<OT> 'scuse me while I vent.
Talk about frickin? idiots, I?ll nominate GTE, hands down. I signed up for DSL with Earthlink, but GTE is the local telephone company, and they will be setting up the circuit and doing the work. It?s November 13, 1999. About three weeks go by and GTE does a line test. Earthlink informs me that my line won?t work (if I had known about DSLreports.com, I?d have known that I?m less than 5000 feet from the central office, easily within range). It?s sometime in early December. A week later I get an e-mail saying the line test was performed incorrectly, and they would re-do it and get back to me. Nobody ever gets back to me, of course, so I have to call. And they say the line test is complete, but they are really backed up, someone will have to call me in about a week to set up an installation date, but it could be longer since it?s now late December, with the holidays and all.
Sometime in January Earthlink calls and we set up an install date of February 4, a Friday. They can?t give me a time, and can?t even narrow it down to a reasonable window. I have to be home ALL DAMN DAY. GTE does the install and won?t give them any other time. So I piss and moan, but realize I?m going to have to be home all day. In the week before the install, I find DSLreports.com and find that DSL installation horror stories are commonplace. To avoid becoming a statistic, I phone Earthlink, not once, but twice prior to the install date, and each time I ask if I need software. They say yes, and promise to overnight it to me. I never got it. Either time. So the night before the install, I download the software, no big deal, takes about 20 minutes.
The big day arrives. I wake up, clean up my office for the installer, and at 8:00 am I decide to call GTE, not Earthlink, just to be sure they know to send somebody out today. After 45 minutes on hold (no exaggeration!), I finally speak to someone who assures me they show an order for my installation today. Alright, I?ll be speeding down the info superhighway any minute now. Well at 2:00 pm, nobody has showed. So I call Earthlink, and suffer through being on hold some more. Finally, I get: ?Yes, we show that you are scheduled for today, there are still three hours left in the day, just wait.? I?m impatient, and a bit worried, but what can I do? At 4:00 I decide to call GTE again. Again I?m on hold forever, then I get some help, and she says she will transfer me to another department who runs the installers. Miraculously, I?m transferred to someone outside of GTE, who barely speaks English, and doesn?t know why I?m calling him, because he doesn?t work for GTE. He says it happens all the time.
OK, now I?m getting pissed. I call back again, and suffer through more waiting on hold while they get around to answering my call. When they answer, I explain what happened and they say they will keep me on the line, no transferring, but just hang on while they talk to someone. Mind you I?m at home, stuck on the phone, not at work with a speakerphone doing something productive. The waiting is interminable, but she finally comes back on the line and says they cancelled my order, but she needs to confirm what the computer is telling her, and puts me back on hold before I can yell "WHAT THE FUCK????" And then I get transferred unexpectedly. The guy wants to know how I got this number. Aaaack, not again!!!! Fortunately, it was not my friend I spoke to during the last unexpected transfer, rather it was secondary support for the installation department, but he usually just talks to installers, not the customers. But he?s a nice guy, and helps me out.
GTE builds circuits by assigning them a unique number, called a DLCI number, and by having the unique circuit, you get the dedicated circuit that allows DSL to work. Seems that GTE somehow assigned my DLCI number to another person, and we can?t share this unique number, so my installation went into the ?reject? pile until this gets resolved. This happened on JANUARY 25, but nobody told me about it UNTIL FEBRUARY 4. It?s been nearly 3 goddam months I?ve been waiting for this thing, and these frickin idiots can?t even let me, OR the GTE person I spoke with this morning, OR Earthlink, know about a problem that was identified 10 DAYS AGO!!!!!!
I had called and called and called to avoid this, and I STILL GOT SCREWED!!!! So then I have to call Earthlink again and wait ON HOLD SOME MORE! After about 15 minutes, the nice woman says they were never told about this problem, January 19 was the last notation in the database. But I?ll transfer you to ?escalation,? who handles difficult problems. They are very nice, and say ?WOW, this has been open since November???? I say "yes, but more importantly, I?ve been home all goddam day for NOTHING!!!!"
Of course by now it?s after 5:00, so we can?t reach GTE. So all I have is a promise to get a call on Monday to set up yet another install date, but this time with a mere 4-hour window. I?m so fucking pissed I could kill those dumb assholes. If they didn?t have a monopoly on the local service I swear they?d go out of business. I hate GTE, Pac Bell is a much better local Telco. |
