What Happened to Customer Service?

Why is it that when cable companies are selling their services they send young, attractive sales people to your door making all sorts of promises about their exquisite customer service.

Then when things go bad - and nothing is worse than waking up on the biggest college football Saturday of the season only to find you have no signal to any of your TVs - you enter voicemail hell until you’re finally “chatting” online with someone in India.

You languish in this labyrinth of DIY system checks and online chats for five hours. You miss the first half of the Virginia game thinking that this would be a simple fix if you could just speak to an actual person. 

Finally, when your patience is gone and the person on the chatline resorts to platitudes they learned in How-To-Calm-Irate-Customers Class, you’re ready to give up.

Yeah, I’m looking at you, provider that rhymes with Berizon, with super-fast internet and super-slow customer service.

Here’s a piece of advice: Never call that company’s 800 number. I was on hold for one hour and 40 minutes. Here, I have proof:

Before we were disconnected, that is.

Worse, I spent at least 30 minutes waiting to get into that purgatorial queue going through steps to attempt to fix my own equipment. Reset buttons. Plug and unplug items. Reboot systems. 

Check. Check. Check.

You’re also offered the option of a digital chat. Sorry, but sending messages back and forth across continents is not chatting.

 It’s typing. 

Finally, your intercontinental typing partner decides you need a technician. No kidding. That’s why you called in the first place.

Good news. They can have one of their crack specialists at your house in four days. 

“LSU and Alabama are playing at 3:30,” I typed, knowing that meant nothing to the man or woman on the other end of the line.

There was nothing left for me to do but unleash a Trumpian Tweetstorm.

That got the attention of the company’s social media team. We began a back and forth. For a few magical minutes, I thought I’d found a backdoor into the company’s elusive customer service department.

Wrong.

I was directed to yet another chat line, where the person, who claimed she was located in the USA, was unable to help me.

Eventually, I folded. I accepted the Tuesday appointment, showered and headed to a bar.

A couple of hours later, I got a text from the provider. They’d fixed my problem remotely.

Did I dare risk losing my seat near the TV to dash home and see if it was true? I waited till halftime.

The TVs were working.

By then I’d lost about six hours of my life trying to fix what must have been a simple problem.

Look, modern conveniences break down from time to time. We get that.

When you’re paying hundreds of dollars a month for a service is it asking too much to have a number to call, where an actual problem-solving person - preferably one in your zip code - answers the phone? In under an hour?

Apparently.