Phone Company
I started a new job recently and needed to get a second phone line at home. I could have always used one but got away without it because I wasn’t home much and had a cell phone. But now I have the option of working out of my home office more so I had to do it. Since it is a backup line, I decided to use voice over internet protocol, or VOIP. I didn’t go with Vonage and used a smaller company called SunRocket. So far so good.
One of the cool things about SunRocket, and maybe Vonage offers the same, is that I could get a second number with any area code, that will ring on my phone when someone else calls it. So, for example, I could get a local number for my parents in Atlanta so they can call that number (which is our house) and use a local number for them, thus avoiding long distance charges. It turns out I am having a hard time finding someone who wants it because my parents and Patti’s parents have unlimited long distance.
So that got me thinking about how my regular land line phone service was set up. I was pretty sure I didn’t have unlimited long distance, so I got on the horn, using my VoIP, and called those bastards at Comcast, my local and long distance phone company. It turns out I did not indeed have unlimited and was paying a little more each month than their unlimited plan. Not a huge deal and not the point of this story. But on that note, I, thinking like a consumer in a perfect world, would have thought that Comcast, or Verizon, or whoever, would have a program that tracks calling behavior and over a, let’s say 6 month period, offer a better plan based on calling behavior. This magical system would have recommended I switch my plan because there was a way to save me money. A Pollyanna approach, yes. After all they have to make money and I was more profitable on their old plan.
Anyway, since the phone company was on my mind, I realized I wanted to make a change to what shows up in the phone directory, either online or print. I have no problem publishing my name but wanted to be called High Speed Dave instead of David Dobrindt. So I called 1-800-comcast, entered my phone number since I was on a cell phone, chose to speak in English, almost killed myself driving because I had to push a crazy sequence of numbers to be put on hold for the digital phone customer service “associate”, then waited in traffic and on hold, gave the woman my number again, answered some pretty tough security questions including the maiden name of the street where my first pet was born, and then asked her for the change. She was nice enough and said she could do it no problem, and there would be a 5 dollar fee. I said, in a really nice voice, “you are going to charge me 5 dollars to make this simple change”, which she replied “yes”. I made a soft comment about loving utilities, which I am not sure Comcast is a utility because I have choice. And they are a private, very much FOR-profit company. I mean, I know they are like a utility but I don’t think they are in the truest definition of the word, which implies a “public” service.
So she said she would put me on hold for a minute, came back, and said the change would take place in two days. She also said
“And I waived the 5 dollar change fee.”
I said “Why?”
She said “Because you didn’t get angry when I told you about it.”
So the moral of this story? Customer services at phone companies is inconsistent.
Just joking. The moral of this story? You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. In other words, you can win people to your side more easily by gentle persuasion and flattery than by hostile confrontation. Something I am not comfortable with.