My DSL service was down on Tuesday night, Nov 25. i tried to see if it was my local machine but i determined that it was SBC’s error and i called SBC.
first, i was on hold for exactly 49 minutes! when you are on hold with SBC, they only tell you that you are on hold for “more than 5 minutes”. well, every few minutes i get a message telling me that it will be “over 5 minutes” until someone talks to me.
then, i finally get a customer service person. i ask him if the internet is down in my area. he says no. i said — “are you sure?” he said, “i have not heard anything.” i said “can you check?” but then he disregarded my questions and proceeded to ask me to reboot my machine a bunch of times and reboot the DSL modem (all of which, i explained, i did in that 49 minutes while i was on hold).
i finally convince him that it is not my machine but it is SBC. then … he finally checks the Internet service … and … to his surprise … the Internet is down in my area … and … of course, he had no idea when it will be up again (turned out is was down for many hours).
this makes me want to shop around for a different DSL provider.
suggestion for SBC:
if the Internet is going down and you know about it, inform your customers so that they can plan something else non-internet related
if it goes down unexpectedly, you should inform customer service immediately. instead of me being on hold for 49 minutes and then dealing with a disbelieving customer service agent for another 14 minutes, all one has to do is recognize my number when i call and play a message “we recognize your phone number and we have determined that the Internet is down for you and we estimate it will be back up at 11:30 pm Pacific Time.” that … would solve everything …
——
2006 update:
i’m encouraging people to rate AT&T / SBC on Rapleaf.
rate AT&T at:
http://www.rapleaf.com/profile/Z7HlwtOO
this rates “support@sbcglobal.net”
—–