Eternal Qwest

It’s been an amusing run of days since, Gentle Reader, I last penned some nonsense for the FreeZone.

I’ve had the most wonderful experience with Qwest DSL, pretty much the flip-side of the coin of my experience with ComCast’s broadband here in Denver.

Before I run down the road too far with this bone in my mouth, let me explain my basic philosophy regarding customer service.

I don’t need pampering - I’m a do-it-myselfer with respect to many things. In fact, my only demands are simple:

• Your product must work as advertised
• If it doesn’t you must make it work as advertised without extra cost or even the slightest hint of an attitude
• If you can’t make both goals, you lose my business

My neighborhood is just a bit over 100 years old - the house I’m in turned 106 this year - and I understand and sympathize with the fact that much of the cable here and about is old, old, stuff.

On the other hand, it’s not my wiring, it’s ComCast’s wiring. It’s not me who hasn’t taken care of it for the last 30 years, and it’s not me charging someone else biggish monthly fees to use it - such as it is.

And I’m not planning on paying for a huge, impressive new building for my new corporate office by chinning-up my customers for every last buck I can get - I’m not telling my customers that they can expect a $35 service charge to repair old wiring from my pole to their homes.

During the last round of denials from ComCast, I explained that their 3rd modem in 2 years does the same things the others had done. Mysteriously going offline, requiring a reboot of all computers connected, the router, the switch, and the Vonage telephone modem. It would do its mysterious absent-without-leave shit with nothing else connected to it except their road-worn, shitty neighborhood wiring.

They stood firm. There is no problem. It’s all in your head, or in something you have connected.

So I switched. It’s been a beautiful experience, at least for a customer service freak like myself.

The first Qwest broadband tech arrived on time, but with a broken line analyzer gadget. He was able to fake it quite well, and after several trips up and back to the nearest connector box, got my service flowing through telephone wiring which hadn’t been anything more than a bird-perch for the last 12 years.

Later that evening, I decided to test Qwest against ComCast, and Qwest came out wanting by a long way.

So I called their customer care number, and was promptly connected with a very sweet young man who speedily diagnosed the problem.

The only disagreement we had was booking the service call - he had a hard time accepting that the next morning was too soon for me, and that the following Monday would be much better. They were so anxious to come out fix their goddamn wiring that it was downright spooky.

After I ended the call, I sat quietly waiting for Rod Serling’s voiceover to start: “Consider a world in which customer service is mostly dead, a world in which those few companies still interested in customer happiness appear freakish and eery…”

That was Wednesday, and a second DSL modem arrived Friday, so again, Gentle Reader, I called the customer care softies at Qwest.

“Yeah, I see what happened. The last guy you spoke to here sent it, just in case it turned out to be a bad modem instead of bad copper [wiring] and there wasn’t a modem on the tech truck. Hang on to it until you’re all fixed and then have UPS pick it up with this return number on the label…”

Monday rolled around, and right at the start of the 3-hour appointment window, I got a call from the broadband tech who was to service me, asking if it was convenient for me to be serviced within the hour or if he should tackle a few other jobs first and then service me.

“I like my technicians fresh, so come on over,” I told him, and he chuckled.

Natch, if I had seen him first, I would have had him come by at the end of the day, all sweaty and ready for a beer - the boy was handsome, handsome, handsome! (similar to this hot package from BuzzWest, in fact.)

“Kevin” had a thingamabob that worked just fine, and used it skillfully to determine that one of my wires was broken about 800 feet up the street, and spent the next hour and a half tracking down the break and fixing it.

“Should be A-Okay,” he reported, and then added, “if it’s not call me,” while handing me a business card with his duty-bound mobile phone, a pager number, and an emergency number which turns out to be his personal cell phone.

“They give me a service truck 7 days a week, I don’t mind emergency calls most times,” he explained. “They don’t count mileage on the truck and don’t care if I get grocieries in it, so long as I can be reached and work on important shi… stuff.”

Five or six years ago, Qwest was embroiled in huge customer service issues; they had a lethal dose of miserable middle-managers working for them at the time, a bunch of the little pricks we used to beat up in high school because of their snotty attitudes, who had found an outlet for their misery - Qwest’s customers. After realizing their loss of customers was due to their handling of their customers, Qwest went on a quest of re-invention.

The company I’m dealing with now is on the way to forming an incredible reputation for both capability and customer service - and that’s the best thing you can wish upon an American corporation at this point.

I hate to leave yarn hanging when I knit, so, Gentle Reader, I’d like your help.

I would absolutely, completely, totally love to give the folks at our local ComCast office - those who work behind bullet-proof glass - a gift so they can remember our relationship.

I know that this is the well-known and well-worn porn star Billy Cochran, and frankly, what he has in his hand sort of scares me.

But if you know where I can get one, let me know. There are customer service people who deserve such a unit. They need a “gut-level” re-ordering and reorganization.

~ pagemonkey