phingers's posterous

Think for yourself.

A little Christmas Tree decorating...

Last night Marla and I decided that before Thanksgiving is not too early to put up our tree. So we did. It looks gorgeous, and we're still missing some tinsel and a tree topper at this point. Hopefully we can find those today before the stores close. We have a new unique tree this year, I have a remote control for it, and it is wired up with both white lights, the kind that my wife likes, and colored lights, my preferred choice. So now with the flick of a button we can switch back and forth between them and both be happy.

It is a good thing that I am in charge of all remote controls throughout the house, that way it will stay mostly colored lights. <grin> 

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Please don't get trampled in tomorrows sales, and I hope I get to see you around Christmas time. TTFN.

Why Century Link should cancel my phone service.

Century Link, formerly Embarq, formerly Sprint telephone should cancel my phone service. You see the house where we have it, is way out on a rural road in Ohio. There are probably only maybe 10 houses on our whole street. The telephone company was nice enough to bury the telephone lines when they put them in, right along side the drainage ditch along the road. This is great since when tree's and other things fall down, they don't take out the telephone line. Plus when they come repair them they don't need special trucks or anything.

On the other hand though, I did mention it is in the rural country right? So we have a few farmers around, and mice, and rain, and other fun things people in the cities don't quite think about. Well they get in the telephone boxes, or knock them over with their tractors, and lots of other things happen to them, like say having a farmer plug their electric fence into them etc. All of which make your home phone line buzz, hiss, crackle, and barely usable.

Well the kind people rolled out internet access to us a few years ago, which puts even more burden on them ensuring the phone line is working perfectly. As humans with nice good ears, we can make out the words from the noise, and somehow manage to coordinate a conversation in some rudimentary fashion. Well these computers are a different story, they demand perfect yes and no answers coming across the telephone lines each and every time. Otherwise your internet speed drops down to a crawl, or halts completely.

So with that background, once we got the internet at the house, I have been making regularly scheduled phone calls to our phone company to fix the internet. The mice or ice, or tractors seem to knock something around in our phone wires about once every two months. So once every two months I call and have them come out and fix it. That has to cost a pretty penny, I mean at least 15 minutes on the phone with them, talking to two or three departments. Their software to coordinate my ticket, dispatching, gasoline, parts, time, labor, etc. Has to easily cost them $150-200 dollars each time I call in. My phone bill is less than $100 a month. You do the math. They have to be losing money over the course of a year. Especially when they say they will fix it by Tuesday, and they don't then I call in and they give me a partial credit for the down time.

The frustrating part is, figuring out how to get them to be more aware of the problem, and fix it once more permanently. Put in some mouse traps, make the area fenced off so the tractors cant run it over. Something! But no each time I call I have to re-explain my case to them. The other time I told them I was out of town. They said they couldn't schedule a repair ticket unless I was there so they could walk me through their normal troubleshooting steps, which never produce results, but do frustrate me to no end. So I again have to go against my believes, to lie to them. I hang up, and call back, pretend I'm there, explain my situation about having them come out so often, pretend to do the steps they want me to do, to finally get a ticket opened for them to come out and fix the box down the street further that the mice got into again. So that the next time I am home I can have perfect (hopefully) phone service.

I'm stumped though, how do you propose I get them to fix it?

First time Whole Foods let me down.

Yesterday, after a long day at work, my wife and I headed over to Whole Foods to pick up our Turkey and a few other essentials for the upcoming holiday. You see Whole Foods is our favorite grocery store, we look forward to exploring it each time we go. We got our cart, and loaded up on the festive thanksgiving day items. It was a little bit crowded, but not as much as some days when we go on the weekend. That is almost expected, so we didn't mind. The gentleman at the butcher counter was very helpful, they only had two mild italian sausages left, so he threw in a mild turkey sausage for the sale price for us to get us up to the one pound we needed for the recipe. The nice lady at the deli counter helped us slice the paper thin prosciutto, and did it with a cheerful smile.

The last item on our list was a case of Peligrino sparkling water, my wife is addicted to the bubbles, so I found the last case up at the front of the store. My wife unloaded the cart while I was picking that up, and I took it and put it in the empty cart. I asked our cashier if she could scan it, and she said, "It looks heavy, no worries I'll just type it in for you, just put it in the cart." I thought that was nice of her, she finished up, we paid our big turkey day bill, and headed to the car. On the way out I asked my wife if she could scan the receipt and see how much the Peligrino came up to. Of course in the hustle and bustle of bagging up our groceries, the cashier forgot to add it in. By now I'm pulling out of the parking spot, and someone is anxiously waiting behind me for it. Parking spots are quite a rare find in the small lot Whole Foods owns.

So our quandry begins. What do we do? I don't want to circle the lot 5 more times to find another spot, it was an honest mistake, can I just leave and head home to get some dinner? I'm starving. I mean I don't want to steal, but these things happen. Just let it go right? Whole Foods is making a ton of money, they seem to be doing fine. What is another twenty bucks to their top executives paychecks? Not to mention the time it would take to fix this mess. I voted to leave, but my wife is a better person than me. She hopped out of the car, as I pulled off to the side and put my four way blinkers on. She came back about five minutes later, and I could tell she was disappointed.

She had to wait in the customer service line, okay no big deal, then she explained to the gentleman what had happened, and he acted begrudgingly and without any happiness. He looked up the code, swiped our card, and handed us the receipt. All without any real words of gratitude. In fact from my wife's description of it, he had a look of disdain. As if he was thinking "You made it out of the store with the water, why are you wasting my time making me charge you for it?" Now I'm not expecting a standing ovation or anything for doing our good deed for the day, but I am expecting the customer service representative to smile, and be extremely gracious about it.

So I do hope that if this happens to you, you'll take a deep breath, and do the right thing, even if it costs you a little more time or money, and even if it is against a big corporation. I truly believe if everyone in the world did this we would be living in peace. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

High Speed Internet Woes - A recurring repair would be great.

Our house in Ohio is in the country. We have critters, lots of em, bugs too. They get everywhere. Including inside telephone boxes, and control panels, and switching stations. We also have farmers. Lots of them. They plow their fields, and sow things, and everything else as well. They happen to drive past all these same telephone boxes, control panels, and switching stations.

Embarq telephone, now switching its name yet again to Century Link? Needs to come out and fix my DSL probably once every 2 months. How come I cant get a recurring repair? They can look at their history, and see I reliably call them that often, lets just have a standing repair order, every 1st Monday of the month Joe Schmoe needs to stop out, clean things up in the box, put down some fresh mouse traps, and ensure there is no buzzing on my line.

Okay maybe that is unrealistic, I mean they are your lines, and I guess as a consumer, it is my responsibility to call in and tell you they are in need of servicing right? You cant really do it yourself.

So when I call, instead of hearing the words that I say: "I need a repair person to come out and fix my voice and internet, yet again, please schedule a ticket" Why not play the transfer game, waste 45 minutes of time of your reps and me getting to state my name, phone number, and address 4 times. Which means by the time I get to the actual person I need I'm frustrated!

It is just bad business too, now you have a frustrated customer, who always has to call and waste their time. You get to waste 45 minutes of your 800 number cost, lets say $4.50, pay 3-4 people on a Sunday, $15 bucks, have the guy come out and repair it, $100 bucks? So your total is say $120, which is more than my monthly bill. And I call every two months. So you are probably barely breaking even with my house, and I dont like you and would switch if there was an alternative.

How could you improve this business model?