Customer service blues

I don't know why, but for some reason, companies seem to think that outsourcing a call center to India, training the technicians in rudimentary English and providing them with scripts equals customer service.

Since November of last year, I've had DSL service through Verizon, if you want to call it service. In that time, I've had only one month (February), of moderately stable service. Before and after February, my connection exhibited and now exhibits the following behavior; It will drop suddenly and without warning at any given moment, then come on again a few minutes later. I'll look at the modem with it's three portals of LED mystery, one marked "DSL", another marked "Data", and the last marked "Internet." The Internet light will be dim, while the DSL light blinks a sullen cryptic message of hatred for all humankind. At times, the Internet light will glow an angry red instead of the accustomed green, indicating, perhaps, that the digital creature inside has trained its lasers upon me and is about to fire if I do not release the other appliances from their bondage and set them free in my lawn in a strange display of hillbilly landscaping.

Before February, when this occurred, I spent five anguished sessions with so-called technicians from Verizon's overseas call centers, trying to convince them that my connection was indeed fubar and that they should send a technician to my home to investigate. After countless restarts of the modem, and even my own router (which I knew would be fruitless), they finally relented and sent a technician. He spent two hours at my home, after which, the connection worked flawlessly for about a month. At the beginning of this month; however, the agony resumed in earnest, except now, instead of twenty minutes or more of uninterupted service, I have perhaps five minutes to check my e-mail, write a blog entry, or visit the forums I frequent.

I warred within myself as to whether I should call, hoping that the situation would, beyond logic, rectify itself, to no avail. So, biting the bullet, I called Verizon this evening. The number in the telephone book yeilded a gentleman with a cosmopolitain American accent. I almost cried. It was wonderful. I stood outside the pearly gates and explained my situation, and he said "I'm sorry sir, but this is business support, I'll need to transfer you to residential." After some buzzing, clicking, and unexplainable alien noises, there was some hold music, and then. "Hello, my name is _______, how may I be of service today," in a stilted middle to far eastern accent. I wept. It was horrible. I'd been relegated back to the seventh level of Hell.

I gave the young woman my information, told her, "Just send a technician, I've been through this before and I am through playing games." Her response; "O.K. sir, I am just needing to do a line test. Could you please to hold the line?" I explained that she could save herself some time by simply sending a technician to my home. I explained that I was tiring of Verizon's poor excuse for customer service but managed to hold back my deepest darkest feelings of rage, since I worked for eight years as a customer service representative and understand how it is to be yelled at by an irate customer. Despite my protests, she went to do her line test, and set her headset down (I heard the thump as it hit the desk), while she talked to the person next to her about the crazy American she had on the line calling their customer service "crap."

After she came back to tell me what I already knew (that my connection was flopping around like a salmon in a grizzly's teeth), I told her she could forget about it and that I will be cancelling my service. She then transfered me to the cancellation department...which was closed.

In the time it has taken me to write this posting, my internet connection has died three times. It's not my computer, it's the service itself or Verizon's equipment, as evidenced by the activity of the aliens inside the modem. While I understand that it is much more costly to run a call center in India or Indonesia, it saddens me that so much true customer service is lost in the process. I have nothing against the people of these countries, and I appreciate that the customer service industry has brought a level of prosperity to areas that never saw it before.

Unfortunately, customer service has transformed into an evil dopelganger: customer processing.

Tomorrow, once the business offices of the various Internet providers open their lines, I shall find a company worthy of my business. Until then, I shall suffer here in the inferno.