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Dogbert Letter Number 9
Diehard fans of the Dilbert comic strip know that all inane letters to author Scott Adams are answered by his razor-witted creation, Dogbert. Rick, Brad, and Mark thought it would be really cool if they could solicit Dogbert to do the same for them - and then realized that Dogbert is only a cartoon character. But if Dogbert were available to answer RTV email, we believe it would look something like the responses shown below:
Technical Support Follies
This story is actually a few years old. While cleaning out the dusty corners of my hard drive, I found this letter to the Customer Support department at Qwest and wondered why I had never posted it with the Dogbert letters. The oversight has now been remedied.
I will understand if you don't want to read through the entire chronology of my phone-support run-around. But after reading my letter to Qwest Customer Support, you may want to skip to the bottom to find out how I got several years of Qwest DSL service for free, and how Qwest refused to let me pay for it.
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April 2, 2002 7:37 p.m.
Dear Mr. Nacchio,
I am writing to you from my office computer because the Internet access to my home computer has been disconnected. I am living proof that, while lightning may not strike repeatedly in the same spot, corporate ineptitude seems to seek out a familiar target. I have documented the saga of my relationship with Qwest as it relates to my DSL service, and attached it below. If you have the time, please take a moment to read it. You will be utterly amazed.
Over the last fifty-seven days I have encountered a handful of cheerful, enthusiastic, innovative, and entrepreneurial Customer Service and Technical Support personnel. They have been a delight when I find them. Unfortunately, they seem to be a scarce oasis in an arid desert of unpleasant, uninspired, unmotivated, and unempowered oafs. They have made an eight-week career out of stretching my patience. It has become a contest of endurance, but at this point I am afraid the oafs are winning.
To summarize, events totally outside of my control have launched me into a Twilight Zone of phone support miasma that, at this moment, shows no immediate sign of clearing. There is a voice screaming in the back of my head, pleading that I break all ties with Qwest and find somewhere, anywhere, another portal to the Internet. But there remains in me a naive determination to discover if it can be true that a corporate monolith such as Qwest can both achieve technological superiority and yet also completely lose the ability to satisfy a customer.
The problems with your Customer Service Departments go deeper than the collective apathy of the random employee sample I happened to draw. Among the various support organizations I encountered, no two computer systems appear to be linked together. A case number assigned from one department cannot be accessed by any other support group, and customer or trouble call information entered into one system resides in that system only. Your employees, even when attempting to be helpful, seem to lack the proper training or resources to know exactly which department within Qwest can or should resolve the issue. This results in a series of transfers to other departments that are totally unable give support. And believe it or not, the phone connectivity between departments appears to be archaic. Many departments claimed they had no way to connect me with the next department and required me to hang up and redial — as a result all continuity within the call for service is completely lost.
I have worked inside major corporations long enough to know that nearly all transactions happen seamlessly, but that when the exception happens all attempts to fix it only result in further breakage. However, you need to know that in this case it is also the process that is broken. This comedy of errors has become self-propagating, and there appears to be no employable method to bring an end to its demon spawn.
Regards, Dogbert.
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DSL Account Chronology
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November 2000
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Ordered Qwest DSL service.
I was told that Qwest was not an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and I needed to select an independent ISP. I selected Northlink for their favorable rates.
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January 2001
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Qwest DSL service activated.
For over a full year, I was a happy, satisfied Qwest DSL customer
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June 2001
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Northlink was acquired by CommSpeed.
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February 06, 2002
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I received a letter from CommSpeed explaining that they would no longer be providing Internet access via Qwest DSL lines. The letter included a URL and a phone number to contact Qwest to arrange transfer to a new DSL. This action needed to be completed by February 28th, and my CommSpeed account would be deactivated on March 1st.
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February 06, 2002
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I accessed the Qwest web site to change ISP's. The information attached to my phone number was apparently incorrect, as it informed me that:
Your prefix is not eligible for DSL service.
I knew that wasn't right.
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February 07, 2002
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Went to the web site again, convinced I must have done something wrong. Same result. Called the phone number only to learn the business office was closed for the day.
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February 07 through 28
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Called Qwest repeatedly over this three-week period. I was frequently told that I was not eligible for DSL service because DSL was not available in my area — despite the fact that I had been using the service for over a year.
(It was like reading your own obituary in the newspaper and having the newsdesk refuse to discuss a retraction because, according to the paper, you are dead...)
Typically, I was told that whichever Customer Service Representative I was speaking to was not capable of addressing the problem, and I was either transferred or given another number to call. If I was transferred I was frequently disconnected. If I did get through, I was invariably informed that the Customer Service Representative I was speaking to was not capable of addressing the problem, and I was either transferred or given another number to call. If I followed this rabbit trail long enough, I would ultimately be directed to the number I had originally dialed before my first transfer.
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March 1, 2002
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The deadline for choosing a new ISP had past, and I was now without an Internet Service Provider.
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March 02, 2002
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Desperate for someone who would offer some assistance, I once again began calling Qwest at 8:00 a.m. I spent an entire day on the telephone being subjected to the same inconceivable runaround described above. Some of the Customer Service Representatives and Technical Support personnel were sympathetic but either unable or unwilling to investigate long enough to discover a solution. Some were apathetic. Some were downright belligerent. None were helpful.
At about 4:00 p.m. I was transferred to a Sales Representative in Denver named Latisha. She politely told me that she would not be able to resolve my problem and offered to transfer me to another number. I asked her to give the number in case I was disconnected — it turned out to be a number I had called several times already. Latisha must have decided that I had been through enough hassle, because she stayed on the line with me through several subsequent transfers and, unwilling to accept a brush-off from those she spoke to, eventually found a Technical Support person (named Buzz, I kid you not) who was willing and able to help. Together Latisha and Buzz signed me up as a Qwest.net customer, and I was told I would be online with my new ISP as of March 08.
I don't really know to this day what it was that Buzz did to restore m account. I remember hearing a lot of furtive typing and cursing under his breath, then the announcement that all was fixed. I was so thankful to Latisha for her help that I bought a cell phone and a service plan from her — neither of which I really needed....
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March 08, 2002
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Still without service, and still without the Welcome Package I was promised on March 02, I called the Qwest.net Technical Support Line. Since my DSL line was already active, I easily and quickly obtained my User ID and set up the proper passwords. I was up and running on Qwest.net in a matter of minutes.
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From March 08, 2002 until April 1, 2002
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I was a happy, satisfied Qwest DSL and Qwest.net customer.
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March 18, 2002
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Heres where it gets really frustrating:
According to your records, two work orders were placed against my account. One was to disconnect me from Qwest.net and Qwest DSL. The other was to restore my Qwest DSL and establish Northlink as my ISP. Remember, Northlink no longer exists, and its new parent, CommSpeed, no longer provides Internet access via Qwest DSL lines.
Neither work order was initiated by me.
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March 27, 2002
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UPS delivered a new DSL Quick Kit needed for DSL installation. I called the phone numbers included in the kit to inform Qwest that I did not require DSL installation as it was already in perfect working order. I also did not appreciate being billed $161.46 for the modem I did not need and did not order.
Repeatedly, I was told that whichever Customer Service Representative I was speaking to was not capable of addressing the problem, and I was either transferred or given another number to call. If I was transferred I was disconnected. If I did get through, I was invariably informed that the Customer Service Representative I was speaking to was not capable of addressing the problem, and I was either transferred or given another number to call. I was ultimately directed to the number I had originally dialed before my first transfer. The Technical Support person must have decided that I had been through enough hassle, because she found someone who could explain to her how to issue a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) number.
I then called the billing office to ask that the charge be removed from my bill, and was informed that this could not be done until the merchandise is received back. I find this troubling, since no one at Qwest waited for me to order the merchandise before it was shipped and billed. I was assured that the credit would be processed as soon as the item was received.
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March 28, 2002
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Shipped modem back to Qwest using the enclosed shipping label. The box is prominently marked on every side with the RMA number.
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April 01, 2002
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My Qwest DSL service was disconnected.
That evening I spent over 90 minutes on the phone with various Qwest personnel at various phone numbers. Finally I was told by a Technical Support person about the mysterious work orders, that they were obviously made in error, but there was nothing that he could do to fix the problem because they didn't have an order number. But if I called Customer Services in the morning and obtained a DSL Starter Pack Order number, I could then call right back and get my DSL line back up.
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April 02, 2002
7:00am
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Called Customer Services and obtained a DSL Starter Pack Order number.
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7:05am
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Called Technical Support. After holding for 30 minutes, was informed that nothing could be done to reinstate my account even with a DSL Starter Pack Order number because the status of my DSL account was inactive. I had to call the Customer Care Center for a status change.
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9:00am
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Called the Customer Care Center but was told that they could not do a status change. To their credit, they did not send me off into the abyss, but kept me on the line while they contacted someone else who could fix the problem.
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10:05am
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After waiting for over an hour, a Technical Support person joined us on the line to inform me that my DSL had been disconnected and that the mysterious work orders were a mistake. And, he said, it would take five days to get it reinstalled.
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10:06am
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UPS delivers the returned modem to the Qwest facility in Pueblo, CO per the tracking information available on the UPS web site.
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5:39pm
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I called the billing office to ask if a credit had been issued to my account for the returned modem. The billing analyst candidly admitted that 'the right hand does not know what the left is doing". I was transferred to a Technical Support number, where they politely informed me that they had no visibility to billing information. They directed me back to the number I called in the first place.
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5:43pm
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I called the billing office back, again to ask if credit had been issued to my account for the returned modem. I was transferred yet again, this time to a company known as Innotrac, as this is apparently the company that handles returns.
It had not. I was told that it will take up to two billing cycles for the credit to appear on my bill. Two billing cycles for equipment I didnt order! Based on my experience so far, I have no confidence that this particular transaction will be executed properly.
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7:17pm
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I am no longer a happy Qwest DSL and Qwest.net customer.
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Not surprisingly, I never heard from Mr. Nacchio or anyone else from the Qwest Customer Service department.
But eventually the billing was reversed and I became satisfied with my Qwest service one again. So satisfied, in fact, that I tried to expand my service when a better DSL package came along. I accessed the Qwest web site to sign up for a new plan. Guess what? The web site informed me that:
My prefix was not eligible for DSL service. Too familiar.
I called technical support, who told me, as before, that I was not eligible for DSL service because DSL was not available in my area. I explained to him that I had been a Qwest DSL customer for years, and he listened patiently to my story — but from the condscending tone of his voice, it was obvious that he thought I was an idiot.
In order to prove my point, I asked if he had access to my billing records, which I knew would prove beyond all doubt that I was a paying customer. He did, and he pulled up my payment history — which told him that I had not been paying for DSL as part of my monthly service!
At that point he started treating me like I was one of those homeless guys with Tourette's Syndrome who follows you down down the street yelling obscenities at your back. So I hung up.
I dug out my old phone bills, and sure enough, I hadn't paid for DSL service since March 2002. That's the month that techno-hacker Buzz worked his cyber-magic to reconnect me to DSL and Qwest.net. He apparently had the wherewithal to take care of the technical side of the problem, but never set me back up with the billing department. And I had never noticed that DSL charges had fallen out of my monthly billing because I had signed up for a cell phone at that same time.
Perhaps most people would happily accept free DSL without thinking twice about it, but I couldn't do it. I tried unsuccessfully to get Qwest to expand my service plan and I would gladly pay them for their product. They refused to believe that I really was a DSL customer.
Now I am a happy customer of Cox Cable, and Qwest is nothing but a sour memory.
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