The telephone company and a complete lack of service (And some redeption)

The telecommunications market in Canada, and most industrialized countries, is increasingly competitive. (I'll leave a discussion of Canada's ridiculously high mobile telephone rates for another day.)

Providers have high fixed costs for infrastructure, but once that is paid for the incremental cost to service each additional subscriber is pretty close to zero.

The one high and unavoidable cost is in-home installation. And while the underlying telecom technology is generally automated and pretty reliable, the human side of the installation process is what drives people crazy.

For the price I was paying to the cable company for television and Internet service I can get Internet, television and telephone from the telephone company. (I know, landlines are redundant and can be eliminated by using Skype and mobile phones. Unfortunately the Skype adoption rate for aged mother's in law is pretty low, so we're stuck with a landline.)

I went into one of the telephone company's stores to sign up and get everything ordered and the installation appointment booked. No problem, Wednesday January 4th at 10:00.

Wednesday rolls around and at 11:30 the service guy calls me to say that he is 15 to 20 minutes away from getting to my apartment. That would be great, except I had an appointment to donate blood at 1:00 pm, and the installation would take two to three hours. (Evidently the time I was given, 10:00 am, was not the time the technician would arrive, but the start of the two hour windows during which the technician could arrive to start his work.) Well, I have a nurse with a needle waiting for me, so this particular Wednesday won't work. I call the office to rebook. Tuesday, the 10th between 8:00 and 10:00 am. I figure that since 8:00 is the first appointment of the day, the technician might actually turn up on time.

Tuesday the 10th rolls around and by 9:30 I'm getting a bit concerned. I call to see what is happening. The telephone company has no record of my reboooked appointment, and the guy I speak to is a complete jerk. They can see me on the 13th. No good as I have an appointment. After much back and forth I get another appointment for the 17th at 8:00 am.

At 9:30 on the 17th I call the telephone company to enquire about the estimated ETA for my technician. The woman I speak to, Sam, looks me up on the computer and tells me that no one will be coming today to install the Internet and telephone. She then comments that my file looks, "really screwed up" in their system.

The remarkable thing about this is that Sam, who delivered another piece of bad news about the rotten service that her employer was delivering to me, actually seemed like a nice person. She was also the first telephone company employee that I encountered who seemed to care about my experience. What a refreshing change! I asked to speak to Sam's boss and got Leah on the phone. I told Leah that despite the horrible service that I'd had so far, Sam was a bloody marvel and was delivering great service. Leah thanked me for taking the time to let her know. (By a fluke of timing Sam was having her annual performance review that day. I hoped I got her a good pay raise.)

And what is the telephone company doing to make things right? Credits against the bill, a few months of free service and a reduction in price.

The remarkable thing is that if things had be done right in the first place then Sam would not have felt the need to provide the credits and price reductions to keep me happy. And if the people that I'd dealt with earlier had not been such jerks then I would have been a much happier customer.

So, what do I learn from this particular experience.

1) Women give better service than men. (At least among employees at the telephone company's call centre.)

2) Confirmed appointments mean nothing. Until the technician is actually at your place complaining about the crappy job the last technician did, nothing is happening.

3) In this very competitive market, the telephone company does not really understand that the most important part of the interaction with the customer is getting them hooked up quickly and efficiently.

My next appointment is for January 24th at 8:00 am. It will be almost a month since I ordered my service. I wonder what will happen next Tuesday?