The
Aftermath of Yesterday’s Blog
After posting my blog yesterday and as if
on cue I suddenly run out of data on my data plan with T-Mobile. Coincidence,
quite likely, but still I am not sure. I couldn’t go nowhere and on the 11th
of Dec. I had bought a 5 gig package that was supposed to take effect as soon
as my last package ran out. It didn’t start and I couldn’t go nowhere on the
web.
Already feeling the pangs of frustration
I search for my address book and dreaded climbing on the rollercoaster of
automated phone answering messages that are designed to prevent me from
harassing a live customer service representative. Lord forbid I go straight to
the source. Scrolling through my options I fail to hear, you have already paid
for your service and I am sorry for the interruption. Instead I am left with no option but to go
straight to technical support. After entering my password and verifying who I
am and my account information , the live lady on the end of the phone informs
me I have used up all my data , 5 gigs of it, and that I actually had went over
. I informed her that I just bought it on the 11 th and that there was no way I
could have used that quick.
At this point she proceeds to inform me on
how to use my mi-fi and that I need to turn it off when finished and that other
people may be using it as well as programs like Apple downloading will use
quite a bit of data in a short time. . I inform her I live in the middle of
nowhere and if they are close enough to tie in to my puter and steal signal
then they’re trespassing
I asked her at this point. But 5 gigs in
five days, come on. My puter, if left on constantly and down loading all of Apples
content would never be able to achieve that kind of down load capability. And
besides in the last week before this I had to get technical support to see what
was wrong with my download connection because I wasn’t receiving anything. And
now I am receiving too much. You mean you fixed it that well. I highly doubt
it. Again I asked her to check and see if I still had data available to me ,
and she said I didn’t and went back to the spiel about turning off my puter and
down load connection when finished surfing on the net. At this point she was
treating me somewhat like I was some kind of a pervert and that I was constantly
streaming porn and that was the reason I had no internet service.
At this point I am thirty minutes into the call and still no success but
a verbal ripping of my anus as she tears me a new asshole about my web usage. After
all if I didn’t use it by a certain time then I would lose it so what are my
options. Besides if I don’t use it she has no job. Being from Ohio and being accused of dropping
f- bombs all the time I did my best and said forget it , you are not listening
to me , I have already paid, but will pay again as I am becoming increasingly frustrated
with you as I try to restore my service . Please re-up me so I can get back
online and check my usage and see if it is true that I used that much in the
last few days. She checks my account and says that I have to add more money to
my account in order to buy a new pass. I said ok and she says she will transfer
me to another department to achieve this less than miracle.
I dread being rolled over into a new department and recanting my story
again. But alas I am given time as I hear the automated message come across the
phone and say all our operators are busy and your call will be answered in the
order it came in. if that was the case I should go to the head of the line but
no I start all over again listening to some irritating music drone over my
phone in a continuous loop until I can’t stand it no more. I place it on
speaker go get a cup of coffee which I really didn’t need and checked the time.
At this point I am 45 minutes waiting and still no service. Finally I hear
through the speaker the welcoming click of someone finally answering the phone.
I hurry and take off speaker as they say we must have bad connection. I really
don’t want to lose this person at this point and assure them that I can hear
them quite well and that it must be their phone.
Again I go through the whole spiel about
how I should have data left and that I can’t surf or do anything as T-Mobile
has my puter locked into their screen and it isn’t letting me do anything. I
mention that I should have a data package that was supposed to take effect as soon
as the last one was completed. And that I am unable to do anything with my
puter in regards to using the web. He tells me that I still have data left and
that I need to use it before I can get another data package in fact I have .19
mb of data. In my mind I quickly surmise that may be enough to go to Facebook
and write f--- T- mobile, they suck. And
quickly toss the idea out of my head. He tells me he can’t re-up me until I use
all my data. Again I tell him I can’t do anything, so he has to pass me on to
his supervisor and again I am on hold at this point I am 50 minutes and still
no service. And again a more annoying loop of music designed to further drive
the demons in my head to a frenzy.
At last as I sit patiently beside my cell
phone wondering if the battery was going to hold up and that my call was not going
to be dropped , and how many words start with f and end with k will I use if
this kind person is not able to help me. Finally she comes on and again I
recant my story again as if I am being grilled by the FBI about some major
crime I committed and in essence all I am trying to do is get my service back
on.
Again I receive instructions on mi-fi usage
and that I should try and curb my activity on the internet to make sure that
this never happens again. At this point I wonder if I woke her up and she was
just pissed at me for taking up her precious time. I said, do what you have to
do to get my service back on, I am getting pretty tired of this as I am now an
hour and 10 minutes into a call that should never have happened in the first place,
she has none of my debit card information available so I have to run through my
house and find my wallet and leave the phone hoping she doesn’t hang up on me
while I dig through my wallet and find my card. We go through the whole process
and finally I am able to make a payment and then she says she can reset my data
but she can’t re-up me for a data package as I need to go back to customer service
and get my data package.
In the old days you used to pay for
something and just get it. The old hardware man would slide it across the
counter and you may even get a joke or two he heard from other satisfied
customers. Now a day it is all quite different. The runaround is designed to
infuriate you to the max. As if they know there is some Ohioan out there, that
is at his tipping point and that maybe with a little nudge he will go off with
the f-bombs and you can quickly hang up the receiver and rather than listen to
him rant.
Again with the annoying music and for
stimulation they added ‘That due to heavy call volume your wait will be
extended and if you want that you could call back later when they aren’t so
busy.’ Wow, do they really think I am going to lose my place in line and go
through all this again. I am reminded at this point of my first haircut and how
the barber had no ears. It scared the hell out of me because I thought he
practiced on himself when in reality he had no ears because he was in a fire in
their house when he was a kid, and it burned his ears off. I imagined I looked
like he did at this point, as I am sure my ears were melted to the side of my
head as I waited for another voice to come back on. At an hour and twenty
minutes finally I hear another voice on the phone and again I tell my story and
the history of what I have been through thus far and I am feeling proud of
myself as I am getting quite good at retelling it. She assures me that with the
payment that my new data package will be in place and everything will be up and
working in a few minutes. Then it is snag time again. As suddenly a five gig
package, supposedly a complimentary was given to me and that the 2.5 gig
package I had just bought would be wasted if I purchased another package now.
Just when you think you have seen the
light they blind you. Apparently I had to use the 5 gig package now and save
the 2.5 for later. Confused, well so was I and so I agreed to use their so
called 5. 0 gig complimentary package
and then I could hold my 2.5 gig in reserve , until she told me of the snag
involved which amounted to an approval that may take anywhere from 2 -24 hrs.
to approve.
Wow,again. At this point I choose to not
drag myself any further through their muck and mire and to just let it go
through and see if everything will go as they say. Besides they have already
shown how helpless you are after all I spent an hour and a half of my life on
the phone trying to get something I already should have anyhow. I mean I doubt
if any business will give anything away if they don’t think you already have a
right to it. Their complimentary package was probably them realizing I had
already paid for service and that it was lying in wait. In fact when I returned
to the computer to check I saw that the 5.0 gig package I had bought on the 11th
was now active. So it wasn’t really complimentary and that for the last hour
and a half I spent trying to get what I had already paid for was a mistake they
conveniently hid behind a complimentary package.
My head was reeling and my ear was flat,
my phone battery was on its last leg and finally I was able to hang up and the
customer service rep I last talked to promised to call me today to make sure
that I received my data package. That never happened. But through it all, I mentioned
frigging once but avoided the four letter version.
Now in conclusion if you are confused and dazed,
then you must know what it is like for me and a bunch of other Ohioans to go
through this for most everything you have to purchase over the phone. The voices
in my head come from the monotonous bleating of the call waiting music. Undoubtedly
much better than Virgin mobile as theirs is a cross between aggravating and just
downright slam the phone down to avoid ear piecing cries of help from some lost
poor singer who was probably the son of an executive there at Virgin.
It would be different if this was a once
in a lifetime event but it seems as if it is monthly or at least every time you
need service from these folks. Why can’t you just pay and get service. Or if
you already have paid and have it in reserve then get what you paid for. Simpler
is better. No wonder the phone companies want to shift their customer service
overseas as it costs too much to do it here in the U.S. Four customer service
reps and an hour and a half to get what I had already paid for. F--- T-Mobile.
As an after note and before I finished
editing of this the customer rep who said she was going to call back and make
sure I had service finally returned the call an hour and a half after she was
supposed to. Again I could feel the tension begin to rise as I talked to her
but still avoided using the f- word directly on her. And I just love it when
they tell you to have a good day after all that.
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