This post started out of frustration with my cable television provider. Or should I say, my former cable tv provider? Now I had Charter for at least two years, maybe longer. I’ve never been in love with the service but I’m a big Tivo fan so I chose to stick with Charter. However, over a month and a half ago, my own personal Hell started with Charter.
One weekend, my digital (HD) channels started to give me trouble. They were breaking up until it became hard to see them. Well, I didn’t think much of it at the time. Television has problems from time to time. By Monday it cleared up! Yay, I thought!
Well around came the next weekend and the problem started again. Seriously? So I called Charter. Now in the past this has been a painful experience with many hours spent on hold! Luckily, I got right through to a human. Holy crap, a real human! They even seemed intelligent. Wow, it must be my lucky day. She ran through several troubleshooting steps and then she sent a signal to my box. Of course I had to wait a few hours to make sure it fixed the problem or so I was told. By this time it was Sunday night and it seemed to be working. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
Well here came the next weekend and here came the problems again! You have got to be shitting me!!! So I called Charter once again. I talked to a customer service rep who eventually decided they needed to send a tech to my house. So I scheduled it for later in the week.
The day of the appointment arrived and at 10:15 am the tech still wasn’t at my house. I called Charter again. Are we seeing a pattern yet? The nice lady on the phone informed me that I didn’t answer the call to confirm my appointment. What call??? The rep looked at my record and asked if my number was 525-7654. Um no, that was my number about 8 years ago. I told the rep my number and they said that it was in the notes but not updated on my record. I thought “For Christ’s Sakes” but I bit my tongue. So Charter set up an appointment for me for the weekend since I had to go to a meeting by this time.
Several days before my appointment I got a call saying that a problem was found and fixed in my area that was most likely the problem. Did I want to cancel the appointment? I mistakenly said yes.
The weekend rolls around and here goes my tv again. This time i call Charter a tiny bit pissed off. I tell them to get a tech to my house that day. Later that day the Charter tech shows up. Again, he’s a very nice guy who’s just trying to help. He checks my whole house and informs me that the signal is bad at the house. This means a truck has to come to my house. He told me he would put a work order in and that they would call me.
When I hadn’t heard from Charter several hours later, I once again called. I had memorized the number at this point from calling it so much. A very nice lady told me she could see the work order but she would follow up to make sure it got taken care of. She called me several hours later and left a message saying that she was still waiting on the supervisor. The next day she left a message saying that the truck would be at my house within two days. I felt relief! Maybe this hell was coming to a end. I never heard from her again but I thought that maybe the truck had come.
Well you can probably guess it. My tv service went down again the next weekend. I called Charter one last time! I told them to disconnect my television service but to please leave my Internet on. Ironically the Internet worked all during this fiasco. The gentleman on the phone asked me if there was anyway to make it right. I said that I was afraid not. I just wanted free of them!!! So they scheduled to disconnect my tv service and I signed up for Directv.
So I came home yesterday and the tv was out. No problem. However, my Internet was also down!!! I wondered if I had killed puppies in my former life and karma was getting back at me.
So I now wait on Charter to come to my house tomorrow to fix what they screwed up. In the meantime I wondered what I could learn from this and I came up with a few things.
- Don’t wait until it’s too late to make things right.
- Having nice employees is great but you need someone making sure things are fixed to the customers satisfaction.
- Give your employees the tools to do the job. This includes good processes and systems.
Unfortunately I can’t get back my lost hours or lost earnings but maybe they will finally get it right. So stay tuned to seVe how it turns out!
