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?
A few times. Usually, like many others, I let the rep know that it’s not their fault but I’m angry and try to escalate to someone who has the authority to assist. Three times I went over the line. I’m going to leave out a lot of details on the ISP ones because one would be far too long and the other could potentially out some of the parties involved. It helped in every case, and I genuinely feel bad about one because I could have gotten someone fired.
Once an HP rep stonewalled me for hours and I baited him into saying something fucked up on a recorded line. I hung up, called back, repeated what the rep said, informed them that it was recorded, and asked for a supervisor. I got one immediately and got my problem solved. I’m not proud of the way I handled it but I was young and not thinking about how my actions might affect others.
Another time was a national ISP. Every single time I called all the supervisors were in a meeting (yeah, right). My service worked almost 2 out of every 3 days and I wasn’t getting nearly the speeds I was paying for. I got on with a rep who told me about yet another supervisor meeting. So I said I’ll hold. I told him that I had vacation time and no Internet so I had nothing else to do but fuck up his call time statistics and tell dirty jokes. In those days at that call center they weren’t allowed to hang up unless you were straight up abusive. He blinked before I did because he was supposed to have already gotten off work and I was in the middle of telling bad limericks. So I got a supervisor and they actually got me fixed up the next day.
The last time was a different (local this time) ISP. I had requested specific times for repair because I was working nights and had been without Internet for weeks. I was told that was no problem. But they repeatedly showed up in the middle of the day (supposedly, I never heard from them so they weren’t ringing the doorbell but every time I called they claimed to have come out and no one was home) and telling me it’s my fault for being asleep and never letting me talk to anyone except for the receptionist. So I called one morning insisting I needed to talk to someone else because it had been weeks and she wouldn’t put me through so I let out a string of curse words and the supervisor interrupted me telling me not to talk to their employees like that. I told her about all the trouble I’ve had and that since she was there and had the receptionist lie to me about her being busy that I didn’t give the slightest shit what she thought. I told her that I was coming off nights and unless she wanted me up there every day I had off explaining to anyone in a suit walking in exactly how I was treated and that she was having her employees lie for her she’d have someone out that evening who would ring the doorbell and fix my shit.
It turned out that the issue was with their connection at the box on the outside of my apartment building so they should have been able to fix it without my input at all. No one bothered to fucking check. I seriously don’t think anyone came out but I can’t prove that.