You’re not the only one putting the operator in the “get in trouble for deviating from script or take the statistics hit” dilemma, you know. I’ve seen people get bounced out of jobs for only a few minor things. Granted, management was looking for staff to cut at the time (penny-pinching on staffing runs rampant in call centers), but the “doesn’t follow procedure” or “inadequate sales numbers” tags are a great way for the employee to wind up targeted, and an absurdly low number of violations CAN result in punished or fired employee, depending on how tightly bunched management/QA’s underwear is.
Again, I have personally seen such events, so don’t try to tell me it doesn’t happen.
I had one of these bright sparks at my door a few weeks ago trying to sell be a satellite TV/broadband/mobile phone package. I told him I was very happy with my current broadband/mobile provider (which I am) and that I don’t need more than the 80+ television channels I get FOR FREE.
“Can I ask which providers you currently have? Because if we compare…”
“No.”
“But if you could just tell me…”
“No. I’m not going to discuss my current services.”
Think you’re being slightly dramatic. The calls are likely to be recorded, and whichever manager hears the lack of boilerplate is also going to hear the customer saying in no uncertain terms that they’re going to hang up if they hear it. If the company is so dysfunctional that they’d fire an employee for retaining a customer, there’s a much deeper problem to be addressed.
There’s no reason to be an asshole to low-level employees, but as a customer I’m not responsible for making sure they stay happily employed. Personally, I tend to just endure the spiels rather than give an ultimatum, but I wouldn’t demonize anyone who does so if they’re not dicks about it.
[bolding mine]
This is the issue that’s keeping me from switching from Xfinity to U-Verse. Coworkers who went with U-Verse have left it due to consistent over-charging that is nearly impossible to get resolved.
For those here who’ve recently switched to U-Verse, please keep us posted.
If anything goes wrong with the billing, prepare for pain.
The Uverse technology and the service is good when it works. I had a terrible time with the TV service when the set-top boxes were wireless, but replacing them with wired boxes and running some dedicated Ethernet lines to them from the gateway box fixed that. (Speaking of which, try to avoid putting the TV data on your home network as three or four HD video streams are probably more bits than a home network device can handle.)
Reliability-wise, in the past six months, we’ve had a couple brief early-morning outages probably caused by the equipment pulling down an update, and there was one significant outage caused by a backhoe.
I haven’t been “graced” with these door-to-door Internet/cable salesmen – yet. But literally more than half my junk mail is Uverse and Xfinity advertising, and way more than half of that endless “pick me! for your cable needs!” junk is from AT&T/Uverse.
I think part of the problem is that I use AT&T for my landline, but not for the Internet, and I don’t have cable. As an existing customer, the no-junk-mail list doesn’t work. :smack: Also, I think the telephone & cable companies almost cannot fathom how someone under 50 years old in a middle-class neighborhood could not have cable TV. :rolleyes: (I do watch TV, and on a purely financial level I can afford cable, but I don’t watch enough TV for cable to be worth it. ;))
Oh, I had fun with some Kirby salesmen one evening when I was bored. Junior guy came to demo his vacuum - which didn’t do a very good job, actually. Then senior sales guy came. I let him run through every one of his sales strategies. First, God. (And he was an Israeli, I believe, so that was pretty funny.) Then just one more sale and his kids could eat. Then we started working on price. We were down to about 1/4 the original sales price before I finally escorted him out. Now, if I decided to buy one, I don’t know for sure that he’d tell me the cord cost $50, but it was interesting to see how much margin these clowns have. We did the same thing once for a timeshare. Very instructive.
We only have one TV in the house, and no matter what the billing headaches are, they can’t be worse than 5 outages a day (no exaggeration) with Brighthouse.
Ditto here. I have satellite myself, much cheaper and it works fine, and I don’t need cable for five TVs in five rooms - I’ve got one, and that is it.
Their junk mail is the most elaborate, heaviest, most luxurious junk mail of any I get. They should be able to lower their prices a lot if they sent it once a week, not every other day.
This is why I live in the country.
My driveway is 400 yards long, if you make it that far without the dogs biting you or me shooting you then I suppose you earned to right to spiel.
Living in a secure apartment building has always worked for me, except at three different places the Seattle Times did manage to harass me. Better luck with that where people don’t have to trek 10 miles to get to the recycling dumpster, assholes!
Also with people who live in like 1990 when people got newspapers.
But literally more than half my junk mail is Uverse and Xfinity advertising, and way more than half of that endless “pick me! for your cable needs!” junk is from AT&T/Uverse.