Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Back online

I have been having Internet problems for several weeks now - more like a few months in total, but for the past two weeks it's been a constant nightmare. I would be connected for about a minute at a time, then my system would disconnect, then I'd have to wait about a minute before connecting again. The first time Rogers sent a technician, my system was in one of its miracle phases where nothing seemed wrong. The next week it all went to hell again.

I was supposed to have an appointment this past Saturday between 8am and 11am. I got up at 6:30am so that I could shower and clean up a bit. No one showed. I called Rogers and it turns out that the person who had taken my order had written down my phone number incorrectly. Initially I was furious. They couldn't send out anyone later in the day on Saturday, and that meant that the next appointment was Sunday afternoon. In other words, all my week-end plans were shot to hell.

I'll give them this though: Rogers did all they could to get me another appointment right away. I also realized that mistakes happen. The technical rep who had taken my order was a fantastic person who correctly diagnosed what was wrong with my system. Okay, it was annoying that he had written my phone number down wrong, but that's life. I know he didn't do it deliberately to fuck me over.

There is much that drives me nuts about Rogers (for one, their incredibly annoying voice prompt system), but once again, I'm going to praise online their technical service reps.

10 comments:

Snooze said...

Oh yes, the point of this post...

so I haven't been able to follow as many blogs recently, or more specifically, comment. It's been a difficult process.

St. Dickeybird said...

I want to eat my phone whenever I have to navigate their voice promts, but the tech that set up my cable/ phone service was fantastic.

dantallion said...

Glad you're back among the land of the living. The most disruptive things are the ones when something we take totally for granted stops working for a moment.

For the most part, tech's are usually pretty good. They're often in a crappy position - dealing with irate customers while trying to troubleshoot things - which is never an exact science. The exception to that is Bell Canada's front line tech support, which is in India. And that's not the fault of the individuals - it's just a very poorly thought out system on the part of Bell management.

Greg the Surly said...

Sounds more like sex and dating. Glad you're back.

tworabbitshow said...

OMG, don't even get me started on Rogers... back away... back AWAY from the post... *eye twitch*

CoffeeDog said...

Glad you are back, what did they find was the root cause of the issues?

Because I work from home, when my internet goes down I scream bloody murder at them. A few months ago it was bad, cable was up and down all day...I suspect at the time they were upgrading something in their network that caused the disruptions over a 2 month period of time. I called in a fault so many times that I got two months free cable!

One time I called in I was so mad that the lady asked me to once again restart my PC to check, blah blah, I mumbled "fuck" in an angry voice and she hung up! They must have rules : "If the client says shit you must stay on the phone; if the client says fuck you're allowed to hang up."

I don't put up with their BS cockamamy stories either, if I don't like what I am getting I ask to speak to a supervisor.

And why did the cable company have the incorrect number? Isn't your home phone part of their records?

Nicki said...

My cable company had me wait for a half hour for someone, but she was nice as hell once I got her. They couldn't figure out what was wrong, so they sent someone out. He was there all of 5 minutes before it was fixed. Didn't even take long enough to download my p0rn.

Snooze said...

StD: "eat my phone" - that's great. Those prompts must cause everyone to be a raving psycho by the time they get through to a person.

Dan: Dell has help in India too, but my dad swears by them. When did Bell switch? And how do they manage to get bilingual reps?

Greg: It feels good to be back.

TRS: Shhhhh, relax now. Let the nice Rogers man come and help you...

CD: I wondered the same thing about my phone number - it's a Rogers phone and is the number for this account - but hey, some of my errors at work have been similar. If I had to work from home I think I would have followed up sooner. I'm impressed you got so much free time though!

FM: Mmmm... porn.

St. Dickeybird said...

Bell switched a while ago. I've been quite impressed by the Indian IT Support. Puts my old work department to shame...

Snooze said...

StD: India is going to overtake us. They have a highly educated and motivated workforce