Harassment Or Incompetence? Or Maybe Just Hiccups…

All writers like to think that a column such as this can rise above muck-raking and flaming. Ranting over an injustice or incompetence can be cathartic, but does it really solve anything?

So I approach the latest chapter in the great Time-Warner takeover of Adelphia with some trepidation. Please don’t think that I’m just ranting. T-W might not have done the best job, but it is not alone. Its transgressions might be legion, but the difficulties experienced by my clients during this transition are not unique to T-W.

The only reason for continuing to talk about these specific problems associated with T-W is that the process is not unique to this company. In some respects, the problems customers have experienced (I don’t know if T-W considers the transition to have been a problem) are characteristic of those we meet every day in fields far from Internet access.

For instance, does anyone believe that Vista will be shipped pure and pristine without immediate need of fixes and band-aids? In fact, all hardware and software systems seem to have troubles when upgrading. Upgrades might be worth the effort in the long run, but in the short run, they are a headache, and my clients are not well served.

Do business colleges offer a standard MBA course putting a value on customer dissatisfaction so that it can be treated as a parameter in maximizing profits? That is, are students taught that having a goal of 100 percent satisfied customers is sub-optimal business operation? There must be some optimally minimum number of disgruntled customers beyond which the cost of meeting their needs is not cost effective. If so, that analysis falls heavily on my clientele.

Who is going to be disgruntled the most by technical hiccups? Knowledgeable technicians can work around issues or, even by simply understanding the nature of an issue, they are reassured that it will go away eventually. Naive customers might not be able to distinguish between a mild hiccup and a major problem. That causes unnecessary stress.

There are antidotes. The local paper ran a small article reporting that our city council is considering legal action against T-W over contract issues. The article does not go into specifics, and I know nothing other than what I read, but that shines a ray of hope. Maybe action will be taken to prevent future disregard for customers. Call me a pessimist, but I do not believe my clients will be compensated for down time and stress due to botched transitions.

In the meanwhile, I have to deal with the woman from T-W who called to tell me that we are in arrears on our monthly payment. Our check to the company did go out timely, and our bank confirms it. Sigh… What’s next? I’ll tell you what’s next. This morning I got another call dunning us again. So I did the natural thing and asked if the dunner had a record of my two calls the previous day on her monitor. She said that she did have the record and they indicated I would call my bank to send T-W a copy of the statement. So I asked why she was calling. There was no answer. Does this constitute harassment or incompetence? By the time we finished talking, she was the third T-W employee who had good customer relation skills and who frankly told me that she has been dealing with other customers who have similar problems.

That piqued my interest. Instead of blowing it off, I decided to find out what is happening. The answer is obvious. Each month the company sends out bills with a return portion that has an address on it, but we use online banking. After the transition from Adelphia to T-W, the address on the return portion changed, but no other indication was given of a change. Customers using online banking continued to send their payments to the old address. T-W seems to assume no one uses online banking and each bill will be returned by snail mail. I am supposed to rely on these people for my email and Internet access?

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[tags]senior computing, adelphia, time warner, t-w, roadrunner, customer service, all of the people all of the time[/tags]