Before you get your pitchfork and torch to go raid Qwest headquarters have a listen to my account of dealing with mine, yours and everyone’s favorite DSL provider at least here in the northwest.
Around 3 weeks ago on a very rainy Saturday I walked into a T-Mobile store(yes you can make fun of me) to get the latest greatest VOIP idea since well VOIP(yes there is more services out there. Stay with me on this.) I received a @home router much like my friend Joe Levi. It was a process and about 4 hours later I emerged from the store with all my gear and a shove it to Qwest and all the high priced land line costs.
T-Mobile told me it would take 10 days to port the phone number I like(I know you all want it. Sorry!) so days turned into well days. All the sudden I had tons of people calling my new line that had not been hooked up yet(lazy me). This is where I ran to home depot and grabbed 100 feet of RG6 cable and ran an entirely new line to my current DSL line(cause it uses a phone line still). This all happened on a Saturday(October 11th to be exact) I was amazed by how clear the T-Mobile VOIP was.
I enjoyed the service for about 3 days until around 8pm on Tuesday October 14th my DSL died. The reason I knew this was I was in the middle of dinner and my mother in law(she is the coolest mother in law) calls on my cell phone telling me the phone was going straight to voicemail. So I calmly go down to my Server/Router closet to find what is the matter with the modem. I look up and the Internet light has gone dark. So I call my ISP and they tell me Qwest cannot talk to the ISP the “Cell was down”. I think of myself pretty communications savvy but have no idea what the crap a cell is? I gear up and call Qwest technical support and go through the motions 3 times (got hung up on twice) till I finally get a manager on the phone. I work with him and 3rd tier support until around 1 am Wednesday. Where I am informed I need to call the “business office” at 8am to see if they can push buttons.
Wednesday comes about and I call the “business office” and I am told I was shutoff due to non payment. I was 11 days late (wow that is for another blog post) so I pay up and ask when will this be resolved. I am told after 5pm. I am excited but angered a little. It gets to about 6pm and my DSL is still not on. In fact the DSL light mocks me by just flashing. I call Qwest support again and talk to a manager that says we cannot find a turn on notice in the notes and until they do they cannot do anything. I lose my patience and hangup.
Thursday morning I call the business office and say I want all but my DSL and DirectTV turned off immediately. The nice but somewhat dim witted Customer service person deletes my account and creates an new account and tells me that my service will not be active until Tuesday the 21st of October. I immediately lose my patience. I asked for the manager and I want a Rush on this. The manager then tells me there is no such thing and I will have to be patient. Grrr… What Can I do they have me hostage.
Tuesday morning comes and I call Qwest to make sure the DSL line will be up. I am assured that it will be up at 5pm (yeah right). I am hopeful and doubtful. So 7pm comes along and DSL is still toast. I spend the next 4 hours on the phone with 3rd tier support trying to resolve the issue until they schedule me a tech the next morning? Sweet finally someone to fix my issue.
Wednesday morning 8am waiting for tech and 9am comes and I am beyond pissed and frustrated. I call tech support and get the manager again on the phone to which I am told I do not have an appointment until Thursday at 8am to which I tell the manager no he will be here in 15 minutes. He agrees. 30 minutes later I am insured a tech will be at my house in a few minutes. I ask to be transferred to billing and the billing supervisor(steve) and I have a one sided(my side) scream fest about who is paying for my bill. I ask if Qwest has any loyalty to any to its customers? I was answered “Qwest does not have any more loyalty to existing customers than it has to new customers.” This was told to me three times. I ended up hanging up frustrated and very very pissed off.
I then email my customer advocate friend Joe Levi to which I was told he called the CEO of Qwest (I have the number if you need it) to explain the issue and that he would be publishing my complaint on a large web news site he publishes for. I was told that the PR director for Qwest called and found out the issues and cleared up all confusion. To him I have to thank.
It seems that when I got my @home from T-Mobile the order to cancel my phone service was not only sent out as just phone service but “All Services”. I love to eat crow(not really). So make sure just the phone service is cancelled/ported and not your DSL service that T-Mobile does not provide is not switched off.
I would like to thank Joe Levi as well as the CEO and PR director for Qwest communications. I hope steve the billing manager can forgive me for my tirade.
