Upgrading my DSL - the final chapter
Jan. 28th, 2011 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkAnyway, I sure hope so. My screaming new 12Mbps DSL has been working fine for 3 months, except that every now and then I have to power cycle the modem/router. Nobody knows why. It has a 1-year warranty, so if it starts doing this more often than once or twice a month I can exchange it for a new one. I can live with that.
What I can't live with is - I finally looked at my magical self-paying phone bill and discovered they are charging me $65/month instead of the $40 they promised me. It took me a week or so to nerve myself up for the inevitable hour-long phone ordeal. And yes, it did take about that long. But I got agreement from "Matt in Des Moines," the first agent that I talked with, that I was being overcharged. He just didn't know what to do about it. He remembered waaaaay back to October, which was when I upgraded my service, that they used to offer this great $40/month for 2 years deal. They just don't offer it any more. So the agent that promised me $40/month was looking at a real offering, but managed to enter the order wrong.
The alert reader may recall that this was my second attempt to get my DSL upgraded correctly. The first agent entered it wrong a DIFFERENT way, resulting in my getting only 7 Mbps. Anthony, with whom I talked on Oct 19, tried to correct the order but ended up signing me up for a different and much inferior promotional plan - FREE internet for one month! Followed by $65/month forever. Matt couldn't switch me to the program I had originally been offered because that program is no longer available so he didn't know what code to enter. Only someone in the "Loyalty Department" could fix this.
So I spent a while getting to know Dennis in the Loyalty Department. He was sympathetic, but kept trying to work around the problem by finding me a DIFFERENT promotional program that would be as good as the one I didn't get on my first two attempts. I kept saying that all I wanted was the deal I was originally offered. After two long breaks to check with a supervisor he finally came back with the secret code he needed to change my account back to "HSN for 24 months at $40/month." Not only that, he was now adding the provision that at the end of the 24 months the "rolloff price" would be ... $40. Originally it was supposed to go to $65 after 2 years (a fact that had not been disclosed to me by Anthony, back in the previous paragraph. But that was the same deal Matt had quoted me, so it's probably correct). So if it actually works this time, I should have a really good deal this time.
Being older and wiser than I was back in October, I asked for an email or letter confirming the price he had quoted me. "Oh, you'll get a confirmation email," he warbled. But, I pointed out, the last confirmation email I got DID NOT CONFIRM THE PRICE. "Right," he said. "That's kind of a problem with our confirmation emails." By this time he had gone all geeky on me and confided that he actually had Comcast himself because Qwest didn't offer High Speed DSL in his area, and was starting to think of me as a buddy. So he compromised by sending me a personal email confirming the price he had quoted. He also gave me 3 different confirmation numbers - one for modifying my account for the future, one covering the $25 refund on my January bill, and another one for the December bill. We decided to leave the November bill as is, since it gave me that introductory free month of Internet. I guess I can't ask for more than that.
Well, yes, I can. I sincerely hope that my Internet is up when I go home tonight.
What I can't live with is - I finally looked at my magical self-paying phone bill and discovered they are charging me $65/month instead of the $40 they promised me. It took me a week or so to nerve myself up for the inevitable hour-long phone ordeal. And yes, it did take about that long. But I got agreement from "Matt in Des Moines," the first agent that I talked with, that I was being overcharged. He just didn't know what to do about it. He remembered waaaaay back to October, which was when I upgraded my service, that they used to offer this great $40/month for 2 years deal. They just don't offer it any more. So the agent that promised me $40/month was looking at a real offering, but managed to enter the order wrong.
The alert reader may recall that this was my second attempt to get my DSL upgraded correctly. The first agent entered it wrong a DIFFERENT way, resulting in my getting only 7 Mbps. Anthony, with whom I talked on Oct 19, tried to correct the order but ended up signing me up for a different and much inferior promotional plan - FREE internet for one month! Followed by $65/month forever. Matt couldn't switch me to the program I had originally been offered because that program is no longer available so he didn't know what code to enter. Only someone in the "Loyalty Department" could fix this.
So I spent a while getting to know Dennis in the Loyalty Department. He was sympathetic, but kept trying to work around the problem by finding me a DIFFERENT promotional program that would be as good as the one I didn't get on my first two attempts. I kept saying that all I wanted was the deal I was originally offered. After two long breaks to check with a supervisor he finally came back with the secret code he needed to change my account back to "HSN for 24 months at $40/month." Not only that, he was now adding the provision that at the end of the 24 months the "rolloff price" would be ... $40. Originally it was supposed to go to $65 after 2 years (a fact that had not been disclosed to me by Anthony, back in the previous paragraph. But that was the same deal Matt had quoted me, so it's probably correct). So if it actually works this time, I should have a really good deal this time.
Being older and wiser than I was back in October, I asked for an email or letter confirming the price he had quoted me. "Oh, you'll get a confirmation email," he warbled. But, I pointed out, the last confirmation email I got DID NOT CONFIRM THE PRICE. "Right," he said. "That's kind of a problem with our confirmation emails." By this time he had gone all geeky on me and confided that he actually had Comcast himself because Qwest didn't offer High Speed DSL in his area, and was starting to think of me as a buddy. So he compromised by sending me a personal email confirming the price he had quoted. He also gave me 3 different confirmation numbers - one for modifying my account for the future, one covering the $25 refund on my January bill, and another one for the December bill. We decided to leave the November bill as is, since it gave me that introductory free month of Internet. I guess I can't ask for more than that.
Well, yes, I can. I sincerely hope that my Internet is up when I go home tonight.
