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COMMON GROUND - 09/17/2008
(by Anita Yarossi - OpEd Columnist - September 17, 2008)
No one listens
Last Tuesday, in the early part of the evening, a massive white oak tree fell across our road from my neighbor’s front yard into the front yard across the street. Fortunately, no one was hurt and there was no damage to the home or car parked in the driveway. Before dark, the tree was cleared out of the street by the borough. However, the tree had brought down all of the power, cable and phone lines across the street, leaving all of us without power or service.
The power company came and restored power by about 2 in the morning. The cable company came and restored cable by mid-day. However, the phone company was nowhere to be found. I’d reported the phone lines down very early on Wednesday morning and was told that there was a lot of work in the area and that I might not expect them to restore service until some time on Friday. I waited until Friday and called again. The call takes about a minimum of 10 minutes to get through to the proper person and the repeated recitation of my phone number, account number and the verification of our name and address, the account number again and an identification number. Each time I explained about the tree pulling the lines down. Each time they said a technician would be here by Friday evening at the latest.
On Saturday morning, I called again – same recitation but this time they sent me to another department that is supposed to expedite service. I verified myself and explained the situation again and then they told me that someone had in fact come out on Friday afternoon and had assessed that there was a downed phone cable. However, the customer service person explained, that repair person was not equipped to handle a downed cable and the job order was then switched over to the technicians who could handle that kind of a job, but…they usually don’t work on the weekends!
At this point I politely told the person on the other end of the phone that they got a big fat zero in customer service and that if in fact the service were not restored on Monday, they would lose us as customers after 25 years. I guess AT&T could care less about us. But after all they are “The Phone Company” and they should be able to listen to a customer who tells them that their phone lines have been knocked down into the street by a fallen tree. They should also be able to send the right technicians out with the right equipment to do the job properly in the first place. They should definitely spend less time verifying who a customer is and more time listening to reason that customer is calling.
As I submit this column my phone service has been restored. I am thinking now about the much broader picture of the hurricane and flood damaged areas of our country where the infrastructure has been destroyed and many people will be without power, cable and phone service for weeks to come. At this time cell phones come in as lifesavers. I hope someone is listening carefully to all of the people who have had these serious losses.
| Comments (1) |
On October 10, 2008 Anthony said:
Just another chapter in the fall of "Ma BELL". I changed over to the cable's triple play just over a year ago because when is was raining my dial-up ran as slow as 9 kb and the static on my phone line made a simple phone conversations impossible. |
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