Customer service problems mar dealings with Verizon
Q. I would like to get some help to find out why Verizon kept refusing to provide DSL high-speed Internet service to my phone line. Quite a few of my neighbors have DSL service. I have called Verizon numerous times and can never get beyond the person from their customer service number. Every time I call, I get the same standard answer that my house is too far from the central office for DSL to work. My street is a dead-end street and the fact that neighbors on both sides of my house have the service just does not make any sense to me.
Jeff Chu
Nantucket
A.I put your questions to the folks at Verizon’s corporate offices. It turns out that your logic is correct. You can have DSL.
The main question at this point probably is whether you still want it. Verizon spokesman Phil Santoro said he couldn’t figure out exactly what the problem was, but the folks in customer service were told to call and make this happen. So, it should be yours for the asking.
This situation echoes an increasingly persistent theme about customer service and fits neatly into an experience I just had myself. My wireless Internet connection disappeared. It has happened before and was resolved in five or 10 minutes by the technical person from my Internet service provider.
For some reason, though, this time the call went on and on (well over an hour) with extended pauses as it appeared the person on the other end of the phone was looking things up on a script that she couldn’t understand.
I asked for a supervisor several times before being bumped to a guy who corrected the problem in minutes. There is evidence that many organizations do have competent people on staff.
What in the world has happened to customer service? Are customer service folks just not as smart as they used to be?
Are companies not so smart as to realize the importance of that first line of contact? There are lots of qualified people out of work right now who would be happy to step into the shoes of people who don’t know one hand from the other.
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