It’s only fair that you have a place to voice your complaints, too. I, too have had problems with these people, but the details escape me so somebody else will have to start.
I tried to buy a new cell phone for my existing number on my existing service. I had to pick up it a few days later because they did not have one in stock.
I was given a different model than the one I ordered, with a different number, on a different service. I refused it. I called my cell carrier, the other cell carrier, and the phone manufacturer to explain what happened, and that I would pay nothing.
Several times. Over several weeks. As I kept getting more bills - did I mention I refused delivery of the phone? In the meantime, the store where I bought the phone went out of business.
Finally, someone agreed to cancel the contract. And I got another bill, for the contract cancellation fee.
I finally got the issue resolved with a very nice CS person, who said, “I am doing this because I believe you” every third sentence.
“Believe me”? None of this was in my file? None of the hours I spent on the phone was included in the Comments field in the CS data-base?
No sympathy for CS people here.
As mentioned in another thread;
When I lived in my last two apartments in the same complex (not where I live now), I had the same landline phone number for five years. In that time I probably got over 100 calls from a debt collector trying to reach the guy who had previously had the number. For part of that time, I worked nights. Would get home, get to sleep, and (after 3-4 years of this shit);
“Hi Mr. BadDebt, We’re from AssCollectors and we need you to start making payments on…”
Whoa whoa, I’ve told you before, I’m not Mr. BadDebt. I’ve had this number for more than 3 years and you can stop calling because he doesn’t live here.
“Stop lying to us, Mr. BadDebt. We know it’s you. You had better start making payments”
<click>
Followed by calling back 30-90 minutes later, and then once more a couple hours after that. Then nothing for 1-2 months.
Also in the same time period, I got all of these “charity” calls from the same number. I demanded they stop and told them I was on the DNC list. “Oh, but we’re a charity, so that doesn’t apply to us.” Took several months to get them to stop, being hung up on by several ‘supervisors’.
The very next day: Same goddamned number. Different charity name.
Ultimately documented close to a dozen call times and numbers and provided them to the state in the form of a complaint. Calls stopped.
Okay, I have one. My new phone gave me, at most, one bar anywhere I went. The CS lady would not put me down for a new phone even after I explained that I was standing in an empty parking lot in Oakbrook, Illinois, the center of business in the Midwest (it’s big on its own and is halfway between Chicago and Naperville) and if the phone did not have four bars there it would not have four bars anywhere on the planet. She did escalate the call, though.
Back in the day when “roaming” still mattered for long distance and cell phone contracts, my husband and I went with Verizon because it had no-roaming zones for Chicago (where we live) and in Madison, WI (our alma mater, and home to friends and family). We saw the coverage maps and everything.
Then we went to Madison. We couldn’t receive calls from outside our area code. They’d go straight to voicemail, and to even be able to tell we had a voicemail - because we got no notifications - we’d have to dial our own phone numbers at random intervals just in case we had a call from our friends we were planning on meeting.
We called Verizon to complain. They said, “That shouldn’t have happened.” Shrug shoulders, nothing to be done.
Then we got our cellular bills. Every single call we made while in Madison was charged at a very expensive long distance rate, including our calls to our own voicemail boxes. Again, we called Verizon to complain. Again, we got “that shouldn’t have happened” but more shrugging shoulders and a refusal to fix the charges. A threat to take our business elsewhere practically got a scoff out of the CS rep and a reminder that our contract was far from up and we’d get hit with a huge early termination fee.
So, we waited for months, being very careful with phone usage (and no out-of-town use), and then cancelled the first day we could. Oh, you bet then the CS wanted to keep our business, but it was too late.
These days, we’d do everything we could to fight that, including call escalation, social media usage, whatever it took, but back then we weren’t sure what else could be done, and didn’t have as much use for cell phones.
Thank you. People, if you get nothing else from this thread I hope it is that the people on the other end of the phone do not want to escalate your call and can get a stern talking-to if they do, but if you are persistent they will and the likelihood that you will get satisfaction will grow immensely. And social media is a tool for fighting dirty and fighting dirty is good, but don’t swear or be abusive. Describe your problem completely in polite and disappointed language. Dropmom says that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but I have found that bullshit is even more effective, and disappointment while you silently blink back tears works great.
I mean, I may be a telemarketer now, but I have always been a consumer.
ETA: Oh, if it isn’t obvious, “call escalation” is what you get when you ask kindly and with great concern in your voice to speak to the worker’s supervisor.
When you have a problem with utility providers, just tell them that you’re filing a complaint with the State AG.
If they’re landline phone or electric tell them you’re filing a complaint with the State Utilities Commission. I’ve filed with the State UC and get a VP level response within two days and the problem is always fixed within the week.
I used to get a bunch of calls for several other people with my ordinary Hispanic surname.
I don’t know these people any more than they know me. Chances are that just because we share ordinary Hispanic surname #7 are very low. We might be 42nd cousins, for all i fucking know but that doesn’t mean that I know them.
It also didn’t matter to some telemarketers and debt collectors if they had the same first initial, after time had passed. Some of them I fielded asked for Timothy, Sophia, Mercedes, and Rosa among others
I’ve had the same landline number for about 10 years now. It starts out with 617. A few years ago, I got a cheap cell phone, the number of which was 857. I never used the cell phone much.
Last year I had problems with Verizon, so I decided it was time to go 100% cell. I got a new phone from TracFone. It had my 857 number, and my old cell was deactivated. Since I had my landline for so long, and that was the number that everyone had, I wanted to change my cell to the 617 number. After a new SIM card and a little voodoo, I was able to do that.
Everything was right, except for one thing – I couldn’t access my voice mail. Pressing the voice mail button got me an invalid code error, or something like that.
So I called TracFone support. I told the rep pretty much everything I explained above. She was very helpful. She had me turn the phone off (I was calling from my landline at work), take the battery out, take the SIM card out, bathe it in the blood of a freshly sacrificed chicken, chant, pray, push some buttons, burn a black candle, burn some offerings, and put the phone back together.
It worked! We sucessfully changed my phone from the 617 number to the 857 number. Great.
But that’s not what I wanted. That’s not what I asked for. In fact, that was what I’d already worked to change on my own.
So more voodoo to change it back to 617.
She then wished me a nice day and asked if there was anything else she could help me with.
“Yes. I still can’t check my voice mail WHICH IS THE FUCKING REASON I CALLED IN THE FIRST PLACE.”
“Oh. I don’t know how to fix that. You can just dial your own number though.”
I’ve noticed over the last year, or so, that many customer service phone banks have been moved back on-shore. It’s a huge blessing for me since I’ve always had difficulties understanding people with Indian accents.
When I’ve had to deal with a rep in Mumbai, I usually wound up asking them to spell what they were trying to say. I was apologetic about it saying it was mostly my bad hearing, not their accent, (probably true) but I simply could not understand about every other word they were saying.
Sometimes just asking them to speak slowly and more loudly helped.
Ferret Herder’s post reminds me of an old dispute I had with AT&T back in the old days of roaming charges. I go on 2 family vacation trips within a couple of weeks. One to Sunset Beach, NC, one to Deep Creek Lake, MD, both somewhat remote regions, cell phone wise, given the calling plan I had. Each time, I made a few unhurried calls to my girlfriend, whom I had just started dating.
I didn’t worry about roaming charges because my phone was displaying a “HOME” message at top instead of a “ROAM” message.
Silly me, according to my helpful AT&T rep, I’m not supposed to believe the phone’s display, I should carry around a map of their entire service area , and (with a magnifying glass, I assume) use that to determine my HOME vs. ROAM status.
I believe, in a bit of a snit, the words “You’re not getting another fucking dime from me” were uttered just before we were unceremoniously disconnected.
Thank you very much for that advice. I do not have any difficulty with my own service provider, but I will remember.
That was hilarious.
There are only so many people in India who speak good, or even adequate, English, so they have grown more expensive. Because of the other added expenses of maintaining a call center in Mumbai I’ve heard (no cite at hand) American call centers are cheaper. We are now cheaper than the people our jobs were originally outsourced to. Makes ya proud to be an American.
And you probably thought it was because of all the complaints, you silly goose! 
Recently, I went online at Network Solutions to pay another years worth of a domain name for a friend L who is completely incapable of doing anything like that - I maintain her site, pay for the name, etc. Anyway, I check the box for what I want and hit continue, the next page asks if I want to pay $47 for a private domain, I double check that I said No and finish.
Yes, you guessed it, they charged me the extra $47. Not only that, but they’d charged my VISA the $35 for the domain renewal, but my debit card for the $47, dunno how. So I call and make the mistake of admitting that I am not L, who owns the domain name, and the extremely unhelpful CS guy basically says that we have to eat the $47 because I’m not going to have L take the time out of her work day to call about something she knows zero about. I finally told him he had two choices - either he takes the charge off or he sends me to a supervisor; if not I’ll reverse the charges. Oh gosh, if I do that, he would have to put a hold on the domain! OK then, now you have three choices - charges off, supervisor, or watch me take all of our domains to Go Daddy if he holds this domain. Oh gosh ma’am, I can’t do > click <
Charges were reversed by Chase (in their one and only competent handling of an issue for me…), it’s been a month, domain is still not held, I think someone with a bit more authority had a look at the account. Two weeks later, Go Daddy was hit with DOS…
In their defense, was the fact that they previously switched your number relevant to you not having access to voice mail? I wonder if explaining the number switch to them confused the issue?
The voice mail button may be user-configurable. So you can possibly put your own number in there, and possibly your access code as well.
Geez. $35 is too much anyway, I switched to NameCheap.com, they are less than $10. I’m sure there are other registrars that are cheaper too, although I wouldn’t recommend GoDaddy.
It’s been a while, but I think that I had voice mail problems before I switched numbers the first time. I’m not sure what confused the CSR. It may have had something to do with how many times she was dropped on her head as a kid.
I’ll take a look at configuring the voice mail button, but right now I just have it on speed dial.
I had a similar situation the last time I had a land line. Some debt collection agency would ring three or four times a week, apparently looking for a person who previously had my phone number. I tried to tell them a couple times that they were barking up the wrong tree, but the calls never stopped. Yes, I could have explored other means to get them to stop, but at that point I’d gone something like a year with no more than one or two personal calls on that line, so I just stopped answering the land line entirely.
It was at least nine months of getting shunted to answering machine every single time they called, before they gave up. I sometimes wonder if they ended up spending more on the calls than they would have ever collected on the debt.
For those of you who got collection agency calls, they weren’t looking for Mahmood Farouk, were they?