My experience with 1-877-722-3755, the SBC DSL support line.
You are immediately talking to a voice-response menu system. Some people must like voice response, but I would prefer the "traditional" multiple choice button selection, rather than having to guess at what vocabulary the nice mechanical lady will understand.
Because this is a universal number for all support problems, you have to navigate a number of levels to get to where you want to be. For my line trouble, these were the steps:
How could this sequence be improved? The system should know, based on my ANI phone number and previous choices, that I prefer English and that my number is a home DSL installation. It should not make me lie: I do not normally run a Windows PC or Macintosh; I use a router for a home network. I have to lie to go any further with tech support. Is a router connection what they mean by "Business Installation"? Should I have given that lie?
The system should know if I have been calling in over the last week or so, and ask if this is a continuation of my prior incident. Then I could be dispatched (ideally) to the same representative, who might recall a previous conversation.
The conversation with the support representative can be quite frustrating, since they are obviously following a script. You cannot explain any part of your problem to them unless it is one of the several "valid", pre-programmed responses to their questions. They do not have any apparent technical understanding of a DSL installation. They might as well be part of the automated voice response system, except they say "thank you very much, sir" quite often. The representative puts me on hold quite a lot as she/he seems to consult a database or a supervisor.
The voice connection is fair, but not "local quality". It would be just adequate for colloquial American English speakers, but it is marginal when talking with someone whose accent or vocabulary is not American. I have considerable experience with non-native English speakers and Indians particularly, so I expect I have less trouble than many Americans. The person on the other end had trouble understanding me about as much as the other way round.
The point of this entire exercise, which lasts for 20-30 minutes is to get the Asian representative to assign you a reference number and a trouble ticket number. That gives you the right to hang up and wait for an SBC/ASI repair person to call you, normally within 24 hours. THEN, you get to explain your problem (from scratch, all over again), but there is some promise that this person can actually do something. There may be a note of sympathy.
What the ASI person can do is to call the local SBC people and initiate a "truck roll" that will bring a live body to your house. With luck, that may only take another day. If you want fast response, you have to accept an 8-hour appointment window. If you can wait, they will give you a 4-hour window.
I went through this complete procedure about 3 times when dealing with my marginal DSL line and its intermittent loss of sync. The last tech visit I had resulted in his billing me $60 because he said the problem was in my "old" modem. (Which by the way is still working fine on my upgraded line.) Blame the victim!
Four times, I went through the entire voice reponse qualification and was transferred to Asia, but Asia hung up on me pleading "call volume". Yet more frustration.
Customer Support (using the term loosely) seems to have no concept of problem escalation, even when I had called multiple times about an incident that was supposedly "closed" each time. I was ready to cancel SBC DSL entirely. That didn't faze the rep at all. Maybe I had been tagged as a liability, and the company would have been happy if I canceled.
I had to assert that I wanted to escalate when talking with a rep in ASI. That finally led to a good resolution for my situation.
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