Customer Services Rants
Recently I moved to my new apartment. As a part of this process I had to talk to bunch of customer representative to Start/End utility services. My experience has mostly been positive with most of them. But still some of them were less than pleasant.
WOW Cable and Internet Service
I had to call WOW Internet Service. I placed few calls with them to discontinue service as well as to dispatch their rental model to designated service area. It doesn't really take too much time to talk to their customer care agent. You will be asked for your phone number and last 4 digits of SSN. Once they identify you, you can talk to them about an issues or situation. They are quite prompt in response and I never had to wait more than 10 minutes and 30 minutes altogether for problem resolution.
AEP Ohio
I had to call AEP Ohio to disconnect my previous connection. There is not too much I had to do as most of their services are provided online. I just had to let them know about the date to stop connection and forwarding address where they would mail me my Letter of Credit. It's quite simple.
Though I am not against calling customer care service, it's quite time consuming to select options and wait in the never ending line until your number shows un.
Columbia Gas Service
I also had to call Columbia Gas service to setup new connection in my new apartment. They have quite a novel approach to deal with long call lines. If line is too long (Usually > 30 minutes, you can specify your full name and call back number) and they will give you a call when your number comes up. It's pretty simple and you do not lose your place in the line even if you hang up as long as you leave your contact information to them. It was quick affair anyways, took only 5 minutes for documents verification and representative provided me with my new account number.
I will need this account number to present to my landlord in order to get keys to apartment. Whoaaa
At&T U-Verse Internet connection
Finally, I had to make call to AT&T customer service to setup new AT&T U-Verse Connection. My bad that I had to call multiple times to setup different installation dates. For some reason couple of my calls got disconnected during conversation (Which is kind of ironic, but nothing against AT&T and I still love them). For one of the customer care representatives he had very thick accent and I could not understand a word. (To be fair my accent is bad too, but still people understand when I say something twice or at the most thrice and sometimes when they do not understand even after that, I give up.). I tried understanding the accent for a minute and then hanged up. (Thank god. That was one big nightmare). I made another call to same number. I had to wait for another 20 minutes but that was fair enough compared to what I had to deal with earlier.
It's annoying and paradoxical that while your are waiting in the line, they keep telling you that you're important to them and you have less than 3 minutes waiting in the line while there are times when I hear it repeatedly and still have to wait for almost 30 minutes
Then customer agent showed up, he took my order number, last 4 digits of SSN, verification phone number and security code.
Jeez, that is too much to ask for. Can't you confirm with minimal information possible? I had to call them 3 times in a row and each time I was asked all this information. I understand that it is for my own acocunt safety, but in my opinion, it's overkill to ask all this information.
Anyhow, my problem got solved. I shifted an installation date a week early and it was all good.
Sometimes AT&T customer service agents are talkative and they can rant on any common topic. It's not really uncommon for me to find someone on other end of phone line and keep talking to them for another 30 minutes even after my issue is fixed. (I do not despise it, it's quite fun and interesting conversation. I feel lucky when I find myself in one of those situations)
