Customer Service Motherfuckers
I wanted to write this post last week, but I couldn't.
You might think that I couldn't write it because I just started my new job. That would be a good guess, but no. You might then assume that I couldn't write it because I just moved into my new apartment, and I'm still unpacking and getting furniture, so it's tough to write a post with laptop cords in boxes and plastic crates acting as coffee tables. You'd be right about the challenges, but no, that wasn't holding me up. You might guess that I have no time between the new job and new apartment, and you'd be right about that, too, but you'd be wrong again about the cause of the post delay. All of these are reasonable and understandable causes, but the reality is, the very reason for this post is also the reason for the delay: my cable company (CC) is completely made up of customer service motherfuckers.
See, here's the thing. I was already hanging on by just the slightest of threads, with all the new stuff coming all at once. I was already stressed out about all these stupid adult responsibilities that come with a full-time job (the only thing worse that not having a job, I realized recently, is having a job) and new apartment, and all I really wanted was to be able to come home and relax. And by coming home and relaxing, I mean having TV and internet working so that I could watch Laguna Beach and check People.com. These seemed like very simple requests, but this set me down the road of customer service hell, which I learned is paved with incompetent assholes.
It began when I called up the CC to obtain their services. (You should know, by the way, that it takes extreme, extreme self-control not to name the company rather than just abbreviate. If it weren't for my pathological fear that my father will send me another cryptic and unsettling warning in the mail about slander and legality, I probably would make every other phrase in this thing "(Name of Bastard Company) Motherfuckers." Alas, I'd rather be able to check my mail without anxiety.) Anyway, I called up these motherfuckers and they told me that they could be here in two days, and I was quite excited. The woman on the phone cited me the charge for installation of everything - "soup to nuts" was what she said - and I agreed to take their latest appointment of the day, 3 - 5 PM, even though that would still mean having to leave work a bit early. That's okay, I thought. They're coming on Wednesday, which means that even if they come late (and they're notorious for it!), I should most definitely be watching a catty Laguna Beach girlfight by 10 PM. Maybe even 9:30, if MTV is showing last week's episode. I was psyched. I even wrote it in on the fridge calendar. That's a big deal.
Those motherFUCKERS.
So around 4:30 PM, this installation asshole comes in. I say he's an asshole because he couldn't answer any questions about anything except, "Would you like a Diet Coke?" because, as he told me about fifty freaking times, he was "JUST an installer." He JUST installed. He didn't know anything about billing. He didn't know how much it would cost me if he put in another cable box, even though he said we should probably get one for the TVs in the bedrooms. He didn't know how to program a remote. When I asked him about a charge that was listed on the bill, he snapped at me and literally threw the sheet of paper back in my face. I'm pretty sure I glared at him until he apologized. (That, by the way, is a side effect of teaching: you glare at people who are disrespectful.) Anyway, the point is, he fucked up the installation by not connecting one of the cable lines for the internet.
Of course, we didn't realize this until long after he'd bailed, because we'd gone with the "self install" option on cable internet because the professional installation cost $50, and I was tired of the CC motherfuckers taking their customers for every penny they had. I'd been assured that even a moron - and yes, I asked about morons - could put together the self-install modem stuff, because I was a technology moron and I wanted to be sure this worked. I wanted to be able to check People.com Star Tracks while watching Laguna Beach by 9:30 PM on Wednesday night, and Laurel at CC assured me this would not be a problem.
Well, Laurel, fuck youuuu.
Actually, maybe I'm a little tough on Laurel, because it's really the installation asshole's fault, since he didn't connect the cable even though he assured me time and time again that he could ONLY install everything. WRONG. He couldn't even do that. Anyway, his whole failure prompted me to need to call back CC to get them to help me with the installation process because all I knew was that even though I was following the prompts of the installation guide, I was stuck. So I called up and got this woman who told me that I needed to put in the CC installation disc into my computer.
"But," I said, "I have a Mac. Are you sure that it's compatible with a Mac?"
(Yup. This is going THERE.)
"Ma'am," she said patronizingly, "of COURSE it's compatible with a Mac. Ma'am, we service thousands and thousands and thousands of customers. Many of them have Macs. Our CD would have to be compatible. Just put it in."
I wasn't sold that easily though. "Well, it just says Windows here, so I don't know, I - "
"MA'AM! I'm an expert. You called the hotline, with EXPERTS here to help you. You have to trust me, to get your cable set up. You do want the internet set up, don't you?"
"Umm, yes."
"Then put in the CD."
So I trusted her and made a bad decision and I put in the CD and I watched my computer screen go dark.
This idiot was unfazed, because she told me - hearing my freak-out sharp intake of breath and panicky "WHHHHATTTTT!!!" - that this was SUPPOSED to happen, that she was an EXPERT, and that of COURSE the screen had to go dark and the computer had to shut off to be turned back on to recognize... she trailed off.
"Oh," she stopped abruptly.
"Oh?" I was frantically pushing "power" and praying that I really was speaking to a computer expert.
"Your cable line wasn't set up for that. The installation isn't complete. We'll have to send someone back to you."
So I admit that I forgot about the dark computer screen for two minutes while we arranged for some other CC asshole to come back on Sunday and set the whole thing up again. Sweet. Then this "Expert" (motherfucking poser expert) hung up the phone and I went back to my computer.
I pushed the power button. Nothing.
Huh. I started to get nervous but I was exhausted because it was already getting late and I still had to eat dinner and get ready for work tomorrow, so I let it be figuring that I'd turn it on in the morning and all would be okay. I think this was the "denial" stage of this whole debacle.
Fast forward eight hours, and it's six a.m. and I'm trying to leave and I decide to try to turn on my computer. I turn the power button and the screen pops up. No more black. I start to relax when I realize that it's taking an awfully long time to load. And then I look and see that in the center of the screen, there's just a blinking file folder with a sad face. As my father so helpfully said last weekend, "That's terrible. It's pretty much like saying, 'You poor bastard.' " So, yes, that's what was happening to me: at six a.m., a whole day of work ahead of me, my computer was telling me that I was a poor bastard.
And how.
I ended up taking my computer to the Genius Bar at Apple Computers (why is everyone a genius or an expert?), prefacing my interaction with the "Genius," "Hi, you could scream in my face and I would still say, 'Wow, Apple, what great customer service." This scared the poor guy, I think, but regardless, he was quite helpful and apologetic when he told me that the CD I'd put in my computer was not, in fact, compatible with Macs (I believe the quote was, "Macs pick up the internet on their own, you don't need the CD, of course it isn't compatible, I wish CC would stop telling their clients that it is") and that the incompatability had corrupted my whole operating system and there was much more computer jargon in there, but here's the gist of what I got: your computer has major issues, you need a new hard drive, this costs you a lot of money, there's nothing we can do, yes we're sure, yes we're geniuses which is better than experts, and yes this is the fault of CC, and oh yes yes YES, they are definitely customer service motherfuckers.
To make a very long story slightly shorter, I'll just tell you that I took the computer to this true expert/genius, and surprisingly, he never called himself either name. (Ironically, the guy at Apple referred me to him, rather than taking it in himself, which was very nice of him. I think he took pity on me because we bonded over the fact that CC had screwed him a few years back, so he sent me to his own computer guy. I feel like sending him a thank you note. He saved me time and money, neither of which CC was interested in doing. Those motherfuckers.)
I called back CC and told them what had happened.
"That's impossible," the woman on the phone said to me. "We're experts."
"Right. Well, I'm telling you that my computer was working just fine and then I am told to put this CD in and suddenly, I have nothing. ...Well, nothing except a three hundred dollar bill for a new hard drive."
"I can understand your frustration," she said. She kept saying this actually, over and over again, like she was reading some fucked up script. Let me tell you, Lorraine (that was her stupid name), you CANNOT understand my frustration because YOU didn't sit here for two hours dealing with an installation asshole moron and then I was on the phone with a fucking incompetent bastard (don't even get me started on how irresponsible it is to have had that twit on the "expert" EXPERT!!! helpline. UGH those motherfuckers!!!) and YOU didn't have to sit at the mall genius bar (and how come they don't have any drinks at the genius bar?) and then be told you need a new hard drive and all of your stuff is most likely gone and YOU don't have a $300 bill and YOU don't have to deal with not having a computer. So no, Lorraine, you DO NOT understand my frustration.
I said this much to her, several times. She continued to tell me that it was impossible that the CD caused any problems. In fact, as she moved me up the management chain, one motherfucker after another kept telling me that I was nuts, but that they understood my frustration, that CC wished me a nice day, that there wasn't much they could do, that the CD was definitely not compatible with Macs and the woman shouldn't have instructed me to put it in but that I needed to understand that the helpline program trains people as they go (though I questioned each of them, "Isn't compatability taught on, oh, the first day?") and, finally and most frustratingly, that they needed me to help them so they could help me.
Listen, you Jerry Maguire rip-offs, I'm the fucking customer. These people kept telling me I had to talk to all these CC company people, and what shocked me (though it was really all relative at this point, let's face it) was that none of these motherfuckers could understand my frustration regarding their inability to talk to each other.
"Why," I asked one of them, "can't YOU call a tech supervisor and tell him or her what happened, work out a solution, and call me back? Why do I have call everyone?"
But they avoided this question by continuing to repeat the same stupid empathy mantras which were empty and insulting and I hated every single one of them even more every time I heard the same stupid words.
The bottom line, if there is one, is that I was supposed to get a phone call from a tech supervisor who was supposed to talk to me about a possible reimbursement for the whole hard drive replacement, but SHOCK, that call never came and I have to track him down. I didn't have the energy last week to call him, and then over the weekend, the true computer genius fixed my computer and got it back to me. After that, I found that my anger level faded because I had my stuff back, and I didn't know how I was going to get the money I needed because I felt like the fight was taken out of me.
Well, turns out, it's not. I wrote this whole thing and now my anger level is steady at catatonic, so I'm ready to go head to head with the incompetent motherfucking idiots over at this piece of shit cable company.
And one last piece of advice from me to you: don't get Comcast.
You might think that I couldn't write it because I just started my new job. That would be a good guess, but no. You might then assume that I couldn't write it because I just moved into my new apartment, and I'm still unpacking and getting furniture, so it's tough to write a post with laptop cords in boxes and plastic crates acting as coffee tables. You'd be right about the challenges, but no, that wasn't holding me up. You might guess that I have no time between the new job and new apartment, and you'd be right about that, too, but you'd be wrong again about the cause of the post delay. All of these are reasonable and understandable causes, but the reality is, the very reason for this post is also the reason for the delay: my cable company (CC) is completely made up of customer service motherfuckers.
See, here's the thing. I was already hanging on by just the slightest of threads, with all the new stuff coming all at once. I was already stressed out about all these stupid adult responsibilities that come with a full-time job (the only thing worse that not having a job, I realized recently, is having a job) and new apartment, and all I really wanted was to be able to come home and relax. And by coming home and relaxing, I mean having TV and internet working so that I could watch Laguna Beach and check People.com. These seemed like very simple requests, but this set me down the road of customer service hell, which I learned is paved with incompetent assholes.
It began when I called up the CC to obtain their services. (You should know, by the way, that it takes extreme, extreme self-control not to name the company rather than just abbreviate. If it weren't for my pathological fear that my father will send me another cryptic and unsettling warning in the mail about slander and legality, I probably would make every other phrase in this thing "(Name of Bastard Company) Motherfuckers." Alas, I'd rather be able to check my mail without anxiety.) Anyway, I called up these motherfuckers and they told me that they could be here in two days, and I was quite excited. The woman on the phone cited me the charge for installation of everything - "soup to nuts" was what she said - and I agreed to take their latest appointment of the day, 3 - 5 PM, even though that would still mean having to leave work a bit early. That's okay, I thought. They're coming on Wednesday, which means that even if they come late (and they're notorious for it!), I should most definitely be watching a catty Laguna Beach girlfight by 10 PM. Maybe even 9:30, if MTV is showing last week's episode. I was psyched. I even wrote it in on the fridge calendar. That's a big deal.
Those motherFUCKERS.
So around 4:30 PM, this installation asshole comes in. I say he's an asshole because he couldn't answer any questions about anything except, "Would you like a Diet Coke?" because, as he told me about fifty freaking times, he was "JUST an installer." He JUST installed. He didn't know anything about billing. He didn't know how much it would cost me if he put in another cable box, even though he said we should probably get one for the TVs in the bedrooms. He didn't know how to program a remote. When I asked him about a charge that was listed on the bill, he snapped at me and literally threw the sheet of paper back in my face. I'm pretty sure I glared at him until he apologized. (That, by the way, is a side effect of teaching: you glare at people who are disrespectful.) Anyway, the point is, he fucked up the installation by not connecting one of the cable lines for the internet.
Of course, we didn't realize this until long after he'd bailed, because we'd gone with the "self install" option on cable internet because the professional installation cost $50, and I was tired of the CC motherfuckers taking their customers for every penny they had. I'd been assured that even a moron - and yes, I asked about morons - could put together the self-install modem stuff, because I was a technology moron and I wanted to be sure this worked. I wanted to be able to check People.com Star Tracks while watching Laguna Beach by 9:30 PM on Wednesday night, and Laurel at CC assured me this would not be a problem.
Well, Laurel, fuck youuuu.
Actually, maybe I'm a little tough on Laurel, because it's really the installation asshole's fault, since he didn't connect the cable even though he assured me time and time again that he could ONLY install everything. WRONG. He couldn't even do that. Anyway, his whole failure prompted me to need to call back CC to get them to help me with the installation process because all I knew was that even though I was following the prompts of the installation guide, I was stuck. So I called up and got this woman who told me that I needed to put in the CC installation disc into my computer.
"But," I said, "I have a Mac. Are you sure that it's compatible with a Mac?"
(Yup. This is going THERE.)
"Ma'am," she said patronizingly, "of COURSE it's compatible with a Mac. Ma'am, we service thousands and thousands and thousands of customers. Many of them have Macs. Our CD would have to be compatible. Just put it in."
I wasn't sold that easily though. "Well, it just says Windows here, so I don't know, I - "
"MA'AM! I'm an expert. You called the hotline, with EXPERTS here to help you. You have to trust me, to get your cable set up. You do want the internet set up, don't you?"
"Umm, yes."
"Then put in the CD."
So I trusted her and made a bad decision and I put in the CD and I watched my computer screen go dark.
This idiot was unfazed, because she told me - hearing my freak-out sharp intake of breath and panicky "WHHHHATTTTT!!!" - that this was SUPPOSED to happen, that she was an EXPERT, and that of COURSE the screen had to go dark and the computer had to shut off to be turned back on to recognize... she trailed off.
"Oh," she stopped abruptly.
"Oh?" I was frantically pushing "power" and praying that I really was speaking to a computer expert.
"Your cable line wasn't set up for that. The installation isn't complete. We'll have to send someone back to you."
So I admit that I forgot about the dark computer screen for two minutes while we arranged for some other CC asshole to come back on Sunday and set the whole thing up again. Sweet. Then this "Expert" (motherfucking poser expert) hung up the phone and I went back to my computer.
I pushed the power button. Nothing.
Huh. I started to get nervous but I was exhausted because it was already getting late and I still had to eat dinner and get ready for work tomorrow, so I let it be figuring that I'd turn it on in the morning and all would be okay. I think this was the "denial" stage of this whole debacle.
Fast forward eight hours, and it's six a.m. and I'm trying to leave and I decide to try to turn on my computer. I turn the power button and the screen pops up. No more black. I start to relax when I realize that it's taking an awfully long time to load. And then I look and see that in the center of the screen, there's just a blinking file folder with a sad face. As my father so helpfully said last weekend, "That's terrible. It's pretty much like saying, 'You poor bastard.' " So, yes, that's what was happening to me: at six a.m., a whole day of work ahead of me, my computer was telling me that I was a poor bastard.
And how.
I ended up taking my computer to the Genius Bar at Apple Computers (why is everyone a genius or an expert?), prefacing my interaction with the "Genius," "Hi, you could scream in my face and I would still say, 'Wow, Apple, what great customer service." This scared the poor guy, I think, but regardless, he was quite helpful and apologetic when he told me that the CD I'd put in my computer was not, in fact, compatible with Macs (I believe the quote was, "Macs pick up the internet on their own, you don't need the CD, of course it isn't compatible, I wish CC would stop telling their clients that it is") and that the incompatability had corrupted my whole operating system and there was much more computer jargon in there, but here's the gist of what I got: your computer has major issues, you need a new hard drive, this costs you a lot of money, there's nothing we can do, yes we're sure, yes we're geniuses which is better than experts, and yes this is the fault of CC, and oh yes yes YES, they are definitely customer service motherfuckers.
To make a very long story slightly shorter, I'll just tell you that I took the computer to this true expert/genius, and surprisingly, he never called himself either name. (Ironically, the guy at Apple referred me to him, rather than taking it in himself, which was very nice of him. I think he took pity on me because we bonded over the fact that CC had screwed him a few years back, so he sent me to his own computer guy. I feel like sending him a thank you note. He saved me time and money, neither of which CC was interested in doing. Those motherfuckers.)
I called back CC and told them what had happened.
"That's impossible," the woman on the phone said to me. "We're experts."
"Right. Well, I'm telling you that my computer was working just fine and then I am told to put this CD in and suddenly, I have nothing. ...Well, nothing except a three hundred dollar bill for a new hard drive."
"I can understand your frustration," she said. She kept saying this actually, over and over again, like she was reading some fucked up script. Let me tell you, Lorraine (that was her stupid name), you CANNOT understand my frustration because YOU didn't sit here for two hours dealing with an installation asshole moron and then I was on the phone with a fucking incompetent bastard (don't even get me started on how irresponsible it is to have had that twit on the "expert" EXPERT!!! helpline. UGH those motherfuckers!!!) and YOU didn't have to sit at the mall genius bar (and how come they don't have any drinks at the genius bar?) and then be told you need a new hard drive and all of your stuff is most likely gone and YOU don't have a $300 bill and YOU don't have to deal with not having a computer. So no, Lorraine, you DO NOT understand my frustration.
I said this much to her, several times. She continued to tell me that it was impossible that the CD caused any problems. In fact, as she moved me up the management chain, one motherfucker after another kept telling me that I was nuts, but that they understood my frustration, that CC wished me a nice day, that there wasn't much they could do, that the CD was definitely not compatible with Macs and the woman shouldn't have instructed me to put it in but that I needed to understand that the helpline program trains people as they go (though I questioned each of them, "Isn't compatability taught on, oh, the first day?") and, finally and most frustratingly, that they needed me to help them so they could help me.
Listen, you Jerry Maguire rip-offs, I'm the fucking customer. These people kept telling me I had to talk to all these CC company people, and what shocked me (though it was really all relative at this point, let's face it) was that none of these motherfuckers could understand my frustration regarding their inability to talk to each other.
"Why," I asked one of them, "can't YOU call a tech supervisor and tell him or her what happened, work out a solution, and call me back? Why do I have call everyone?"
But they avoided this question by continuing to repeat the same stupid empathy mantras which were empty and insulting and I hated every single one of them even more every time I heard the same stupid words.
The bottom line, if there is one, is that I was supposed to get a phone call from a tech supervisor who was supposed to talk to me about a possible reimbursement for the whole hard drive replacement, but SHOCK, that call never came and I have to track him down. I didn't have the energy last week to call him, and then over the weekend, the true computer genius fixed my computer and got it back to me. After that, I found that my anger level faded because I had my stuff back, and I didn't know how I was going to get the money I needed because I felt like the fight was taken out of me.
Well, turns out, it's not. I wrote this whole thing and now my anger level is steady at catatonic, so I'm ready to go head to head with the incompetent motherfucking idiots over at this piece of shit cable company.
And one last piece of advice from me to you: don't get Comcast.
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