Not wanting to miss the Superbowl 2018, I set CenturyLink Prism TV to record the event. It did. Mostly.
The last 2:21 of the game was not recorded.
I called CenturyLink to complain and was given astute advice: schedule to record again. Gee, wonder why I didn’t think of that.
The depth of CenturyLink ineptitude never ceases to amaze me.
The City of Seattle uses a service request system from Motorola Solutions.
The form more often than not is more frustrating than it is worth.
When I called the Customer Service Bureau to learn who in the City is in charge of configuring this software as a service they did not know. Someone in the office would need to research it.
This video illustrates one example of frustration.
I spent nearly an hour in a Lowe’s store and more hours on the phone in an attempt to get Lowe’s to honor the Replacement Plan we purchased for the dehumidifier we purchased at the same time. The device has malfunctioned. No one in Lowe’s could find record of the replacement plan purchase even though I presented the original paperwork provided by Lowe’s at time of purchase/pickup. See image with this post. This led to the staff calling someone and yet more inability to find the replacement plan purchase in the Lowe’s system.
Lowe’s claims it needs the reference number for the replacement plan. If that is true, then why didn’t Lowe’s put the replacement plan number on the paperwork? On the line item for the replacement plan is this word: “Reference #:”. Why didn’t Lowe’s put the number on their own paperwork? Demand it, but not provide it, is a scam recipe.
As far as I’m concerned at this moment, Lowe’s is refusing to honor the plan even though Lowe’s was provided its own original paperwork by throwing up some mysterious roadblock of not being able to find a record of the purchase even though the store’s original paperwork was presented.
Bottom line: We did not buy the replacement plan to:
a) be swindled
b) waste a huge amount of time over some mysterious inability to find a purchase in the store’s own system.
One would think a store manager would err on the side of customer service and make things happen — when presented with actual, original evidence from the store itself. Instead, Lowe’s has created a system to constructively refuse to honor a purchase by creating a huge hassle for the customer, in part withholding at time of purchase information later required.
I helped an attorney set up VoIP phone service in Seattle and Pacific Beach. As a part of this setup, I recommended CenturyLink DSL in Pacific Beach because of the lag time on satellite internet connections.
The customer decided to upgrade from DSL to bonded DSL (which is essentially two DSL lines working as one for more bandwidth).
The attorney scheduled an appointment for Oct 9, 2027 to upgrade his DSL service to bonded DSL. The appointment was set up by a support person in Wisconsin. CenturyLink did not show up for the appointment. There was no notice that CL would not show up. The attorney (on staff at a separate employer) lost basically a day of paid work waiting for CL.
The attorney’s attempts to move things along have produced nothing, eg:
— Emails to the original person in Wisconsin. That person responded twice by email saying he was too busy and now no emails or phone calls from this support person.
— Two phone messages left for the local technician. No response.
— I suggested he try calling a contact I had in Salt Lake City. That contact told the attorney that he (support person) was not in the legacy department but would try to get someone to get in touch with the attorney. Despite all this, the attorney has not gotten any response from anyone.
I have real qualms bringing customers to a company when customers are treated this way
Ignoring a customer like this is pathetic, to the say the least. This kind of treatment reinforces the underlying perception that if corporations have your money, there is no problem, whether or not there is support or service. For a time I thought CenturyLink was getting their act together, in part because of the new fiber service, which I have and like — 1 gig synchronous. However, treating a customer like they are treating the attorney is simply appalling and rivals the worst support I have had with Comcast.
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Update: 2017-10-27
According to CenturyLink, the appointment for bonded DSL was removed upstream from the local technician’s appointments. Apparently VDSL is being rolled out to replace DSL and bonded DSL. (When? CenturyLink doesn’t know.) Unfortunately, NO ONE in CenturyLink ever thought to let the customer know what was going on, allowing him to waste time waiting for a no-show appointment and communicating with CenturyLink without response. (The response came from someone other than the customer writing a lot of emails to CenturyLink.) One might think a communications company would know how to communicate. Guess not.