This has been a year of no longer caving in to bad customer service for me.  It’s probably a pipe dream - likely all the new services will turn out to have their problems, but sometimes you have to put your foot down and say ENOUGH!

We have been living here in Hertford, NC for about eight years.  We have had Medicacom Cable for most of that time.  We had them for our television service, and we had them for our Internet.  Both have been riddled with odd down times, poor customer service, weird charges and rate increases.  Add to that the extra cost of our Embarq phone service, and it just got to be too much.  The final straw was when we found we were paying for HD service and using a DVR receiver with no HDMI output.  When I asked them to upgrade us, they said sure - you can come pick it up thirty miles away and install it yourself, or we’ll bring it to you for forty bucks.  Really?  When you get close to $2000 a year of my hard earned cash, that’s your answer?

We went with a bundled package from Embarq, the same unlimited long distance phone service fora cheaper price, 5 Meg DSL service, at least as fast as the cable, and Dish Network.  We have at least as many channels as we had, they are almost all HD - we have the proper cables (they didn’t hook it up right, but when I got home *I* hooked it up right, and the picture is awesome.

At the same time we dumped Hypermart.net - who offer so little with their hosting packages when compared to other services - more modern services - that it was laughable.  Add to that the fact they have very slow and only sort of helpful support, very slow servers, and tools that are far out of date.  We went with Godaddy.com and have had nothing but good, responsive support and easy configuration…not to mention more service for less money.

It’s infected my job, as well.  We are dumping Altell, which I will stand up and vote for as THE WORST company for customer support, particularly business support, that I’ve ever encountered.  Even our slow move off of Altell has caused new and unprecedented problems.  I combined 9 lines that were left with them due to continuing service agreements.  It was supposed to lower our bill.  They changed a wireless air card into a phone, put one non-data line on it’s own $149 account, and God alone knows what else - none of which they were supposed to do, and all of which has screwed up our bill repeatedly.  I can’t get off there fast enough.

Instead we have US Cellular.  Service is cheaper, and we have our own rep who comes to the office and personally insures each phone is up and working, that service is right.  He monitors our usage and calls with changes that could save us money.  WIN.

So now I will sit back and watch my (finally) 1080i 52″ high definition TV and see who won the diving last night.  Onward!

DNW

Technorati Tags: Altell, Cable, customer service, Dish Network, DSL, Embarq, Mediacom

Posted on 08/21/08, 6:42 PM
in: Uncategorized
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