Thank You Richard From Little Rock

So I recently canceled my land line. And it was a frustrating trip full of domestic and foreign imbeciles to get from A to B. I understand now the stories of people getting stuck in a phone maze and being in customer support hell. Let me set the table for you, much like everyone else I have a landline telephone. And it was very nice to have, the only problem was I hadn't really used it in a few years. Well, other than to have hooked up to my Dish Network receiver. And that's about it. I kept thinking to myself, "self, you just need to get rid of that and save some money." I have recently been using my cell phone more than my landline and it just made sense to cut the cord. The only people who would be upset about this would be my local newspaper who would call at least five times a week with a robot call about subscriptions and the Original Gutter Company. Hell, they used to call all the time even when I lived in an apartment. I wanted to keep them on the phone some time and give them all my information and then have them come out for the free estimate. That would have been great to see them come out and realize it was an apartment complex. But I didn't because I really didn't want to waste that much time on the phone with them. So back to canceling my land line with ATT. And I figured while I was doing that I'd go ahead and increase my DSL service to the fastest speed they offered. I don't use my landline but I use my internet all the time so that made sense to to do. On paper it seemed like an easy enough thing to do, turn one off and bump up the other. Done. So one Wednesday afternoon I called. That was the end of the easy part. If I had any idea of how much of a clusterfuck this was all going to turn into I may not have even tried. I called, talked to the robot voice. Oh my God, how I hate those robot voiced phone mazes. I think they're technically called VRS, voice response systems. What they should be called is the seventh level of hell. First off, you sound like a retard when you're talking to them and half the time the robot voice on the other end can't understand what you're saying. Good God people, if you're going to use some kind of technology like that at least use one that works. Those all suck and put you in a worse mood than you were when you were calling in the first place. As bad as they are, at least they speak English. More on that later. So I got through the robot voice phone maze and was actually going to be allowed to talk to a person. As I've outlined before, I'm not too patient so you can imagine how I love these voice systems. When I got to talk to the lady on the other end I explained that I wanted to have my landline disconnected and also have my DLS line upgraded to the highest speed they had available. I was giving names, numbers and all that and she checked and I was able to have the data only service in my area so I was good to go. She finished up on her end and said everything for both requests should be done on Friday. Nice! So I crafted an email to send out to everyone I knew to let them know that as of that Friday, I would no longer have a landline and I would be cell only. Sent that out and then just waited for Friday to get here. Friday morning rolled around and I woke up and turned on my phone and dead line. Nice! Didn't have a chance to check the internet but I figured if the phone was ok I should be good to go. 7:36a.m. on that Friday was the last good thought I had about ATT for quite a while. I went to work, uneventful day, came home and wanted to see how fast I would be going on the interweb now. No connection. That's weird, it said it my computer was connected to my network. So I quit my browser and relaunched and still nothing. Restarted my computer. And still nothing. What the fu.... So I went to check out the router and modem and the DSL light on my modem was blinking red. No signal. But my laptop sure as hell was getting a signal. So I figured it was hopefully a quick fix. I called the tech support line, went through the robot voice maze and got to talk to someone in tech support. In Mumbai I'm guessing. She was pleasant enough while I was giving her my info and giving her the background on why I was calling. She said the line signal looked good and that I should wait an hour or two to make sure the order had fully processed and that could be the problem. She said if after that time if I still had no signal to call back tomorrow and they could work on more fixes if need be. Ok, not ideal but if the processing was slow there wasn't much I could do about it. So I decided to just wait and see what it looked like in the morning. Woke up and went into the office to check it out and still blinking red so I was back off to the phone maze this time. Talked to the robot voice again and wound up talking to Jerome in St. Louis. Explained to him again what the situation was and what I'd been told and hopefully he could help. And after a few minutes of looking into my account he came to the conclusion that I needed to talk to someone in what they call the Provisioning Department (more on that later) and they could help. Unfortunately they weren't in on weekends and I'd have to wait till Monday to talk to anyone there. Really? Fuckers. So now I was going to be without service the entire weekend because of some problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place in a department I can't reach. That's just fucking great. So I think after that news I was a little short with Jerome from St. Louis for the remainder of the call. It wasn't his fault but he happened to be the one on the other end.


So I wait till Monday to call. And by this point I had been seething about it for the entire weekend. Why, they managed to get the phone disconnected right off but couldn't get the internet service upgrade handled. Not only no upgrade but because of moronic capabilities, no internet service at all. So needless to say I wasn't in a good mood when I had to call in for the third time. But Jerome had given me a tip, he'd given me the responses to the robot voice to get to a person in only about three steps. Thank you Jerome. So Monday at 9:00am I'm dialing away. Got to the robot voice and the questions he was asking didn't fit the responses I had from Jerome. I kept saying them but the voice wouldn't acknowledge them. Are you kidding me? I thought I'd be right through to a person and close to having my problem fixed. Fuck you Jerome. So for the third time I'm explaining my problem to a very nice lady on the other end. Unfortunately she can't make anything out of it and transfers me back to the tech support side. And on hold more. That's one thing I'd left out of all this. You'd be on hold for five minutes minimum in getting connected or getting transferred. I was really starting to think they were doing it on purpose hoping people would just give up and go away. I'm too stubborn so I played their little phone game. So seven minutes later someone in tech support again picks up, again, in what I'm assuming was Mumbai, and I had to repeat my story. Honestly ATT, come the fuck on. You have an account number, I have a problem ticket, why is none of the info traveling along with me in your phone maze? Every person I talked to I had to repeat the issue, and because it was dragging on, the story got longer on each successive retelling. So I'm talking to Mumbai and after about ten minutes on the phone (half that spent on hold while they 'look something up', I swear to God I hate that phrase now) they determine that it needs to be fixed by the Provisioning Department. What? That's just where I was transferred from? Could someone act like they know what the fuck is going on and fix the fucking problem? So I was getting bounced back state side to the Provisioning department for the second time this call. And I'd been on the phone about twenty minutes so far. But at least I was going to be talking to someone who I didn't have to ask to repeat what they were saying every time. Not to sound like Archie Bunker but if you insist on having your call center overseas you need to invest more time in the English lessons. So I'm back in the provisioning department talking to Denise. And at this point I wasn't inclined to be too nice. I had to explain, AGAIN, the whole story and where it was at this point. Which seemed really stupid since I had started out in your shitty department not more than twenty minutes ago. Where did all those notes go? Ass. So she's looking things up and she says to me it looks like the order was never completed. What the fuck? Are you kidding me? Wasting all this time and not having service for the last three to four days because some chair warmer couldn't process the order right? I think at that news she sensed the frustration and almost ready to boil over anger, and she seemed to be very helpful and said she'd fixed that and that when I went home I should have my DSL service ready to go. Well thank you Denise. Good to see at least one person in this whole operation didn't have their head up their ass. Or so it seemed.


So I get home and son of a bitch, that fucking little red light was still blinking at me. Mocking little motherfucker. So I again call the tech support line. For those of you keeping track at home, I would be talking to, at minimum, my seventh person in four days trying to get this fixed. And was far from happy. So I dial up the number and was talking to "Gabrielle" in what I can only guess was Mumbai by the lilt in her voice. Now why do you keep banging on Mumbai, you may be asking? Well, I'd had enough time on hold that I'd been Googling call centers trying to see where I may be going. Turns out that most companies that employ overseas call centers have the center based out of Mumbai, India. I think that article said like 80% of oversea call centers were based out of there for one financial reason or another. So I'm not just pulling Mumbai out of my ass, I did my research on where I was focusing my hatred. So I'm talking to Gabrielle, or at least that's what her stage name is. And I think stage name is the right term. People are already frustrated when they're calling those numbers and even more so when they know 100% for sure they're talking with someone over seas who they can't understand. So you have a lot of American sounding names on the other end of the phone. Instead of Rajiv, Madhuri and Gupta you have Steve, Gabrielle and Tony. Very weak attempt and faking everyone out but they keep doing it. So like I said, it was her stage name. And again, I'm relaying the story up to this point and seeing what could be done. And at this point I know I was a little short with her because I could tell so myself. I'm not an engineer but I'm not a tech idiot. I know my way around computers and a pretty good level so I was kind of questioning some of the things she was telling me to try but what the hell, at this point I didn't have much choice and was along for the ride if I ever wanted to have that little blinking red light go away. She first told me that because of the canceled phone line only one jack in the house would be live and that that would be the dedicated data line. I told her I knew that the one it was plugged into was the dedicated line. When I moved into my house I had to have some rewiring done with the phone lines and at that point, I'd already assigned that jack to be the dedicated DSL line. She wasn't understanding me or wasn't varying from the script. So I take my modem around the house, while Im on the phone, and try it in every jack in the fucking house because this dullard won't acknowledge what I'm trying to tell her. Oh, I'm hating you Gabrielle. So I got done plugging it into every damn jack in the house and no green DSL light. Just like I'd told her. I'd more or less determined at this point that it wasn't anything on my end and that there had to be something up on their end. Either a field not filled in or a switch not flipped or something. So she put's me on hold. I think this was the second time I'd been on hold and I was getting less pleasant by the minute. She tried some other line test on her end that took forever and still didn't fix the problem. So at that point she says I'd have to have a tech come out and check the line. Are you fucking kidding me Gabrielle? That's all you've got for me? Oh, I was done with all of them at that point. Fuck all you all. This was a Monday night and the next available appointment they had was Wednesday from 8-12 or 12-5. FUUUUUUCK!!!!! Ok...deep breath. I just cut in before she'd finished her speech and said put me down for Wednesday morning. She said would that be Wednesday from 8-12? Ummm...that's what the morning is Cupcake, did you seriously ask that question. So she signed me up and was giving the 'are you satisfied with the blah blah blah' end of call bullshit and I think I hung up before she'd finished the last word in her sentence. So if you're taking notes, we're five days into this and no closer to having my service back than we were when I placed the order almost a week ago. Oh, and she also said I'd have to call back so that they could calibrate the modem for the signal. Fuck you Gabrielle. So Wednesday rolls around and I'm up bright and early, ready to go in case they showed up right at 8:00am. That never happens...well I'm sure it happens for some people. I mean, someone has to be first obviously, it just never seems to be me. So I'm waiting. 9:00. And waiting. 10:00. And waiting. 11:00. And waiting. 12:00. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING WITH ME ATT? It was 12:03 and not so much as a call to say they were running late. I was livid and on the phone again right then to see what the fuck was up with this short bus of a company. I was going through the phone maze again and just shouting 'AGENT' at the robot voice. After a couple prompts it transferred me to a human. I explained the whole story, again. And I almost asked that lady "why are you asking me all the same questions the robot voice already asked me? Didn't it get passed along? If not what the fuck good it is having that thing there at all? Is it just so you can trick people into thinking something is happening?" But I didn't. And I think she was picking up on the anger in my voice at that point and asked me to hold while she conferenced in someone. That someone turned out to be Richard in the Little Rock call center. So again, I explained the story to him. I think now I'm up to like the tenth time explaining what's going on. And he was very apologetic, not to mention understandable, and was pulling up some records and files. He was a little dumbstruck as to why they even suggested sending a tech out, he said they would have gotten there, checked the line and said, "Yep, lines dead." So he looked everything over and the line was fine and he said it didn't look like the order was ever entered properly from the beginning and hadn't been provisioned properly. Ah, the provisioning department. Let me relay to you folks what he told me happened. Sigh.... So when you cancel your landline but keep the data line, the line goes dead all together. No voice or data. Then the provisioning department has to make the provisions for there being a data only signal going to that line. And that part of the order was never done right. And no one up until now was bright enough to know that. So he fixed the order 'paperwork' and sent it back though. All the while being very apologetic. And I told him flat out, "Richard, you have been more helpful in under ten minutes than everyone else I've talked to over the last six days combined." He then was telling me that while the department is usually pretty quick, depending on the volume of requests, it could take up to two hours for it to be finished. And he gave me the number and extension to call back if it wasn't. I thanked him again for all of his help and he was again apologizing for all of the hassle that this had been and was telling me it shouldn't have taken this long to get resolved. At least I was happy about the acknowledgement that they knew it was a pain in the ass. So I got off the phone with Richard and had to go back to my bedroom to grab something before I went into work and when I went back by my office, all the lights on the modem were solid green. And our long national nightmare was at a close. So Richard from the Little Rock call center, thank you.