I'd like to reach out and touch SBC

[j Paul]

Man am I fed up with SBC the phone company here in Ohio. I had my new phone line installed in my new shop Wed. of last week and the tech left without testing it. When I brought my phone over on Thur. all we had was static. They did a remote fix and Friday we could call out, but it won't ring in. Had an appointment to have it fixed Monday between 8am and noon. SBC was a no show / no call either to my home #. We called them and they said they fell behind and could come on Tue. but we had other commitments and so we arranged it for today (Wed) between 8am and Noon. Guess what, SBC again a no show/no call. When I called them, and waded through there automated system to get to a real person, I was told that I never even had an appointment on either of those days. Let me speak to a surpervisor. They are all tied up, they'll have to call you back. Well they didn't after four hours, so again into there automated nightmare, finally a supervisor agreed to send someone on friday between 8am and Noon. No! I won't go sit there again, I have other work to do. Finally agreed they would call me on there way there and I could run over (only 10 min.away) and meet there tech. They act like this is all my fault.
What a way to run a business. If I could have reached through the phone line, I sure would have reached out and touched someone like their commercials used to say. Thanks for letting me vent, not much else you can do when they hold all the cards.

On a better note, our showroom is coming along great. Finishing my build out in the next couple of weeks and should be open by middle of next month.

 

[WizSteve]

Yeah, phone companies are the worst. Just go to Google and type "sucks (insert phone copany name here)" and you'll get thousands of hits.

This past Christmas I ported the wife's and my cell numbers from cingular to T-Mobile and it was a royal nightmare... the phone rep who sold us the new phone wrote down the ID number of one of the phones wrong, and T-Mobile didn't know how to communicate that to us (took them two weeks to figure out why it wouldn't activate). And then Cingular put us in collections because we still had a balance due, but a full month hadn't even gone by since we transferred.

Has anyone ever gotten good service from a phone company?

Just once for me - after installing an ADT alarm system, the ADT tech accidentally grounded the business line at our house. The Verizon tech came out fixed it, installed a splitter for the DSL for free, showed me all kinds of nifty things at the box, and then came inside for a cup of coffee and showed me a couple web sites to measure the speed of our DSL line. And then gave me his personal card in case I had any more problems. Reminded me of De Niro's character in the movie Brazil, the unauthorized repair man that would go around and fix people's AC commando style.

 

[JRB]

You have only just begun with SBC. Now that you are a customer, expect to be phone solicited for SBC customer satisfaction surveys, better offerings than you have now for your phone service, etc. You can expect these calls at least twice a week, sometimes twice a day. They will also be sending sales people to your shop with a multitude of offerings. SBCs sole purpose of existence is to try as many ways as possible to keep you from earning a living.

We had SBC for years when they only did local calls. We had to use AT&T for long distance. AT&Ts business practices at the time where as I described above. I finally switched to another long distance provider, just to get AT&T off my back. In order to get a price from the new provider I had to give them my local calling as well, this meant dumping SBC.

Since SBC started offering long distance as well as local, they have enthusiastically adopted AT&Ts old marketing strategy. It took us until just recently to convince them we are no longer a customer and to please quit calling us. We explained we would be taking legal action against them if they did not stop. I gave them the name and number of our attorney in case they did not understand what I was talking about. It seems to have worked, we have not been bugged in almost two weeks.

John

 

[Baer Charlton]

Originally posted by WizSteve:
Has anyone ever gotten good service from a phone company?

I hear you about phone companies, but I do have a great story about AT&T: I usually tell this to AT&T operators right after I tell them that I have always had AT&T long distance since my first phone number which was "Two longs and a short". If you don't have grey hair, you wouldn't understand.

Anyway, we were in Tanzania and had to run into town for a repair on our lorry, as well as secure some emergency rations of framing liquid, (Scotch). While we were hanging out at the "men's club", we over heard these two crusty looking blokes talking about how backwards this country is that it takes three days to get a phone line...

I asked the bar tender what the story was, and he said that they were doctors from the USA and had gotten a telegram to call the hospital STAT. The telegram was delivered to them out at lake Lonagaratae (260+kilometers in the bush) and that was five days ago and they had been at the club for 82 hours trying to get a phone call through to America.....

I went over and chatted these two god forsaken souls up, along with sharing some scotch...
One had a MCI World card, and the other had a Sprint card. A told them that a knew a few people and maybe could help. They were the Chief of Staff, and Chief of Surgury from Oueen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles. Being from LA myself and having the fine hospital had saved my life once, I figured I owed them.....

I picked up the phone and when the operator came on the line, I asked in my best Swahili if she was an AT&T operator and spoke english. She replied in the affirmative and so I told her about the poor smucks and the cards that they had and trouble they were having......
She said in Swahili that she knew about the gentlemen that had worthless phone cards in Africa and how could she help me.
I told her that I had an AT&T card and would like to get in touch with their hospital in LA; could I charge the call to my card instead, as a service to the good doctors.
She said "no, because AT&T would be more than happy to place the call for free, because I had made the request. AND to make sure I told the good doctors that my card works where no other does." Next she bounced us (she stayed on the line untill the hospital answered, as did all of the operators who were all told the story which got longer and funnier with each telling.) to London, then off to New York, through Omaha, and on to LA where we finally let the doctors have the phone.

As they were each talking to the hospital, they were calmly cutting up their phone cards.

It would have been really funny, except the reason they were needed to call, was to let them know that they no longer had a job; the hospital was closed. So they went back to the bush for another month......

Hey, I did my part and AT&T did theirs.

Good luck with SBC, I don't know why but it just sounds like a venerial desease.....
happy matting
baer

 

[j Paul]

Glad someone had a good experience, but misery really does love company. I like the old days when there was one phone company that was responsible for everything. I don't think any good came from breaking up "Ma Bell" You could even drop those old phones and they still worked most of the time.

I'm sure SBC will eventually get it fixed, but I sure will never feel "warm and fuzzy" about them as a company

 

[johnny]

I'll tell you what - if America ever dissolves into anarchy come on over to Cleveland and we'll have fun leveling their offices. I hope you get it fixed soon, it's your most important marketing tool.

SBC has a whole building next door to the downtown mall I'm in. There is very little precious delivery space. There is a truck zone right outside the mall doors on 1 street, right near my store. SBC parks their vans there ALL DAY LONG. I don't know when these guys ever fix anything. They even put orange cones up around their vans. The space will hold about 6 ot 7 vehicles and you'll see 4 or 5 SBC vans taking up most of the truck parking. Truck parking is only 1 hour, but SBC has special permits that let them use truck zones for as long as necessary, probably because they are a utility. So - I have to PAY for parking to deliver to my own store.

I hate them.

 

[Puppyraiser]

My favorite AT&T story involves one of those solicitor calls to change the store's long distance carrier.
"I'm calling to talk to you about your AT&T long distance account."
"We don't have AT&T long distance."
"Yes, you do"
"No, we don't"
"You are so stupid. You don't know who your long-distance carrier is."
A call to AT&T got us the information that these marketing calls are a third party, and nothing can be done about them. Hm. Haven't done business with them in years and feel no need to.

 

[Ron Eggers]

Has anyone ever gotten good service from a phone company?

About a year ago, I switched my local and long distance service - business and residential - to a local, family-owned company you've never heard of.

When I call them with a question, they answer the phone. If they don't have the info I need, they call back within 15 minutes. The bill is concise and legible and lacks all the obscure charges that SBC could never quite explain.

The only downside is SBC owns the lines. When I had some outside line trouble recently, SBC was just going out on strike. It was a 4-day strike and I got my phone fixed on the 5th day and I never had to deal directly with SBC.

When that happened with Ameritech (pre-SBC) years ago, I was on hold with their service department for four hours before I could set up a service call.

 

[JRB]

Allegiance Telicome is who we switched to. Our bill is about 25% less than SBC. Only thing I do not like is their actual billing statement. First page is left blank, for who knows what reason. They send about 15 pages in each bill, listing every little thing imaginable with our phone usage. At the end of this huge stack of paper is a request that we save the forest by paying our bill automatically. Other than that, excellent service, low prices.

John

 

[Jill]

I completely agree with you about SBC. After multiple phone solicitation calls i finally got them to stop that. Only to start having them show up at the door with their do "I have a deal for you"s.. The last guy made me so mad I e-mailed the company to let them know that if I was contacted one more time I would be changing my service. To another carrier. It seems to have done the trick for the moment.

 

[j Paul]

Well today is Friday and guess what they never called. I was over at the shop at noon and found a SBC tech. wout back taking his lunch break, and asked him if he was the one supposed to fix my phone. He didn't know anything about it, but would check. Well come to find out the tech that was to fix it was 1/2 mile away working on it from a terminal location because the problem was not inside and they knew that all along. Well it if finally working. Hope it stays that way, I would hate to have to deal with there service dept. again. Praise goes out to the SBC tech that was on his lunch break though, he gave me his personal pager in case they didn't get it fixed today, and said I should call him directly on Monday.

 

[Ron Eggers]

Jill, the local, family-owned company I was talking about is called NTD and they're based in Oshkosh.

Give 'em a call.