30 July 2008

MSN - You Suck!

Subtitled: Help me find a new broadband service!

BTW, LinkSys and Microsoft, I'm not too happy with you either. Warning, customer service rant below.

#pragma BeginRant [redundant]
The problem began when I decided to move the DSL modem & Router from one side of the room to the other. Everything worked fine before, but post-move no internet connection through the router. The net worked when bypassing the router and other systems were visible on the network. So individually, the net service and the router functions seemed to work, but not together.

We're on Qwest/MSN today and I'm not at all happy with their service. The call starts with a robot playing 20 questions. When finally plugged into a human being the call was answered with an accent that says "Thank you for calling India. Please hold a moment while I find my place in the script". And you just know this isn't going to end well.

I walked through the symptoms with "Bojo" and she pronounced the problem was not their problem and instead I should call LinkSys. Since I opened the call with this as a given, I was annoyed. I finally asked Bojo "Are you saying you have absolutely no information on how to set up a router with your service?" She said "yes". That is a bald face lie since it's on their website.
I pressed on with her "supervisor" who of course follows the same script complete with apologies but no actual solutions.

Bottom line here, I've never been happy with MSN (we're better than AOL) since signing up and I'd love to find a "real service". Any suggestions?

The LinkSys call wasn't much better. Second clue the call was answered in the far east (after the accent) was his complete acceptance of a well known cartoon character pseudonym as my name (hook, line & sinker!). Other info he asked about was the model & serial number of the router and when did I buy it. He went off to talk it over with his supervisor only to return to say (in effect) No Tech Support for you. But then went on to say "but for $29.99*, we can pass this over to advanced tech support and they can make it work like new". I called BS on him... if it was working fine 5 minutes ago and now it's not... the problem is not something that needs a firmware update to fix. That was it, no suggestion that help might be available on their website, just $29.99 please.

At that point my motivation switched to "how much of their time money and resources can I waste?" That cost them several more minutes of rant on the poor state of customer service all (and corresponding groveling apologies that solve nothing) and how the actual cost of poor customer service extends far beyond the $40 spent on this device, damaged reputations and resulting effect in terms future products not bought, and stocks not invested in.

The final insult is that the root cause likely resides with Microsoft's Windows Firewall preventing access.

So QWEST, LinkSys, and Microsoft - You're all on my pooplist**. While you saved money in the short term by terminating my service calls without solving my problem. In the long run you've hurt yourselves. I will permanently discount the future value of your products based on the poor customer service and absolutely never invest a so much as a plugged nickel in any company that won't stand behind their products.

#pragma EndRant

* IIRC, the router only cost $39.98 to begin with so in effect they wanted me to buy it again.
** While I have a vocabulary to keep up with the best sailors (heck I was one), I choose to keep it clean here.

1 comment:

BobG said...

I have done tech support in the IT industry, and your case is not unusual. The goal at most call centers revolves around getting rid of the customer, whether you can help them or not. Many of them get paid on a per-customer basis, so the more callers they can "process" per day, the more money they make. I was one of the techs that was repeatedly getting into trouble with different clients because I actually did my job, which was to help customers.