customer. Which was denied. So now i get to deal with a slow connection until a convienient time to take things down.

Another example: I recently looked at switching from tmobile to att, largely because of 3G data services. Currently we have 3 lines on a shared family plan. 2 of those lines have addon dataplans. I have a blackberry perl which I dont like, the email client is horrible, the browser is mostly useless, there is a irc client and ssh client but they are clunky also. I think part of it is the screen and the rest is poor design. Really who doesnt do filtering server side on mail. Generally the email that lands in my inbox is the mail i care least about. Any way i called ATT to confirm a few things since all of their pricing was higher than tmobile’s. That was a rude suprise. I was told that its not possible to have data addons to a family plan if that addon was to be a datacard. Since I have a inbuild 3G GSM modem in my laptop, instead that would need to be a plan and line on its own. Right now the third line we have is in the laptop and used for data only. however if my family came to visit i could put that sim card in a spare phone and give it to my family to use, with the minutes coming out of our shared pool. Att does not allow that, any device thats connected to a computer has to be on its own service, it will also cost you more and goes from unlimited data to 5Gb limnit a month. so the unlimited on the phone is really not so. they are saying it expecting you to not use it. When your connected to a computer its much easier to download data, so they limit it. I tried to get an explaination from the tech support people i spoke with. but All they could tell me was its in the customers intrest. I really could not figure that out.

I was paitent with them. There really is no point in getting upset. They are doing a job and dont deserved to be yelled at and treated to abuse. I have found that being nice sometimes gets me the answer. Sometimes i’ll get i’m realy sorry I just dont know this is all that they tell me. but I always get treated fairly decently I can tell that I frustrate them. the customer service people ive dealt with have very little knowledge of what it is they are helping with. They have a sheet of things to do, that was made clear to me when a level 2 tech at comcast tried to tell me I could only download things that were the size of my connection speed, and that i really couldnt expect to be able to download a dvd iso (my usual speed test is downloading a DVD iso from mirrors.kernel.org since I refuse to install flash to use the designated speed test sites). I think that I have every right to demand answers. I blame the short commings in being able to get them at times to executives in Big Business, they dont pass along rationale on decisions to those under them its expected to be taken as gospel. If Governments acted the same way there would be uproar at the injustice of it, I really do think we should expect to get answers even when the answer is not something that you want to here. In ATT’s case I am sure that the reason is entirely to make more money. If they were honest with it i could accept it or not for what it is, when you only have a half truth or less its really difficult and you can usually tell when its not the truth. Most of the time ive found that its not that they dont want to give you the information. It is simply that they themselves dont know.

I think I have fairly simple wants and demands. I want to get a propper answer, I’ll treat you with respect, all I ask is that your do the same to me. Don’t try to make up excuses if you don’t know say so. I can accept that, though i will ask to go up the chain until I get the answer. Even though comcast support claims its not possible to speak to anyone higher than a floor supervisor.

A note to phone makers. I want a device that I can have the freedom to run the software I want on it. I want to be able to easily sync contacts and calenders, I want to do that without having to go through your servers to do so. I want a good browser, irc client, and ssh terminal. I want at least EDGE preferably 3g (and tmobiles 3g doesnt really count its on a frequncy all on its own, no one else in the world wruns on it so existing 3g equipment wont work), preferably all in a package with a touch screen that i can use my fingers to type on a virtual keyboard, or do handwriting. openmoko is currently the closest thing to what I want. There are some serious limitations in the hardware. GPRS only being the biggest one. I would want to thther to it when I cant get wifi. wifi to me is only attractive as an AP.

So in summary, i’m the worst customer because I expect straight detailed answers (just cause doesnt cut it), I want to be treated as a human with respect, not some dummy. I will tell you when I think your wrong. I want to know in advance when you will have new things say offerings like 10Mbit/10Mbit cable (yes i really want that also). I will be loyal to you if you treat me right. I’m not perfect and if i’m wrong I own up to it.

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Recently i’ve decided that i’m the worst customer ever

So why am I the worst customer ever? Well for one I demand that I get an answer. The answer that i expect needs to be grounded in something remotely believeable. For instance, Im having some latency and speed issues with my internet connection today (I have comcast business class internet) Step 1 the tech wants me to do is reset the gateway. its a SMC something that comcast provides. I ask him nicely why it is that we should need to do that. Since in theory there should be nothing on the device that should be fixed by a powercycle so long as its accesable, which is is things are just slow. He says he doesnt know why its just on the list of things that he has to go through. I suggest to him that any issue should be fixable without needing to reboot (a hard lockup being the exception), the claim i get back is that it just needs to be done. At that pointI asked to be bumped to a higher level of tech who I could work with. (Though i doubted it would happen. I also dont have much faith in level 2 techs there) I was told that its not possible without going through all of the steps. I can be very stuborn and really only wanted to take the connection down if really neccesary. After he told me that was not possible, I asked for his supervisor. When the lady got on her phone I explained the situation to her and said that as a last ditch effort I would powercycle the modem, I also explained that I dont see how resetting the modem would help since everything could be reset on the device without the need for a power cycle. I said that i wanted to explore things like load on the network segment i am on, congestion in other parts of the network, basically any other plausable thing causing the issue im seeing. The response from here was that sometimes you have to reset the modem just like any other electronic device. when she specifically mentions computers in her device list I said thats not true and that i have and have had computers with uptimes of over 2 years, to which she claimed it was highly unusual. long story short, she claimed that the reason that the modem needs to be reset is to flush the caches and that 9 out of 10 times it fixes the issue. So i said what your telling me here is that the software on the modem is buggy and rather than fix it you put additional burden on the customer. Which was denied. So now i get to deal with a slow connection until a convienient time to take things down.

Another example: I recently looked at switching from tmobile to att, largely because of 3G data services. Currently we have 3 lines on a shared family plan. 2 of those lines have addon dataplans. I have a blackberry perl which I dont like, the email client is horrible, the browser is mostly useless, there is a irc client and ssh client but they are clunky also. I think part of it is the screen and the rest is poor design. Really who doesnt do filtering server side on mail. Generally the email that lands in my inbox is the mail i care least about. Any way i called ATT to confirm a few things since all of their pricing was higher than tmobile’s. That was a rude suprise. I was told that its not possible to have data addons to a family plan if that addon was to be a datacard. Since I have a inbuild 3G GSM modem in my laptop, instead that would need to be a plan and line on its own. Right now the third line we have is in the laptop and used for data only. however if my family came to visit i could put that sim card in a spare phone and give it to my family to use, with the minutes coming out of our shared pool. Att does not allow that, any device thats connected to a computer has to be on its own service, it will also cost you more and goes from unlimited data to 5Gb limnit a month. so the unlimited on the phone is really not so. they are saying it expecting you to not use it. When your connected to a computer its much easier to download data, so they limit it. I tried to get an explaination from the tech support people i spoke with. but All they could tell me was its in the customers intrest. I really could not figure that out.

I was paitent with them. There really is no point in getting upset. They are doing a job and dont deserved to be yelled at and treated to abuse. I have found that being nice sometimes gets me the answer. Sometimes i’ll get i’m realy sorry I just dont know this is all that they tell me. but I always get treated fairly decently I can tell that I frustrate them. the customer service people ive dealt with have very little knowledge of what it is they are helping with. They have a sheet of things to do, that was made clear to me when a level 2 tech at comcast tried to tell me I could only download things that were the size of my connection speed, and that i really couldnt expect to be able to download a dvd iso (my usual speed test is downloading a DVD iso from mirrors.kernel.org since I refuse to install flash to use the designated speed test sites). I think that I have every right to demand answers. I blame the short commings in being able to get them at times to executives in Big Business, they dont pass along rationale on decisions to those under them its expected to be taken as gospel. If Governments acted the same way there would be uproar at the injustice of it, I really do think we should expect to get answers even when the answer is not something that you want to here. In ATT’s case I am sure that the reason is entirely to make more money. If they were honest with it i could accept it or not for what it is, when you only have a half truth or less its really difficult and you can usually tell when its not the truth. Most of the time ive found that its not that they dont want to give you the information. It is simply that they themselves dont know.

I think I have fairly simple wants and demands. I want to get a propper answer, I’ll treat you with respect, all I ask is that your do the same to me. Don’t try to make up excuses if you don’t know say so. I can accept that, though i will ask to go up the chain until I get the answer. Even though comcast support claims its not possible to speak to anyone higher than a floor supervisor.

A note to phone makers. I want a device that I can have the freedom to run the software I want on it. I want to be able to easily sync contacts and calenders, I want to do that without having to go through your servers to do so. I want a good browser, irc client, and ssh terminal. I want at least EDGE preferably 3g (and tmobiles 3g doesnt really count its on a frequncy all on its own, no one else in the world wruns on it so existing 3g equipment wont work), preferably all in a package with a touch screen that i can use my fingers to type on a virtual keyboard, or do handwriting. openmoko is currently the closest thing to what I want. There are some serious limitations in the hardware. GPRS only being the biggest one. I would want to thther to it when I cant get wifi. wifi to me is only attractive as an AP.

So in summary, i’m the worst customer because I expect straight detailed answers (just cause doesnt cut it), I want to be treated as a human with respect, not some dummy. I will tell you when I think your wrong. I want to know in advance when you will have new things say offerings like 10Mbit/10Mbit cable (yes i really want that also). I will be loyal to you if you treat me right. I’m not perfect and if i’m wrong I own up to it.