I’m a pretty loyal friend and a fairly loyal customer.
It takes a lot to get me to pull the plug on a company, especially one that has served me well for years, but that’s exactly what’s happening in the next week or so when it comes to my phone plan.
I won’t name the national company, but I’ve had the same phone plan for nearly 10 years. I signed up when I moved to Birmingham, and it served me well through four different cities in three states.
I’ve lived with rate hike after rate hike over the years, not once questioning the ballooning monthly bills, mostly because the service was good. And there was too much unknown about the competition.
But like many brands, this one seems to be fading in terms of quality and customer service.
I’ve shopped around, and I’ve found a pretty good Mississippi-based company that seems to be coming into its own when it comes to branding and meeting the needs of its customers.
I hope I have a long and fruitful relationship with the new guys.
I can’t say the same about the cable company I chose three weeks ago.
This Orwellian-named company shall also remain nameless, but I want to go on the record and say that I chose this outfit over a streaming service.
I like to watch sports. I don’t care how many half-hour slots of The Office Comedy Central can fit into a 24-hour day.
I just want to watch baseball, and I don’t like delays.
Cable supposedly offers live sports, with no delays.
Well, a technician came to my house early last week and hooked up three cable boxes. When he left, he mumbled something about a system being down, so it would take some time for the boxes to load.
When I got home from work, I tried to turn the main box on in the living room. It didn’t work. I called the tech, and he told me to try another power cord from another box.
Sure enough, it was a bad power cord. He promised, and fulfilled it, to bring me a new one the next day.
Only problem was the boxes still had not loaded. And the tech, when called, insisted it was out of his control.
He did say that if I screwed the coaxial cable directly into the TV and did a channel scan, I would be able to watch cable. I did this, and it did not work.
The next day, still without working boxes, I tried to use my cable subscription to access baseball on an app. It stated that my cable subscription did not include baseball, even though I paid extra for it.
By Friday, I was done. I called the cable company and told them they would be receiving their non-working boxes back in the mail and that I was canceling.
Minutes later, I signed up for a streaming service, and I was watching live television within 10 minutes of putting my card information in.
While on the phone with the cable company’s retention line, I told them, for quality assurance, that streaming is going to crush them.
It’s so easy to access, and the cost is not that much higher.
“You’re going to feel that on about your third month’s bill,” the retention expert told me.
“Yeah, but I’ll be watching baseball,” I said back to her.
Not to sound too much like a “Get off my lawn” rant here, but good customer service used to be a vital part of branding. American retail at one time was completely obsessed with the concept.
We’ve gone from “The customer is always right,” to the customer is just alright, to the customer is the enemy.
If they can make a profit treating customers that badly, more power to them.
But I’m going to do business with companies who still care about me and my family. Thank goodness there’s still some out there.
