Customer “Service”

Early on in my career, I took a job that was about a four-hour commute away from my home so I rented a flat near the office and split my time between living there midweek and going home at the weekends.

The rent on my flat didn’t include utilities or Internet, so I took out a second landline and broadband contract with the same ISP that provided my services at home and things went, if not well, at least without any incident worth speaking about until I ended my lease.

I phoned my ISP and very specifically told them that I want to keep my home contract but end the contract at my flat because I was moving out. I was assured that this would be no problem. I emphasised very clearly that it was the service at my flat and only at my flat that was to stop and that the service at my main address should continue.

You can guess what happened next. Yep, they cancelled the service at my main address instead of at the flat. This led to the following conversation with one of their alleged customer service representatives after I explained what happened.

Customer Service: “I’m sorry to hear that there has been a mistake on your account, [My Name]. I will arrange for the service to be reconnected for you. That should be done in two weeks.”

Me: “Pardon me, two weeks? I want it reconnected now.”

Customer Service: “I’m sorry, [My Name], but that isn’t possible.”

Me: “Why not? You disconnected it remotely. Surely, you can reestablish it remotely? What is it that you need to do that is going to take you two weeks to sort out?”

Customer Service: “Unfortunately, whilst we can disconnect your service remotely, a site visit is needed to reestablish it. There are other customers waiting, so our first available appointment is in two weeks.”

Me: “Excuse me? This was your mistake. You cut off service at the wrong location! Surely you can expedite this?”

Customer Service: “No, we can’t.”

Me: “What do you mean, ‘you can’t’?”

Customer Service: “We don’t expedite site visits under any circumstances. It just isn’t a service we offer.”

Me: “Not even to fix your own mistakes?”

Customer Service: “No. However, as a gesture of goodwill, we will refund you for the duration of your outage.”

Me: “That’s not goodwill! That’s you not charging me for a service you aren’t providing. As far as I am concerned, that was never in question.”

I eventually threatened to leave their service and cancel my mobile phone contracts, as well, but unfortunately, I found that I would still need to wait two weeks for a new connection with any other ISPs and that the price I was paying with my existing (lack of) service provider was the most competitively priced.

On the plus side, the manager did give me additional compensation off my bill and there haven’t been any major screw-ups since.