There are some things that really drive me crazy. Here are just a few that happened recently…
We
moved this fall from Long Island to New Jersey.
As part of the process I had Verizon put in a standard old fashioned
copper wire phone line. It is literally
just for backup as a result of my experience after Super Storm Sandy.
In
the aftermath of the storm two years ago, we had no electricity for 11 days. Cell phone service was spotty at best, and
the only technology that continued to work was that good old reliable copper
wired phone. We kept in touch with our
parents, our children, and of course, my clients.
So
on October 7th, the nice Verizon installer arrived to get me hooked
up.
It’s
important to note at this point that in this era of deregulation, Verizon’s job
is done when they get dial tone at the interface block outside the house. From there, it’s really up to you.
I
keep remembering the old Green Acres series where their phone was up on top of
the pole. They had to climb the pole
whenever they wanted to use the phone!
But I digress…
Verizon
will, if asked, run wire inside and install a jack. However, this service is billed by the hour
and charged separately. In my new home,
my office is on the same side of the house as the interface block. I haven’t actually measured it, but I
estimate that the total distance is about 6 feet.
The
installer drilled a hole from the corner of my office, through the vinyl siding
and then struggled (for more than 10 minutes) to push the wire through the
hole. Having finally accomplished that,
he installed the jack and then proceeded to connect the wire at the interface
block. The result, no dial tone! After nearly a half hour back and forth the
installer finally figured out that he had wired it wrong. In spite of the fact that I assume he does
this for a living, the guy had picked one wire from one pair and another from a
different pair.
Two
weeks later, I received the bill which included a $175 labor charge.
I
called the billing office with what I presumed to be a simple question. Was the $175 a standard charge (it seemed
high for such a relatively simple job) or was I paying for the incompetence of
the installer (who behaved like he had never done this before)?
Remarkably,
the business office didn’t know the answer and transferred me to the repair
office.
Remarkably,
the repair office didn’t know the answer and offered to have the foreman call
me back with a breakdown of what the charges were.
Pet
Peeve #1: This will not surprise you, no
one called me back!
I
don’t think it is unreasonable on my part to understand what I am being billed
for. I was not objecting to the charge
so much as looking to understand it.
Even if they needed more time, would it have been such an imposition to
simply leave me a voice mail telling me they are working on an answer and
setting my expectations on when I will hear from them?
I
called Verizon again and the business office connected me to the repair office
once again. The woman in the repair
office explained that she did not know why I never got called back. The only thing she could do was to email the
foreman and tell him to call me. When I
bristled at the fruitlessness of that plan, she explained that while she could
transfer me to her supervisor, it would be better if the business office
supervisor contacted the foreman as they were peers. I agreed to let her transfer me back to the
business office.
Instead,
she managed to transfer me to someone in the Finance department. She would be happy to help me work out a
payment plan for my bill but was not equipped to do anything about getting an answer
to my question. She transferred me to
someone else who, after hearing my story, arranged a $75 credit to be posted to
my account.
Pet
Peeve #2: Who’s in charge here?
There
seems to be no one at Verizon who has overall responsibility. It is up to the customer to navigate through
their various departments to get any answers.
I started with what I thought was a simple question about what I was
being charged for, an answer which I have not yet received, and ended with someone
in the business office giving me a credit to keep me from cancelling the
service and jumping out the window!
Every
business, especially large behemoths like Verizon needs people whose job it is
to resolve customer issues. The customer
should not need to try to figure out who to talk to in order to get his
question answered.
Late
this week, the foreman finally called me back.
His voice mail message made it pretty clear that he had no feel for what
I was calling about, referring to my second call instead of the original
question. I have not returned his call.
Pet
Peeve #3: Just leave a message
The
woman in the repair department does not appear to have given the foreman any
information about the purpose of my call.
I find that more often than not, people are leaving messages that don’t provide
any information. If the foreman knew why
I was calling, he could have left a message on my voice mail telling me how
they arrived at the $175 charge.
Instead, he just left a call back number which would require me to call
him to tell him what I was calling about.
I bet we could play phone tag for weeks!
What’s
your pet peeve? I am going to start a
collection J
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