My ISP has been Speakeasy for some years now. Now I have pretty specific requirements for the DSL and pretty high expectations; so far they have always been great. I would rather scrape my brains out through my nose with a butter knife than go back to an Internet-for-Idiots ISP like Verizon, where the support staff know nothing except their awesome script which covers all possible usage scenarios from one computer with Windows 2000 and the supplied modem, to one computer with Windows XP and the supplied modem.

But this week I tried to start the moving process, and I am getting major red flags at every step. First I filled out the moving form online, which assured me that a Moving Specialist would contact me within 24 hours. Nothing happened. So I called today and got some jerk salesman who immediately started to give me attitude before I could even finish explaining what I wanted. He didn't understand my existing service plan so he said he would just make the new order the same as the old one. Fine, that's what I wanted. And he did create an order, which I can see online, but it is for the standard Internet for Idiots plan, not even close to sufficient.

So I called back the support department, figuring who wants to talk to sales anyway. Again I got attitude within 60 seconds; this guy informed me that my plan doesn't exist anymore and this is the new plan. This he said without even looking at my old plan, which I had to entreat him several times to do, before he could be convinced that I really did have static IPs and some other stuff. Then he told me that all that other stuff would be transferred over after the new loop is installed, and not to worry about the fact that all the information on the ticket is wrong. Yeah, maybe, but I would be a lot more inclined to believe him if I hadn't just gotten three different stories in an hour. Both guys on the phone seemed to be in a big hurry to tell me anything that would get me to hang up, which is exactly the crap service I am used to from cheaper companies.

What's the deal? Did they start grading their phone support people by number of calls per hour? I sure hope I just happened to call during a problem shift, because I really don't want to go 12 rounds with the phone company and ISP and CLEC over starting a DSL again.

19 Jan 2006 18:20 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments