Thursday, October 19, 2006

Customer No-Service

I'm too far from a phone company switching station so DSL is not available in my area. But I still get calls, email, full color brochures in the mail, and even visitors offering me DSL from the phone company. I had been a customer of one phone company for over 25 years and when I called to ask them about DSL they said they didn't show me as their customer. I still had to pay the bill that arrived every month. After years of offers for DSL service that the phone company couldn't provide, I finally decided to accept their offer for DSL service from the phone company's website. They site confirmed my address, account and phone number and told me to expect a DSL modem in the mail within a week. Of course, it never came. The website showed a pending order for the service but they'll never fulfill it. When I called the phone company to ask where my modem was, they told me that DSL wasn't available at my address. When I asked them why the website confirmed the order and said a modem would be arriving, they said that it was a mistake. Knowing my next request wouldn't be fulfilled, I asked them to stop sending me glossy expensive brochures offering a service they couldn't provide, stop sending sales people to my door and quit emailing me offers for DSL. If they could stop wasting money trying to sell me a service they couldn't provide, then maybe they could lower my monthly phone bill, which was over $100. They told me to call the business office with my request. The business office told me they didn't recognize me as a customer. I got high speed cable internet, got rid of the phone companies, and got Vonage phone service for one third of what I paid the phone company. Now the phone companies are scrambling to try to prevent more loss of business. Maybe if they recognized their customers as customers, they wouldn't have this problem.

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