I’m having a hell of a time with my current ISP (sitting at 18 days now without a connection) and I’m having to bite my tongue every time I’m talking to them (Remember The Human and all that)
Whilst the front line support are nice people and answer the phones quickly they are honestly pretty useless and they never really sound like they know what they’re talking about, also seemingly none of the departments seem particularly good about communicating what’s going on so it’s hard to get a straight and useful answer out of them.
Have you ever lost it with a rep? What happened? and did it ever help push things along?
One thing I hate is when I finally reach a human being and it’s clear that the rep is being forced to read a script. And that means they probably have little to no ability to solve my problem.
Management is wasting both our time with their CYA, boilerplate BS
Assuming we’re excluding the sales side of things (telemarketers and other unsolicited communications) no I have not.
My roommate used to adore Dell though because “if you’re willing to be an asshole and not hang up you can get anything for free”. I understand that squeaky wheeling is effective but I just find it such an utter waste of time to both parties.
I was handed a really surprisingly thin cup in the Frankfurt airport, and it completely squished open as I grabbed it. I apologised and offered to help clean up within seconds, but first I reacted.
Bro was nice about it, and gave me another one. That might not be what you were asking about, but it is a customer service thing.
I’ve definitely gotten angry about a situation while on the phone with a customer service rep, but not with the rep themself. I make it a point any time I’m audibly angry when on the phone to state that I’m angry at the company, not at the person I’m speaking with, and that I understand that it’s not their fault. It seems to help a lot; I used to work in customer service and I sure appreciated it when people made that distinction to me. It’s okay to be upset, just don’t take it out on a CSR.
Honestly this is pretty much it. Sometimes you have to be pretty aggressive to get companies to do the thing you need; they will take advantage of the social friction required to keep you in predatory arrangements. They literally design it to be frustrating so you’ll give up. Like you, I try to make it clear to the person I’m speaking with I have no problem with them just the business. But if the corporations require me to get mad to do the right thing I will get mad.
I have a friend whose family immigrated to Fiji from India before coming here. He’s bi-cultural, and his super-power comes from his heritage.
Also, he will wait on the phone and talk to as many reps as required in order to get a discount. In CANADA, his full-up TV package - sports, streaming, movies, 1gbps internet, etc - is $1 for the next 2 years. Then he’ll call again and bring up the days where things didn’t work, mention how this is a consistent pattern they promised to eliminate, and launder all that into another 2 years just so they can be rid of him. He outlasts them.
I have, it didn’t help, I apologized right away.
Yes, although for a good reason.
I ate at a fairly well-known cafe where I live, and had a sandwich and side salad. I finished the salad, and near the end I felt a weird crunch in my mouth. Suddenly I could taste blood near my gums, and when I looked at what was left of the salad I could see broken glass.
Obviously, I was a little panicked, and my wife quickly called someone over to say that there was glass in my food. One person stayed with me while the manager went to the back, and found out that one of the chefs had broken a glass on the table, but had just washed the salad clean rather than throwing it. By this point I was really embarrassed because around 30 people were staring to see what was happening, given that I had blood coming out of my mouth
I said that this was probably in other people’s food, so they should probably tell others, but instead of responding they handed me cash to cover our meal, apologised, and walked away. I shouted at them to say that they shouldn’t ignore it because others were eating the same salad. My wife chimed in and told everyone that we had found glass in the salad and that they shouldn’t eat it.
I’ve never gone back, but a few years later I had told someone that story and they said that they’d heard a rumour about it from locals, so it seems that people remembered that story and stayed away.
Can you file a complaint straight to a regulatory agency? In Brazil, thankfully, whenever ISPs or telcos give you too trouble, you can simply complain straight to ANATEL (Brazil’s telecom regulator agency), saying what you’re trying to do and which, if any, protocol ID (you get one whenever you get on line with their customer
blockageservice) you’ve had. Companies will reply and fix the problem the next day.This is what I did, except I’m in the USA. I had to contact the FCC directly because my phone and internet provider just pretty much quit working. Turns out they were doing repairs in our area and just didn’t tell anyone to expect interruptions. If your ISP won’t take you seriously now, they will if you file an informal complaint with the FCC or other comparable agency.
Ya, I definitely swore at them and raised my voice. I immediately apologized and said I was upset at the situation and not them because I know they are trying to help and are just trying to get through the day. The call went pretty well after I apologized. There was one time the person seemed like they were being intentionally unhelpful and a smartass when I was super polite. I did lose it on them and called them a fuck face and told them to fuck off.
I worked phone support for a few companies for a few years, this is how to Karen: Try to bait the ai, companies are liable for promises made by their hallucinating chatbots. Chat support first, who wants to talk to people? Ask tier 1 support, if they say no then flex that Karen superpower “I’ll need to speak your manager”; those people are individuals just collecting a paycheck. If the floor manager (many have a 3x request policy) can’t see the situation from the human perspective and resolve/waive, they will only care if someone above them gets upset, the ways to do that are threaten legal action. No sovciet bs, but it helps to use contract terminology like “agreed upon terms”, “failure to meet industry standards” and “breach of contract”. If they don’t get jostled immediately, your next escalation is tag the intern on social media with a negative sentiment; or Google the company name followed by email for the office of the president. This is the pr address, CEO assistant or community director which again have the power to step in and resolve.
Each conversation should be less then 2 minutes + wait time and if that can’t resolve it, you need to close your account or potentially move. You can justify 1 more call during a different shift. There is no need to get mad, state that are you upset and are looking for resolutions. Use an I feel statement, and be sure to ask to leave notes on the account regarding your conversation. They have a UI with comment fields in the ticket that are displayed while you are on the phone and it helps sell the situation with comment history.
I worked phone support for a few companies for a few years, this is how to Karen: Try to bait the ai, companies are liable for promises made by their hallucinating chatbots. Chat support first, who wants to talk to people? If you do need to call, enter identitng information once, then repeatedly press 0 to get human support. Ask tier 1 support, if they say no then flex that Karen superpower “I’ll need to speak your manager”; those people are individuals just collecting a paycheck. If the floor manager (many have a 3x request policy) can’t see the situation from the human perspective and resolve/waive, they will only care if someone above them gets upset, the ways to do that are threaten legal action. No sovciet bs, but it helps to use contract terminology like “agreed upon terms”, “failure to meet industry standards” and “breach of contract”. If they don’t get jostled immediately, your next escalation is tag the intern on social media with a negative sentiment; or Google the company name followed by email for the office of the president. This is the pr address, CEO assistant or community director which again have the power to step in and resolve.
Each conversation should be less then 2 minutes + wait time and if that can’t resolve it, you need to close your account (which might take you to retention team!) or potentially move. You can justify 1 more call during a different shift. There is no need to get mad, state that are you upset and are looking for resolutions. Use an I feel statement, and be sure to ask to leave notes on the account regarding your conversation. They have a UI with comment fields in the ticket that are displayed while you are on the phone and it helps sell the situation with comment history.
This is actually helpful advice, thanks!
Not on the phone but I had to threaten the Bitdefender E-Mail rep with a lawsuit in order to get my money back.
A few months into my 2 year subscription I changed my e-mail associated with my Bitdefender account. Thereafter all mail I got from them went to that new email, as it should. A short while after that I switched over to Linux and my “need” for an AntiVirus evaporated entirely between Linux’ workflow not really requiring one anyway and me learning how little AntiVirus Software offers over the default Windows Defender. Queue forward to the end of that 2 year subscription (whose auto-renewal I had disabled before leaving Windows exactly to prevent what happened anyway but alas I have no proof of that anymore) I notice a really weird charge while reviewing my credit card statement. A charge that by all accounts should not have been there and one I was not made aware of beforehand. Guess what, those fucks sent only the mail about the upcoming renewal to the old email account which I had no reason whatsoever to suspect would still receive mail from them. Curiously the mail about them cancelling the renewed charge after I went off on them was sent to the new email again…
Initially the customer service said “oh well can’t do anything here’s a 50€ discount” until I lost my cool and threatened to sue them for theft because by all reasonable standards I could not have expected them to inform me on my old email about this upcoming charge.
On that note my stance was reaffirmed: Between and AntiVirus and an actual Virus I’d pick the latter, at least those are upfront about their motives and intentions instead of pretending to provide you with a service.
Nope. I know it’s a person on the other end that’s probably confused and figuring stuff out to the best of the ability. I try not to get upset because I’ve been there.
Yes.
Yes. More than I care to admit. No. It never helped.
It’s even worse today, where the front line support starts with a defensive attitude now.
I’ve tried a bunch of different strategies. But as Im now in my 40s, I’ve learned that you always get better service with honey.
I started doing that Gen Z stuff of like, “Hey man. You are probably just doing what you need to do, and I’m hoping my issue is easy as fuck to solve. If not, I’m not here to give you trouble because the system sucks.”
There’s a great book called Verbal Judo which goes through how to deal with the suck. Its not for everyone. But for people like me who tend to blow up easily, it’s great for keeping your composure, getting to a solution without ruining your day (even if it isn’t what you want), and remembering the person behind the screen/phone is human.
I just ask for the next tier of support.
Lots of tier 1 support aren’t even armed to do much troubleshooting. They are there to enter tickets and to advise the cookie cutter “have you tried turning it off and on again” type answers and to give scripted explanations of known outages or bugs. More advanced troubleshooting gets done by higher tiers.
In your case, I would ask for a rep to be assigned your case number and get their phone number so you have one point of contact. Whether they actually do that for you is another matter, some companies put very little emphasis on customer service and support once you’re already a paid customer.
This had already gone past the first level “customer service” level to the 2nd level “technical support” team who sat on it for a couple of weeks, they’ve apparently now escalated it again and they’re waiting for their “network team” to take a look at it.
I’ve basically lost all hope with them at this point.
It might be worth switching providers. Starlink and 4G ISPs (TMobile, Verison) are surprisingly good.
If you are willing to switch, tell your current carrier and sometimes that will light a fire under them to actually address the Support call. We had that happen recently. Internet went out. The issue was outside our house with the provider’s line. They said they’d send someone a week later, so we pointed out it would be faster for us to switch providers, to which they replied, “We can’t get there tomorrow but how about the next day?” We accepted and they actually did fix it in two days instead of seven.
I’m in the UK, we have a system for switching ISPs that is apparently relatively painless so I’ve started that process but it’s apparently going to be another 2 weeks before the switch can happen :(
A couple of times. No, it didn’t help. And I was disappointed in myself afterwards.
