My Qwest is finished!

I’ve written about our trials with Qwest many times over the past year-and-a-half. First, we had issues with our account when we changed the speed and the customer service representative lied to us about what they were putting on the account. I contacted the BBB, and an executive customer service representative and I emailed back and forth (and talked on the phone) until the issue was straightened out (in our favor).

I then moved to a new apartment, and all was well for a year with no issues. Then I moved across the hall and instead of moving my service, they continued my old account and started a new one. Every month, I contacted the executive customer service rep I had first talked to with the first debacle. For reasons I still don’t understand, they couldn’t just close the new one and move my old one nor could they actually close the old one. Until yesterday, we STILL had two accounts going, even though we moved at in June of 2008. And then we moved again to the current apartment in July 2009. Yes, we still had both accounts going.

Shortly before we moved this last time, however, I discovered @TalkToQwest on Twitter. No, I don’t personally have a Twitter account, but I did discover on that page that they have an email address as well. I emailed them there and inquired about their possibly helping me, even without a Twitter account to advertise my woes. (Although, seriously, you should read some of the tweets that they in turn reach out to in order to help. Some people are really rude, and they just tweet back “How can I help you?” all nice-like. Wow.) Steph at @TalkToQwest returned my email pretty quickly and told me that she’d be happy to look into the issue. A week ago, she emailed me and was ecstatic that she thought that she had finally fixed it. I was pretty happy to be able to email her back tonight that, yes, she had fixed it after a year of someone else’s being unable to do so!

In fact, not only did she help us with that issue, but she helped get us a better price when we moved. We weren’t able to get the same speed as we had here, so she offered for us to either be let out of our contract or she could give it to us at a decent rate. My exec CS rep said that it would be $15.00 more than the @TalkToQwest representative had quoted me and that she could do nothing to lower it. We, of course, immediately jumped on the rate from Steph and thanked her profusely for all her help.

I guess it all boils down to this: If you have Qwest and you have any issues with Qwest (and want them actually resolved), check out @TalkToQwest and ask them from help, after attempting to go through “normal” CS channels (or maybe before going through normal CS channels, if time is of the essence). They will probably be able to help you in a kind, courteous, and quick manner.

Thanks to Steph and @TalkToQwest! (This is all from the kindness of my heart, because I am so amazed that it didn’t take Steph very long to figure out the problem AND to help us get a good rate when we moved. Otherwise, we probably would have just closed all our accounts and gone with someone else when we moved this last time.)

Updates!

Busy, busy! We’ve had a lot to do this summer, and I’m still working through the summer as well. In addition, we’re FINALLY moving from the pit-of-hell apartment (okay, it’s not a drug den — that I know of — but the management and quite a few other renters still suck for a variety of reasons). Our new apartment is closer to where I work (as in walk/bike to work close), we have a garage, a storage area, and a bigger apartment in general with a balcony to sit out on. There are tons of other perks, but those are the biggies for us (in addition to actually good managerial staff).

Antiques Roadshow went extremely well. I’ve never been in such a humongous yet well-organized event before. We found out that the lithograph we took (in addition to two smaller things) is indeed real and from the 1890s. We were super excited to hear that, obviously, since it’s such a wonderful lithograph and we LOVE it. Nicholas Lowry appraised it for us, as we had hoped during our time in the queue. We’d seen him on the show before, and we knew he’d be fun to talk to. He gave us a hard time for appraising a wedding gift (insurance purposes! We have a rider on our insurance, and we wanted to be sure the lithograph was actually real before continuing to pay that) and also quite a scare.

NL: Tell me about this.

Us: blah blah wedding gift

NL: *raises eyebrows and strokes his chin* You’re appraising a wedding gift?

Us: *babbling* Yes, we wanted to know more about the artist. Also, insurance purposes!

NL: *laughs and then sobers up* It looks really new.

Us: Uh. *can’t think of anything to say* We just wanted to know more about it.

NL: Good news, though. It’s not! It’s a well-known lithographer, although this is not his most famous piece, which is …. Yours is from the 1890s…

[just writing the important stuff here]

Us: Yay!

And so on.

We also took Neal’s grandfather’s (whom Neal has never known, as he died tragically when Neal’s dad was a child) Japanese katana from WWII and a metronome of Neal’s that he received from his grandmother when he was learning how to play the violin. The metronone is from the 1920s, which was exciting to know, and was made in Paris, France.

Anyway, good stuff. The producers and staff of AR are amazingly friendly and helpful. We saw one producer come over give his headphones to the girl behind us in line, so she could listen in on the appraiser and guest about the guitar they were then filming. Her boyfriend collects guitars, and she had been trying to get closer, but was told to get back. She asked a volunteer about it, but he couldn’t hear either, so he asked a producer who handed over the headphones (a Martin worth $5000 that was kept in a basement closet). The volunteer also gave us some info on other things around the place, such as a huge Japanese-made table that was worth $25,000 to $30,000 and the even bigger wardrobe that the owner thought was from the 1800s — but it was actually a fake.

We entered and exited almost exactly three hours apart, and this included standing in a huge line (that kept moving pretty quickly; I don’t think I stood in one place for more than five minutes the entire time), getting the general appraisal information (where we needed to go to have our items actually appraised), finding the first two lines (arms, to talk to this guy, and music, to talk to this guy, which were luckily both short lines), standing for a bit in the prints line for the lithograph, walking around to check out the scene (and look for the Kenos, whom we did not see), and then give our couple bucks at the Feedback Booth (the girls in front of us will probably be on television: They had prepared a song!) All in all, a wonderful time, and I would recommend it to anyone!

In other news, our saga with Qwest continues. We are STILL getting billed for our old service (yes, folks, we have actually passed the year mark as of a month ago) and we just found out we can’t get the same level of service at the new place. I’ve luckily found Qwest’s twitter (no, I don’t have a twitter account, but they have an email and will help you if you email them), which has been more helpful than my “executive customer service” representative from the BBB case. If you need to contact them, I suggest emailing the address on their twitter (or @talktoqwest on twitter) and talking to Steph. She’s been helping us with both the move (and she got us a GREAT price on the service, which was much less than we have been quoted by several other people, which made me happy, since it’s a slower speed than we currently have at this apartment) and with trying to figure out the continual billing at our old address. So far, no one has been able to actually stop the statements, but I’m hoping Steph can get behind the issue.

Our big move date (i.e., moving the furniture, since we’ll have all the smaller stuff over there already) is this Saturday. I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet of our new home! Picnics and grilling out! Riding my bike! (We can’t have bikes at this current apartment at all, even outside, and we aren’t allowed to use any grills anywhere on the premises. Work is going well for me, and Neal has the summer off (forcibly, since he didn’t get a contract for the summer, but I think it’s been good for him to have a break). His contract for next year is only for the first semester so far, at 75%, but I’m hoping he’ll get picked up for the spring semester, too. We’re keeping that in our prayers, along with a few other personal things, but otherwise life is pretty good today.

(We’ll see what happens tomorrow, now that I’ve actually written that out.)

More customer service (some good, some bad)

Okay, remember when we moved and then had problems with Qwest? No? Okay, here’s a refresher…and here…and here. As a quick reminder: They were supposed to move our service from one apartment to another one in the same building. Another apartment literally right next door to the one we were in. Instead, they charged us to set up a new account and kept billing us for the old account. And kept billing us. And kept billing us. As a matter of fact, they STILL have not closed the old account. The switch was supposed to happen the last week of June 2008. It is NOW almost the last week of MARCH 2009. Almost nine months later and we are still fighting this. Still. Qwest, when will you finally just CLOSE that old account? (The rep I’m in contact with said she can’t figure out why it hasn’t been closed. Heck, they don’t even listen to their corporate customer care reps. Egads.)

But on to the good: In December we rented a car from Enterprise to visit family. When Neal got the car home and we opened the trunk to put our bags and presents in, we noticed some moulding was loose on the rear panel of the car, but we didn’t have time to go back to Enterprise. (Yes, I know.) We dropped the car back off on Sunday and received a call on Monday that there was damage to the rear, as though the car had been backed into. It hadn’t, and we knew it. We disputed the issue and were told that we’d receive a call from someone in the Cities office regarding the dispute process. Instead, a week later on January 5th, we received a bill for about $800 and and pictures of the “damage” including a “dent,” although the pictures showed nothing that could be seen: no dent, no damage other than the loose moulding that we had explained. Neal called the person on the notice and explained that we were disputing the issue. We both felt that we were getting the rap for someone else’s damage on the car, possibly because the other person didn’t or couldn’t pay up. The Enterprise rep told us that he’d look into past damage reports and get back to us within a “few days” if they denied our dispute.

So far, so good, right? So why am I writing about it now? In March? Because on Friday, March 13th, we received a call from our insurance company that said Enterprise had filed a claim against us with them. Yes, almost three-and-a-half months later, they finally send it through, possibly hoping we’d just give up and let the insurance pay out on it. I mean, no skin off our nose, right? (Except possibly higher premiums, depending on the final cost of the “repairs.”)

I was livid. No contact for this long and then you expect me to let my insurance pay with no argument? I don’t think so. I immediately went to The Consumerist to find what info they had on Enterprise’s executives and then did some more researching on other corporate email addresses to launch an EECB (Executive Email CarpetBomb) before we left for the Cities (this time no rental car due to this exact issue) for the rest of my Christmas present (how timely!) I explained what had happened and that we’d been loyal to Enterprise since both of us had been able to rent cars, especially during before we had married and were driving back and forth to see each other and even now that we have to drive states away to see friends and family. I told them that unless the matter was actually looked into and we received some kind of contact, even if it were to tell us we were still going to have to pay for it, then we would never rent from Enterprise again (even though they have the best rates and, until now, the best customer service we’d seen).

On Monday, Neal received a call that apologized for the error and told him that we were not at fault. The person promised the information in writing as well. True to his word, we received a letter today that again apologized and explained that the damage on the car was actually from an accident four weeks before we rented the car. The damage simply hadn’t been completely repaired, for some reason, and we were the unlucky ones in the interval to take the fall. He apologized for the misunderstanding and the error and let us know that they were reviewing procedures with staff to make sure this doesn’t happen again. (Seriously, though, what a break-down in communication for this to go on so long and obviously not be our error. Why couldn’t the first guy just actually do his job and look back into it like he said he would?)

I’m pleased that this had a good outcome, and we will definitely rent from Enterprise again in the future. I’m still a bit upset with the particular local office we rented from (there are two) and the corporate office in the Cities, though, that they didn’t consider us valuable enough customers to actually do a real check on the car’s history.

Qwest: C’mon and fix these silly issues!

Enterprise: Thank you for being so prompt and for doing the right thing. It took several months to do it, but it turned out all right in the end.

Qwest. Yes, again.

Remember this: All we asked for was an address change on our old account.

So yesterday, I got an email telling me that they were “trying” to take care of the un-canceled previous account that we are still getting.  They then tell me there is nothing they can really do about the contract ending date being pushed back a year, but that they did put a “permament note” on the account that it is to really end in July 2009 and not 2010, which is a teeny, tiny step in the right direction.

But then the rep blows it by telling me that the “discount code” we had on our “previous account” (remember, again: there should be no “previous” or “current” accounts—there should only be account at old address and same account moved to our new address) is no longer valid, and they can’t put it on the new account.  Did she explain what this means?   Of course not.  But I assumed the worst and emailed her last night, asking for clarification AND explaining that we expect to be in no way penalized for the error the Qwest CS rep made, lo those many months ago.

I didn’t hear back from her again today, sooooo I emailed her again tonight.  I am sick of waiting a week or more in between responses.  She has thanked me for my patience, but I’m pretty sure it ran out as of last night.

As a side note, I actually WON something today!  I’ve not really won anything in my entire life, and I won a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com over here at Daily Deals.  Of course, I was led there by the very pretty and wonderful Mir, who runs the WantNot site over here—which has given Neal and me some pretty nice deals on many things in the past.  Go check out both of her sites and tell her how pretty she is!  (She’s also got GREAT customer service skills.  Don’t believe me?  Check this post out.)

Update:  Supposedly we won’t be charged anymore than we are supposed to be every month.  If this doesn’t happen, of course I’ll be back posting it on here!

The Qwest for service continues

As an update to this post regarding the [lack of] real customer service at Qwest, the person we’ve been talking to said that she canceled the old account and that she was working on getting our contract period back to where it was supposed to be.  Unfortunately, we learned when we yet again received two bills (one for our current address and one for our old one) that she had only deleted the amount owed on the old account and it is, indeed, still active (almost four months after we called to cancel it).  I also checked our real bill and noticed that the contract date is still set to end in 2010 instead of 2009.

So, really, what was done to help us?  At this point, nothing.  I emailed her yet again, so the ball is in their court at this point.  Let’s see if they can figure out how to actually FIX this, shall we?

Qwest, please learn to hire truthful customer service representatives!

Let’s say I call you and say, “Hey, I need to change my address.”

Do you change my address or do you give me a whole new account AND keep my old one?  Do you charge me new account fees and extend my contract period without my knowledge?  Just because I need to change my address?

If you are Qwest you do.  We have had nothing but issues with this company since we started with them (mainly just representatives lying to us about…oh, everything), and we most certainly do NOT want an extended contract, even by less than a year.

We moved to an apartment about five feet from our old one.  Literally.  Instead of changing our address (easy to do since they did it once before with no issues), they started a new contract and new account, charging us all manner of outrageous fees for doing so.  And then we got two bills for last month, one for the normal amount at our old address and one for double the amount at our current address.  We chatted online, we called.  We were told that the contract period was put back to where it should be on the new account since they couldn’t cancel it and just change our freaking address on the old one like they should have in the first place.  (No, we don’t know why and neither did they.)  We were told that the old account had a “continued in error” note placed on it and would be canceled effective immediately and not to worry about that bill.

Okee dokee.  Fine.

Until we got this month’s bill for our current address and the contract date still ends in 2010 instead of 2009.

And until a few days later we got a bill for our old address for two months’ worth of payments due immediately.

I’m done going through normal channels with this one, since Qwest customer service reps are apparently only taught to lie and not actually do anything productive or, you know, helpful.  I still have the address of the executive that I spoke with regarding my Better Business Bureau issue (from when we were lied to on a previous occasion), so I emailed her.  Let’s see if SHE can do anything about this issue.

Don’t worry: We’re not holding our breath.

Is customer service really going downhill?

I’m not going to recount all the terrible instances of customer service that we’ve had over the past few years, but I will recount one just to give some idea of what people these days are dealing with: incompetent, lazy, and ignorant (and sometimes downright manipulative and lying) customer service representatives. It’s not just me and Neal (or even just us and my friend Dena, whom I mentioned previously.) People are getting sick of outsourced and/or unhelpful CS reps getting paid to do nothing. And some people are starting to fight back.

Shortly after we married, we switched from cable to DSL internet service (couldn’t get wireless in our neighborhood at the time). We checked around and compared prices, settling on Qwest as our new service provider. We were fine with their services for a year. After our year of the introductory price, I began checking around again for better pricing. Qwest sent many adverts in the bills that begged us to switch to their higher speed service. Thus began our time of hell getting the advertised price.

The advertisement, to be fair, did disclose two-tiered pricing: One tier was for those with a bundled phone package and, according to the wording, the second, higher price was for those “without.” Yes, that is all it said. “Price for life guarantee: $36.99 for those with a qualifying phone package; $41.99 without.” Neal called and attempted to get this pricing, but we were told that it didn’t apply to us for some strange reason. They tried to get us to sign up at 49.99 instead, which wasn’t happening. We decided to let it go for the time being. The next billing period came around and we received another notice of this special “deal”. We also received a separate mailing that was a letter detailing these plans, again stating one was with a “qualifying bundle” and one was “without.” No other qualifiers.

Neal decided to call another time and see if we qualified (if not, we were changing plans and going with another provider.) Surprisingly, the person on the phone said the $41.99 would be no problem. She started setting up the plan and, not surprisingly, they were cut off. Neal called back explained the situation to the next person who answered, who also stated that the $41.99 would be no problem. They finished setting this up. Our first billing period under the new plan started. We were charged $49.99.

Neal contacted the CS department and they said there was nothing they could do. I contacted the Better Business Bureau, as Qwest is a BBB “corporate partner,” meaning that they normally try to work things out if the BBB is contacted. I was contacted by email by an “escalation” representative. Neal again called and attempted to fix this situation as did I, trying one final time to work this out the “normal” way. Finally, we had to give up (after over an hour on the phone on my part, as I put the rep through the paces a few times.) I called and emailed the escalation rep with no answer for several days. She finally called me and said that the advertisement did not apply to us. It was apparently meant for those with phone service but not bundled service. I explained to her that I had ads in hand that did not make that apparent, which lead me to believe this was false advertising. I also was upset that we had been told twice that this change was acceptable and that we were locked into a two-year contract under false pretenses. I demanded that they fix this or let us out of our contract.

She asked me to fax the information to her at their corporate offices, which I did. She also said that she would listen to the last phone conversation Neal had when the service was finally set up. (She refused to also look for the one right before that where Neal had been told the first time it was an acceptable rate and no problem to set up for us.)

A few days later, we were offered a refund for the previous month and the current month (as we’d already been through TWO billing periods while trying to work this out and were told in the first one just to pay the 41.99 and the bill would be taken care of, although we were—in reality—billed for the leftover amount and overbilled for the second month.) She also relayed that sometimes the phone representatives lie to get a sale, which leads me to believe that the phone recording also backed up our story. She said that she got sick of the company they used for customer service calls (NOT an in-house call to Qwest like you may think) and that she has heard of their lying just to get a new sale or contract extension or simply to just get a customer to quit arguing with them. Then, the customers are upset after they realize they were lied to (just as we were, quite obviously.) These admissions floored me, especially acknowledgment that Qwest execs knew that there is a reliability issue with the company they’ve outsourced their own “customer service” to.

She then offered to give me a lump sum payment on the entire amount I would be overpaying for the two years. I discussed this with Neal but both of us felt it prudent to deny this lump payment, opting instead to have the amount taken off our bill each month. We did not want to have to pay it back in the event that we should move and not be able to receive Qwest service, which is what we assumed would happen if we moved. (She assured me it wasn’t, but we definitely did not want to chance it.) We still receive a bill for the entire larger amount but the escalation rep goes in each month a few days before the bill is due and removes the extra amount. She let us know that after our two-year contract, we would go back to the higher price, as they could not guarantee this price “for life,” but would guarantee the 49.99 “for life.” I told her that was fine with us, as we only wanted what we were promised in the first place.

We’ve since noticed that they’ve changed the wording completely on their advertisements to say “$41.99 with other Qwest local phone service.” Gee, I wonder why? Perhaps just saying “without” a phone bundle didn’t cut it when it came to customer understanding of what they meant.

Companies, don’t falsely advertise your services and then get upset when a customer demands it. And don’t outsource your CS to a dishonest, untrustworthy company. If they weren’t a BBB corporate partner, we probably never would have gotten anywhere with this. As it is, I’m disgusted with their lack of customer service and the ignorance their “customer service representatives” display while on the phone.

(This is the short-story version, as I also did some letter writing to the guy in the corporate office that “wrote” the advertising letter, the so-called Vice President of Consumer Marketing. Today, however, we received an advertising booklet that shows someone else now has this title. Interesting. Neal and I also found it ironic that their slogan on this new advertising is “your connections, YOUR way” (emphasis and capitalization theirs) and that they state, “Along with unlimited choices, you get unlimited value as a Qwest customer.” Yeah, right. Such is my “unlimited value” that I can’t even get real customer service without going outside the company after at least ten tries of contacting someone that they consider within their own customer service scope.)