Do industries secretly agree not to provide the best customer service so no one gets a competitive advantage? A little overboard, but it looks that way lately. Our arch in front of our house cracked — not unusual based on the way it was built without rebars. But it scares me whenever people come to the porch because I don’t want anyone hurt. Our family goes out the back door anytime we want to go outside.
We called four masons for estimates. Three came out and three gave quotes. We’re ready to proceed, but no one is returning our calls. To boot, it’s been below freezing in the Dallas area, so we doubt that they’re outside working on projects (I hope not). The crack needs fixing before something happens.
One of the carpet stores came to measure our floor because we need to replace the carpet (thank you, Itzy) before we have a big shindig next month. The store called back later the same day and left a message to call them for quotes. Paul called several times and gets no answer or answering machine.
Not all is bad. Verizon and the remodel company did their jobs. We switched from Time Warner to Verizon FiOS. Verizon showed up nice and early on the scheduled date. After inspecting our set up, the employee needed to go to his parts yard for parts. He returned on time and finished the job. He even gave us his cell number so Paul could call him with information.
We’re also switching to Verizon FiOS TV. They’re supposed to come today, but the Dallas area got hit with unexpected sleet. Original prediction was for snow flurries, after 4am — it changed to sleet and the roads are bad. No one is overreacting this time. Funny thing is that all independent school districts closed except for Dallas.
When we made the appointment, Verizon said someone would be here at 8:30am. The person forgot to say was that it was a window from 8:30am to noon. When Paul called about it at 10am, they said it was a window of time. At 11:00am, someone else called and said they would not be able to make it because of weather and rescheduled for Saturday (only a couple of days away). PLUS, they gave us one month of service free.
Nice work, Verizon.
T-Mobile, on the other hand, doesn’t have a simple answer to the question of how to cancel an account. I joined the family plan, so I need to get rid of my original account.
2 thoughts on “Customer Service for Home Projects”
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Interesting. I read an article (may require registration) in The Dallas Morning News this morning where its writer had a bad experience with Verizon. However, his situation was different… Verizon was in the middle of installing FiOS in his neighborhood. Somehow the company turned off his DSL AND phone service! Three weeks without DSL. I don’t know how I could survive that and my daughter pleading with me to get it working.
I’m just looking for a place to post a complaint about Verizon and this looks like it. They don’t support their phones. I live out in the sticks – 2 hrs from a Verizon store. My phone $450 PDa phone dies and wont’ take a charge. It’s real easy, its either the battery or the charger. Verizon central won’t let me mail the phone to them for their service guys to check out. My wife makes the drive to the store 2 hrs away and guys there won’t put it on a charger to test it. Instead they start pushing a new phone instead. She comes back, mission un-accomplished. I call another store in the distant metro area. They say, yes, they can service the phone, but I can’t mail it to them. I have to bring it in. Well, great balls of fire! Are they afraid I’m the Uni-bomber?. I’m not scheduled into that area for another month. Then I find a Verizon store that CAN service it, and WILL accept it mailed in. Halleluja! They tell me that if the battery has failed, it cannot be replaced. What kind of garbage is this? Sell a $450 with a battery that cannot be replaced? I tell Verizon customer service is “el stinko”.
If you are customer of Verizon’s you are at the mercy of MBAs with razor sharp horns and tails tipped with cattle prods lashing to and fro.
I belive that these Verizon devils (and hordes of other MBAs) rely upon inertia as a marketing strategy. I’m switching to Sprint, I’ll get a better PDA phone for $100 and an equivalent contract.
Let’s take a solemn oath together, “To defend my family, my friends, and consumers everywhere, I, (your name here) vow to dump any company I am unhappy with, even if the competition appears little or no better. I promise to view upstart companies favorably as fresh and healthy competition to entrenced abusers of consumers. I promise to purge any feeling of comfort I feel regarding any brand image that I cannot credit to personal experience with that brand’s service or product. And, I will shout out on the internet my dissatisfaction with any brand, company, product or service that annoys, injures, robs, or defrauds me in anyway, minor or major.”
SnoPig