I’m having a hell of a time with my current ISP (sitting at 18 days now without a connection) and I’m having to bite my tongue every time I’m talking to them (Remember The Human and all that)
Whilst the front line support are nice people and answer the phones quickly they are honestly pretty useless and they never really sound like they know what they’re talking about, also seemingly none of the departments seem particularly good about communicating what’s going on so it’s hard to get a straight and useful answer out of them.
Have you ever lost it with a rep? What happened? and did it ever help push things along?
Ya, I definitely swore at them and raised my voice. I immediately apologized and said I was upset at the situation and not them because I know they are trying to help and are just trying to get through the day. The call went pretty well after I apologized. There was one time the person seemed like they were being intentionally unhelpful and a smartass when I was super polite. I did lose it on them and called them a fuck face and told them to fuck off.
I’ve definitely gotten angry about a situation while on the phone with a customer service rep, but not with the rep themself. I make it a point any time I’m audibly angry when on the phone to state that I’m angry at the company, not at the person I’m speaking with, and that I understand that it’s not their fault. It seems to help a lot; I used to work in customer service and I sure appreciated it when people made that distinction to me. It’s okay to be upset, just don’t take it out on a CSR.
Honestly this is pretty much it. Sometimes you have to be pretty aggressive to get companies to do the thing you need; they will take advantage of the social friction required to keep you in predatory arrangements. They literally design it to be frustrating so you’ll give up. Like you, I try to make it clear to the person I’m speaking with I have no problem with them just the business. But if the corporations require me to get mad to do the right thing I will get mad.
I have a friend whose family immigrated to Fiji from India before coming here. He’s bi-cultural, and his super-power comes from his heritage.
Also, he will wait on the phone and talk to as many reps as required in order to get a discount. In CANADA, his full-up TV package - sports, streaming, movies, 1gbps internet, etc - is $1 for the next 2 years. Then he’ll call again and bring up the days where things didn’t work, mention how this is a consistent pattern they promised to eliminate, and launder all that into another 2 years just so they can be rid of him. He outlasts them.
I just ask for the next tier of support.
Lots of tier 1 support aren’t even armed to do much troubleshooting. They are there to enter tickets and to advise the cookie cutter “have you tried turning it off and on again” type answers and to give scripted explanations of known outages or bugs. More advanced troubleshooting gets done by higher tiers.
In your case, I would ask for a rep to be assigned your case number and get their phone number so you have one point of contact. Whether they actually do that for you is another matter, some companies put very little emphasis on customer service and support once you’re already a paid customer.
This had already gone past the first level “customer service” level to the 2nd level “technical support” team who sat on it for a couple of weeks, they’ve apparently now escalated it again and they’re waiting for their “network team” to take a look at it.
I’ve basically lost all hope with them at this point.
It might be worth switching providers. Starlink and 4G ISPs (TMobile, Verison) are surprisingly good.
I’m in the UK, we have a system for switching ISPs that is apparently relatively painless so I’ve started that process but it’s apparently going to be another 2 weeks before the switch can happen :(
If you are willing to switch, tell your current carrier and sometimes that will light a fire under them to actually address the Support call. We had that happen recently. Internet went out. The issue was outside our house with the provider’s line. They said they’d send someone a week later, so we pointed out it would be faster for us to switch providers, to which they replied, “We can’t get there tomorrow but how about the next day?” We accepted and they actually did fix it in two days instead of seven.
Yes.
I was handed a really surprisingly thin cup in the Frankfurt airport, and it completely squished open as I grabbed it. I apologised and offered to help clean up within seconds, but first I reacted.
Bro was nice about it, and gave me another one. That might not be what you were asking about, but it is a customer service thing.
There’ve been a couple times. I make a distinction between frustration at the company and the person, but sometimes you run into reps that are willfully unhelpful or actively malicious for their own gain.
Two cases come to mind. I’ve had an ISP rep call me about updated prices, who then proceeded to try and sell me a broadband and streaming bundle subscription. I would have gotten a slightly faster speed, plus the streaming BS. Same price as I was already paying.
I specifically asked if unbundled contracts had also been changed, and the dude said “no”. I checked the prices online while still on the call, and the bastard was straight up lying. Without the streaming bundled, the price was lower and came with even more speed. I told him this, and he asked “oh do you want that then?”. I replied “yes, but not if it gives you a sales bonus”, so I hung up and signed up for the new contract via the ISP website.
In the other case I was shopping for jeans, and the store rep repeatedly handed me elastane-ridden skinny jeans a few sizes too small, insisting they’d look better, even as I kept telling him the exact size I wanted, and that I preferred the 100% cotton denim, loose fit jeans. At the fourth pair of skinny jeans I told him to fuck off, and just went through the store myself until I found what I was looking for.
It’s hard for me to do that to them, they’re not the people I’m upset at. Unless the high school office counts as a customer service rep for high school. I might as well have left their property by now with a permanent impact crater.
A couple of times. No, it didn’t help. And I was disappointed in myself afterwards.
Nope. I know it’s a person on the other end that’s probably confused and figuring stuff out to the best of the ability. I try not to get upset because I’ve been there.
Yes I have, and no it does not help. Always apologize and tell them it’s the situation, not them, that you are upset with.
I’ve done that job before and most likely they would help you if they could, but the company won’t train them or make any solutions available because it costs money. Your impression that they don’t know what they’re talking about is probably accurate.
Your best bet is to keep escalating to a higher department (“manager”, “office of the president”).
Assuming we’re excluding the sales side of things (telemarketers and other unsolicited communications) no I have not.
My roommate used to adore Dell though because “if you’re willing to be an asshole and not hang up you can get anything for free”. I understand that squeaky wheeling is effective but I just find it such an utter waste of time to both parties.
No, but that’s because my brain is weird. I have a lot of difficulty getting angry, usually I just get really frustrated but it almost never boils over into actual anger. Even when it does I’m not that angry. Sounds good probably, but every emotion is useful and it tends to lead to me not standing up for myself.
Not that I can recall, but I was close pretty recently. There was a minor snafu about a hotel booking I made recently, one that in theory should be a pretty simple fix.
I contacted the chains booking department which usually handles those things, and after serving BS excuses they turned out to be utterly useless. I instead called the front desk of the specific hotel and there too I got an excuse that I at least consider valid: “Yes, it should be possible to fix this, but that’s probably something I should talk about with the manager, as I’m pretty new here”. She then proceeded to tell me the name of the manager, and the time when she would be available.
I called the front desk later as instructed, and talked with the manager. She said that normally booking handles these things. After politely airing my frustration with booking, she had it fixed within five minutes while I was on the call. I thanked her, and asked her to also thank the new hire who did what she could earlier.
I have, it didn’t help, I apologized right away.
When I’m dealing with ISP or phone customer service, I always ask for the cancelation department. They are motivated to keep customers so sometimes they’ll throw in a coupon, especially if you treat them like a human.
