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Customer Service Lessons for TimeWarner

I’m pretty much ready to be done with TimeWarner/RoadRunner.  It’s not as much about the service, although my RoadRunner, which used to be outstanding has been pretty flakey over the last year.  I’m on my 3rd failed modem in that time frame. 

This last episode was driven by the electrical storm that apparently nuked our DVR, 42” Plasma TV and apparently my Cable Modem.

The Internet is a necessity these day.  I keep a permanent VPN tunnel to work using special hardware to do that.  I need to be connected.  Can I be down a day?  Sure, but not 7-8 days.

Last nights tech support call was atrocious, so we made the trip to their retail store on our dime to pick up a new modem.  They new that, they did the exchange.  It should be plug and play when we get home.  In fact there are only 3 connections.  Power, Cable, and one Ethernet to our router…

Of course it didn’t work, so I called tech support again.

The lady I spoke with initially, looked up the MAC address and said point blank, oh, it’s not provisioned.   Let me transfer you.

After 10 minutes on hold being transferred I get a woman who said “Honey, I don’t know what your problem is, your modem is provisioned.  What do the light say?” 

Uhm, they are all green but I can’t get an IP, and when I do I can’t go anywhere.

“Well then you need a service call, the earliest I can give you is…  Oh, you already have someone coming on the 15th.   They’ll fix it then.”

I said well can you just have them pick this stuff up when they come? 

Nope, we’ll bill you until you bring the modem into a service center and drop it off.   What?!?!?!  I just picked it up…

This infuriated me.

So while I’m on the Internet trying to figure out how to order Zoomtown from Cincy Bell, (the only other company I hate more that TW… just started looking a lot better), my wife calls and was able to move the date up to the 12th.

After more troubleshooting, I could now all of a sudden get an IP every time.  But I still couldn’t go anywhere.   This to me isn’t something a tech is needed for.   So I called back in again.  Explained my plight, and was escalated to Tier 3 support.   The hold for this was throughout dinner and while I swapped out the TV that no longer works and worked on troubleshooting the DVR.

An hour late I get a Tier 3 guy, who is kind enough to inform me that my modem is stuck in auto-provision, so he’s going to kick it in the head.   5 minutes later we’re back up.

I candidly asked him, “Do you really need a Tier 3 person to force a provision?”  He said no.

I said can you look at my DVR?  He said no but he’d put a note on the trouble ticket so hopefully they’ll bring one on Saturday.

So my tips for TimeWarner.

1) Not all your customers are stupid, so don’t treat them like they are.

2) Not all your customers are out to steal your modems and hardware.  I have no use for a cable modem if I’m not subscribing to your service.  You know the one you can’t get to work.

3) Step up the training on your tier one folks.  They should be smarter than my 13 year old daughter when it comes to troubleshooting this stuff.

4) If you see someone’s called in 3x looking for help, you can assume they did the fundamental troubleshooting on the first two calls.

I realize you probably get some real winners calling in for support.  You get people who can’t release and renew their IP’s…  I know these people, but come on…  The steps to figure out where the problem lie aren’t that complicated.   It took me 3 calls to get through to you that it was on your end and that you could fix it remotely.

5) 7 days is far too long for anyone to wait for service, I don’t care what business you’re in.   You almost dispatched someone to my house for a problem they couldn’t fix anyway.   That can’t be cheap. 

Wake up!  Cable tech support has sucked since day one.  You’d think you’d have this figured out by now.

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Electrical Storm = Bad Juju

Tonight around 11pm EST, lightning struck… Quite literally, just outside the house.   The TV, DVR, DVD, VCR, all went blank…  Surprisingly we still had electric, which rarely is the case out here in the sticks when we have a bad enough storm.

I ran into the office to check the computers, everything was still up and good.   The cable modem wasn’t happy though.   No blinky lights.   I’ve been here before too.  So I rebooted it.  Amazingly, the power light and the cable light lit up.   But no PC or data light.   I figured the cable network was probably zapped.  Again, not unusual.

Back into the living room to check things there and to verify that the cable was dorked up.   All of the entertainment stuff was plugged into a surge protector, but it was dead, no juice.   I ran down stairs and found a circuit breaker popped…  I’m thinking this is a good thing.

Back upstairs all of our entertainment devices have power, even the TV, but the TV is non-responsive.   You can turn it on with the remote, but that’s it.  No picture, no changing inputs, nada…   Of course this would be our 42” plasma pride and joy…   Our Black Friday special two years ago for $999.  Coincidentally the same amount as our home owners deductible.   Oh goody.

So back in the office to deal with the Internet situation.   The cable modem appears happy on the cable side, but no link for the PC connection.   I swap out the router hoping that it’s not toast.  Nope, nothing I plug into the modem is seen by the modem.   This isn’t good.

30 minutes of troubleshooting with TimeWarner on the phone they finally give in and offer a service call to replace it.   Today is the 9th, and it’s only been the 9th for 30 minutes.  The earliest they can service me is the 15th.   Isn’t that special?   I explain that isn’t good enough for $50/month internet that’s already somewhat flakey.  I offer to come pick up a modem and be compensated for my time to drive there, stand in line and drive home.   They just laughed but did offer to credit me for the lack of service.

I think I’m just about done with TimeWarner, but I don’t think CBell is going to be any better.

Here’s hoping they’ll actually have one when I get there tomorrow.

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7 Days and Counting

The trip is getting closer, right around the corner actually.  We leave next Monday the 14th at 0-Dark Thirty.

Bike is ready, though I need to double check everything and I’ll pack this weekend.

Whilst on my trip I’m going to do everything I can to avoid work.  I will be ‘connected’ when I can be to update this blog mostly and journal the trip.

Technology that’s traveling with me:

IMG_0017

I’m taking a super small HP 2133 sub notebook.  Space is critical and I thought this would fit the bill just fine.  It’s loaded with Vista and I have to say I’m very under-whelmed with both performance and battery life, even with the BIG battery.  But it beats nothing I suppose.   It’s wifi equipped and I’ll be taking my CrackBerry with Verizon coverage and tether-ability.

I’ll also be using the iPhone (current generation) as my primary communications device.

To give you a sense of just how small this thing is, or just how large my D830 is, here’s a shot of both of them with the iPhone as a frame of reference:

IMG_0018   Yeah, it’s tiny.

I’m in the process now of loading up all the prerequisite software which includes but is not limited too:  MapSource with 2009NT maps, Streets and Trips, and other utilities.

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14 days and counting

or there about…

In about 14 days we’re off…  Off to the Bad Lands, MT. Rushmore, Gillette, Wyoming, Yellowstone, Golden Colorado, Pikes Peak and other such fun places.

At a bare minimum we’re going to Gillette and Golden.  I don’t have our full itinerary yet but it’s something like this:

Trip_002

It will be a mix of hotels and campgrounds.   The bike is ready and I’m ready.

I can’t wait.   I plan to update the blog as we travel if I can.

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Alternative heat part II (There is no free lunch)

This weekend we visited Charles Family Hearth and got an education in options.

After careful research we thought for sure we wanted a pellet furnace. Not a stove but an actual furnace that we could tie into our existing duct work.

Our biggest issue is we have an old farm house, it’s leaky, not well insulated and not easy to insulate.  It’s chopped up, not open so it doesn’t lend itself to a stove.  We’d never get the heat distributed.

We currently have oil heat, and last winter we burned through 750 gallons of fuel oil.  We ran out twice.  For the last month we limped along and wore sweatshirts, etc.

Basically our options break out like this:

Technology Pros Cons
Oil Heat Do nothing Go broke.
Wood (whole logs) None that I can see.  Might save some money. We have to buy wood or go get it.  We don’t have woods to cut our own.  Cutting/splitting/stacking wood sucks.  Then transport wood to the basement or where ever the wood furnace is sounds like a real joy.
Wood needs more attention, you can’t leave all day and expect to come home to a warm house.
Corn it’s just like wood pellets It’s as expensive as oil and is apparently very inconsistent.
Propane Easy conversion from oil. Just as costly.
Natural Gas Would Save money It’s not available to us.
Electric (Heat Pump) Should save money Not sure a heat pump could keep up with our drafty old house.  I suspect we’d be on electric auxiliary heat a lot and that’s not economical.  Heat pumps are not ‘warm’ and we like warm.
Wood Pellets Should be cheaper, is a warm heat, but isn’t instant on like oil. We’re already seeing prices of $300/ton (before delivery).  Pellets have been in short supply in recent years.  Stoves/Furnaces are in high demand, allocation is an issue.  Some of the bigger producers are in iowa and were just flooded out.
They are not maintenance free, you can automate pellet deliver, but you still have to maintain the burner and heat exchanger. You have to man handled 7 tons of pellets to get the same BTU’s as 750 gallons of Oil.
Coal Cheapest of all options Dirty as hell, smelly, and you have to handle it which isn’t attractive.
Geo Thermal none for us Far too expensive to install at this stage of the game.  This works best with tight efficient houses, our is the opposite of that.  If I were building new I’d certainly consider this.
External/Outside Furnaces. None to me… If I’m already bitchin about loading a wood/pellet furnace that’s in my house, why in the world would I want to do that in cold and snow.

So right now our run away leading candidate is a wood pellet furnace.

There are a couple brands/models.  Some auto start, some don’t.  Some have large hoppers some don’t.  All require me or someone in our family to be the fuel delivery mechanism at some level.

Some are available, some are constrained.   None are fast heating.  You don’t get the blast of heat we’re used to with Oil out of anything but Oil (or gas).  But they work well if you keep them at a constant temperature and keep them burning (so we’re told).

What are we missing?