Americanuck

For the most part I work from home which leaves me completely dependent on my internet connection. Since our incident with the dying modem last year things have been stable, no complaints at all with the service. We’d been rocking along on a wireless gateway which came in handy having two geeks each with their own laptops in the house.

In fact, I’d been going through a renewed honeymoon phase with Telus, past annoyances forgiven and forgotten because things were going so well.

I received an email from them talking about some upgrades to their billing system that would bring the billing dates for internet in line with the phone which would mean a one time extra billing. Fine, no problem. I get that. Then I checked online to see what our usage has been and freaked out because it appeared our upload/download limit had been lowered.

So I called Customer Service last Monday, maneuvered my way through their AWFUL voice response IVR and waited on hold for a Rep for a while. No problem, I know they’re busy so I waited patiently.

I got a very nice Rep who explained that I need not worry about the online account system and their totals, as they are messed up right now with the upgrades and she’d had a lot of customers calling about that (hmmm perhaps they should notify customers of that to avoid the phone calls? Just sayin’).

While I had her on the phone I asked about upgrading our connection to something a little more speedy. With some discussion about what is available to us, the cost and the like I decided on their high speed extreme. She said that this upgrade would be something she would need to take care of ordering as opposed to one that you could order online but didn’t see any issues. I asked if there was anything I would need to do here and she said no everything would be taken care of other than I may need to log into the system again but she wasn’t sure. She said that the upgrade would be done on Wednesday. Easy peezy no problems no downtime.

Cool.

So on Tuesday night, right about the time I started feeling a stinking gall bladder attack coming on, we lost the net. We thought oh hey, they are doing it early cool. We waited for an hour or so and still no net. We thought well, it’s supposed to be working on Wednesday so I guess it should be up in the morning.

Not so much.

So in the morning, along with some nice after attack liver pain and nausea, we had no internet. I called their tech support and that Rep told me that the outage the previous night was them swapping out a card and that no, my upgrade wasn’t scheduled for Wednesday, in fact it was scheduled for SOME TIME on Thursday! So I carefully explained that I work from home and that I in need the ‘net for work and that the CSR did not mention any kind of down-time. He just kind of sighed and said that they do that a lot but they should be explaining to the customer that there is more involved in this upgrade, someone has to physically go somewhere to do this upgrade and I was on the schedule but there would be a service disruption.

He put me on hold for a bit then came back and said that he would do what he could to have it done that day. I asked when, he said maybe the afternoon. Maybe. Sigh.

Well because I was feeling so sick I took the day off. That evening, still no internet. So I called tech support again and got a different Rep. They gave the same story. I asked if there was any notation from the Rep that morning that said they would try to do the work that afternoon and she said no. I think now that they were just handing me a line trying to get me off the phone which annoyed me. She goes on to tell me that it was indeed scheduled for Thursday but that they are also to tell the customer to give it another 24 hours after that date to have it up and running. So I said “Ok so now you are telling me you can’t guarantee I will have the internet until Friday?” “No you are scheduled for Thursday” She says.

“Um well then why the 24 hours…” She went on to explain that it was time in case they had problems with the connection. It was all just word play, scheduled for Thursday, but it could take another 24 hours to me meant no GUARANTEE until Friday but best case scenario it would be SOME TIME on Thursday. No way to say when. So I asked to talk to her supervisor. She said that he would most likely say the same thing and I said I understand that, and I also don’t blame her for what is going on, it was just her luck that the first CSR didn’t bother to tell me that there would be a disruption AND tell me the wrong connection day…she said she understood where I was coming from.

I was then passed over to the “supervisor” who I think was a slightly more Sr. Rep. He repeated what I had been told, agreed that CSR Dept needed to set the consumer’s expectations a wee bit better and said he would see what he could do. They would try calling the technicians to see what could be done I was then put on hold again and the other Rep came on the phone and said that they weren’t having any luck getting anyone, that they may have gone for the day but they would call me back in an hour.

An hour and a half later I got the call from Telus, it was the Sr. Rep again. He said unfortunately Thursday was still going to be the day.. I explained my frustration and that I REALLY wanted to speak to someone in the CSR dept in Management to discuss the issue, really just to make them see that perhaps there is something they need to do for the future customers who go through this. I mean seriously, if the techs are rolling their eyes saying that the CSRs are always doing this, then maybe, um.. training issue? At first he said he would give me the number of the CSR Dept then thought again and said he would have them call me. Good man. I told him to ask them to call me on Friday, as now I would have no net until who knows when on Thursday (maybe Friday!) I would have to go into the office to work.

Thursday morning around tenish, Tom emails me to say the net was up so that meant I could work from home Friday. Hurray! My productivity is so much better at home but then again I guess it is good once and a while to interact with my coworkers. One benefit is that I was able to pick up my new laptop from the office. It is another Dell, but it is a Latitude with the built in button mouse.

I have yet to master the touch pad mouse (hate!)

His Delta Tau Chi name is Gus.

Sean asked me “why Gus?”

I belched and asked “Why not?”

It was love at first sight. No more sticky keys and weird creaking noises from my old Thinkpad. Goodbye extreme slow boot-ups and a loose lid and hello quiet operation and comfortable keys.

Oh yeah, Friday came and went with no phone call from Telus. Sigh.