Category: TeleComm

A few weeks ago a drunk driver nearly hit me head on. I called 911 on my Fi phone and tracked the driver for 9 miles until state patrol finally busted him. Second arrest after a previous conviction. 5 days in jail. That was good.

In order to help document what happened when (possibly for court) , I wanted to know when I dialed 911.

Guess what? Not in the call log or history on the Fi phone.

Guess what? Google Fi support has been playing games with me, first telling me they don’t have any record of 911 calls.

We all know this is nonsense. Google, the great data collector does not have this? Hard to believe.

So, the trouble ticket I’ve had open for 2-3 weeks finally reported this:

I [google rep] have good news! We have a team of Engineers requesting specific dates of your request for your 911 call logs (From / To).

What’s wrong with this?

1. I didn’t request the dates I made calls to 911. I provided the date and wanted to know the time.

2. This is as far as they got in 2-3 weeks with this request?

3. When did anyone every get a call from 911?

My recommendation based on this experience: if you need to dial 911 and may need to go back for the time, forget about Google. Simply not trustworthy.

You would think that a communications company like CenturyLink would know how to communicate. Apparently, this is not the case.

An email arrived to an organization: “Subscription Renewal Notice – 5 days”. This subscription was for “Core Service Pack – Microsoft Office 365 from CenturyLink”.

My understanding from previous phone calls was that this subscription was free. However, the email notice contained this language: “Please do not send any credit card information to us via email”.

Wanting to get more details about this notice and whether there was a charge, I called the number in the notice:

Phone: +1 877 7203429
URL: https://www.centurylink.com/apps

Here’s what I heard from 1 877 7203429:

Thank you for calling CenturyLink Business Applications.
For sales or to add a new CenturyLink business application, press 1
For billing and account inquiries, press 2
For technical support, press 3

Two times I pressed 2 for billing and account inquiries.

1.
The first time I was told I had reached the wrong department. The representative acknowledged a problem with call routing.

2.
The second time I was told I needed to be transferred to billing. What? I had pressed 2 for billing. Then the representative said I had reached general business sales, not apps billing.

On a 3rd call I was told the fee for the subscription was $19.95 per month. On a 4th call I was told there was no charge. And the representative, upon request, sent an email to put in writing that there was no charge.

CenturyLink needs help routing calls to the right place and needs help to get employees to be consistent in understanding its services and billing.