Does venting consumer outrage on Twitter actually work?

This is a great article on Slate about using the internet to complain about a company and resolve a problem.

Oh Comcast, you give me a headache!

I thought I would give Comcast a second chance. I thought I could forgive and forget. But, oh how they just want all my money by inaccurate billing. Oh how they love to waste my time by making me talk to people who don't have a clue how to do their jobs.

After using AT&T's Basic DSL for a few years I was ready for a faster speed - however that wasn't offered in my area by AT&T. Cable Internet was the only other choice in my area. I have had bad experiences with Comcast in the past but with a lack of choice what was I going to do? I tried to subscribe to their service online. I was trying to sign up for their up to 12 Mbps for 19.99 for 6 months but I didn't want to pay almost $50 to have it "installed" when all you do is plug wires into a modem. I can certainly do that myself. So I did what any normal human being would do and I called Comcast. The lady I spoke with said I could get that service of Cable Internet for a year and the install fee was $100 but she would waive it.

Imagine my surprise today when I received my first bill from Comcast and it was for $110! What? They charged me $50 for the install fee and then $28.96 for a connect fee. I was also charged for a modem yet I have my own. And then there are Cable TV fees too. Um, I don't have cable TV, didn't ask for it, and don't have a way of getting it. When I called Comcast tonight the first guy was confused at my bill because it showed I ordered Cable TV. But, I didn't order TV. So he transferred me to a person in disconnect who could get that off of my bill. She was awesome and removed all of the fees, removed the cable TV billing, and reset my internet billing to $19.99 a month for 12 months through some black magic. Apparently it was a promotion they were running that I caught the end of. So how did the Cable TV get on my account? Turns out someone tweaked my account on July 3rd and when they added Cable TV it took away all my discounts. How nice of that person, eh?

You thought I was done, didn't you? No, there is the technical side of things to talk about. The guy arrived and installed my cable on July 3rd. But - he didn't test the cable to see if it worked on my computer before he left. So I had to call in to have someone help me get it working.

On Tuesday my personal modem arrived so I called Comcast to get it set up. The first guy I spoke with didn't have a clue what he was doing. He kept telling me the MAC address I gave him was wrong. How could it be wrong? It's on the modem and the box! I asked him to transfer me to someone else. He said the only way I could talk to someone else was to hang up and call back in. Are you kidding me? So I call back. And this time a woman has no clue what I'm talking about. You want to set up your own modem? Yes, I do. Let me look that up. Okay I enter in your info and in 3-5 days you can call us back to activate it.

I happen to twitter and since I was frustrated I complained about my experience with Comcast. Imagine my surprise when Bonnie from Comcast quickly replied to my Twitter Tweet and came to my rescue. She took care of everything - we did it via email and Twitter and then I had my own modem set up and running. There were no 3-5 days required. She was awesome.

So while Comcast has done some really stupid things they also have some great people. But, overall I still have to rate them as poor because a company should be good to begin with and not just have people to save their butts when in trouble.

Lowe's Disappointment

Today I stopped by Lowe's just to pick up something quickly. I was shocked to find that on a Saturday that there was not a single check out lane opened but only the self-service check out lanes. Do I need to point out that Lowe's is a home improvement store and the majority of purchases made do not sync with checking yourself out.

First of all those machines check the weight of items and have a hissy fit if not positioned correctly. Imagine if you were purchasing a rake, a shovel, a garden hose all in one purchase. Try balancing that rake on the scale. Good luck.

New Tactic with HP

I came up with a new plan for dealing with HP and that was to make sure they had the type of graphics card that is in my laptop properly documented. So tonight I called them and spoke to a very nice guy in India even though we had trouble understanding each other. I found out btw he has an electrical engineering degree. Everyone should be asking the following question: why is he working in an HP call center?

It took an hour on the phone with him but I think the objective of the phone call was achieved. He documented that my graphics card is an nVidia 8400M and that my request of the repair technician is to replace the graphics card with a non-faulty one instead of "repairing" the graphics card. I'm very uneasy about sending the laptop in for repair based on the hundreds of people who have had issues with their computers failing even after the repairs.

I also shared with him that the rude escalated Case Manager (named Cindy) said HP would never replace my laptop and he apologized for her and said she should never have said that. I'm glad someone in this world agrees with me on that one.

Interestingly though, when I asked him if he could confirm my graphics card was on the list of faulty graphics cards he said he wasn't allowed to do that. Hmmm...

HP Laptop is extremely hot and smells like it's burning. Thanks HP!

This week my HP Laptop started to get extremely hot and two nights ago it smelled like it was burning! I was a bit freaked out I do admit. I powered it off and let it cool down for about 24 hours before trying to use it again. It quickly heated up again so I called HP. Remember my laptop fiasco with the dead hard drive back in the Fall of 2007? Well, it turns out that the replacement laptop they sent me uses a defective nVidia graphics card. But I didn't know that when I called HP last night. Nor did I know it when I got off the phone with HP last night.

The call was of course routed to India where the person couldn't hear me very well because there was a lot of static on the line. I couldn't hear the static, but he could and we couldn't terminate the call because I'd have to start all over in the process. He worked from a script and had me first turn off the laptop, take out the battery, unplug the AC adapter and press the start button to discharge the static. Then he had me turn the laptop back on and asked me if it was running cooler. I said no. Next he had me run a quick test on the hard drive to see if it would pass. It did. Then he had me update the BIOS (um, did that in December 08 and there wasn't a new version released since then). Started the laptop back up and he asked me again if the laptop was running cooler. Umm, no. The fan constantly runs. It's hot to touch. You can't even type on it because it's too hot.

They said it had to go in for repair and they thought it was either a problem with the processor or the hard drive and it would take 2 weeks before I'd get it back. This caused me heartache to hear this because how can one live without a computer for 2 weeks? From online banking, to online businesses, to keeping in touch with the world - I'll be lost.

However, after the call ended I did a google search and the first item that popped up was an HP forum where hundreds of people have documented the very same problem. That surprised me because I specifically asked the HP rep if others have reported this problem and he said no. WHAT? How could you not know this?

Further research yielded that nVidia released into the market defective chips from May 2007 until September 2008 and didn't acknowledge the problem until late summer of 2008. In August of 2008 they contributed $196 million dollars (to computer manufacturers) to fix these computers (both desktops and laptops). So my question is: why didn't HP notify owners of computers with these chips that they were defective? My laptop could have caught fire two nights ago! I almost burned myself on it. What, is this the Ford Pinto case all over again? It's cheaper to deal with the aftermath (pay of the grieving relatives) than fix the problem?

I called HP back and told them I was appalled that I got the run around about my issue when it's well documented on the internet. I requested that my laptop not be repaired as repairs are not working (evidence from the forum posts) and the fact that my laptop smelled like it was burning (other permanent damage could have occurred). My case was elevated to a case manager and now I'm just waiting for someone to call me.

Stay tuned...we will see what happens.

HP finally delivers

After 7 weeks of waiting, the HP replacement laptop finally arrived yesterday. A true miracle has occurred. The laptop has lots of upgraded features, plus they threw in an air/car adapter. Even though resolution did finally occur with HP, I still rate them as poor in customer service because it should not have taken 7 weeks to resolve my situation. And it shouldn't have taken over 3 weeks to get to talk to someone in the U.S.

HP - will they come through?

Almost 3 weeks ago my HP laptop's hard drive failed. Luckily (or not) it is under warranty. At first HP told me I'd have the replacement hard drive within 3-4 days. Those days came and went. When I called HP, they said it was backordered and I'd have it in 3 business days. Yeah, that didn't happen either. Now it's been 2.5 weeks and I can't get anyone at HP to tell me what is going on. Why don't I have a hard drive by now? When will it come? No one knows. Yesterday I was on the phone for 1.5 hours trying to talk to someone, I was transferred 4 times. They say it takes 24-48 hrs to send a request (and receive an answer) about the status of my "order". Why does it take so long in this day and age?

AT&T: Will it ever end?

I logged into one of my AT&T/Yahoo email accounts this morning and saw my list of email in the portal, but when I clicked on inbox, all of my mail disappeared. Yes, all of it. ARGHHH!!!

I was on the phone with AT&T for over an hour as they had me do stupid stuff that had no bearing on recovering the email. I was passed off from Level 1 to Level II, then told that a yahoo engineer would be in touch with me in 24 to 48 hours and that they are very busy and it could take quite some time.

I was informed that I do not pay for the email service, it's a free courtesy of ordering DSL. This was said in response to asking for a credit since this was my home business email account and they just lost my messages. I'm most worried about the new ones that were in the inbox that I hadn't read or downloaded yet.

This is the very first instance I've experienced where the inbox just disappeared. I find it very interesting that they can't just pull the emails from a server. I would assume they back up their data. We will just have to wait and see what happens with the yahoo people. Ugh.

But, I do have some good news. After months of trying to sort out the $10 DSL mess, the lady in the business office I was transferred to was able to credit my account $19.99 (the last bit required to make up for the difference between $10 and $14.99 DSL over the course of a year. And - she even credited my account $10 for the email snafu that has occurred. I guess it takes losing all of your mail to get some response. I'm thankful for the response, just missing my email, and not quite trusting the service anymore.

Delta - failure to disclose

When the grandfather of my friend's husband died just recently they were quickly figuring out how to fly (without spending their daughter's college tuition money) from Washington D.C. to Austin, TX for the funeral. The first thing they did was check various airlines for bereavement fares.

Southwest - "We treat everyone equally. All last minute tickets are sold at last minute prices."

Delta - "We don't sell bereavement fares. Then, why do you have on your website to call this number to ask about bereavement fares?"

Finally, my friends decided to cash in credit card miles through American Express in order to get their airline tickets. The American Express lady was so nice that she even made the phone calls to various airlines to determine what flights were available for immediate departure to make it to the funeral. It turned out Delta had the best schedule that met their needs. One ironic thing though, delta refused to be tied into a conference call so the American Express lady was the go-between. She would talk to Delta, then repeat the information Delta said to my friends. Once the miles were transferred, my friends called Delta directly to process the transaction and were quite surprised when Delta told them there would be $200 in fees and a credit card was needed. They were not informed by Delta of the high cost in fees prior to transferring the miles over to Delta. And now, that the miles were transferred, there was nothing that could be done about that. Other airlines has fees that were much less than $200 to process late last minute frequent flyer travel.

After a much heated discussion, the ticket agent reduced the fees to $50 and my friends made it to the funeral.

Why? Why do companies insist on sticking it you without fully disclosing increased prices, fees, etc? I'm shocked that so many people are willing to put up with this and not take the time to fight against it.

Update: October 4, 2007

It turns out that Delta charged my friends the complete $200 and when they called to inquire about the full charge the lady refused to reduce it back to $50 even though the notes on the account said that $50 would be charged. My friend's husband promptly wrote a letter to Delta's management about the situation.

The Rules at Cheddar's

(Event occurred in Jan 2007)

What an interesting evening. Tonight I met up for dinner with a bunch of volleyball players I have met over the years. They had a tournament in Galveston today and went out to dinner afterwards. We went to Cheddar's, a new chain restaurant that opened up back in Sept/Oct here.

So it turns out they have A LOT of rules and odd behavior! It's very comical. Read on...

When we first arrived we asked for a table to seat 10 and the hostess just gave a look and said it would be a really long time since there was a table of 15 ahead of us and they only have three tables that seat large parties. She didn’t know how to handle the situation. At one point she asked us, "So what do you want to do?" The reply to her was, "Seat us, either at one table or 2 tables of 5." This didn't get a reply and eventually someone beside her asked if 2 tables of 5 would be ok. Of course (didn't we just say that?) it was as long as they were in the same area.

Then while we waited in the bar to be called to our table we tried to order drinks and an appetizer. The majority of the people in our party had played in a volleyball tournament all day long and were quite hungry. The waitress took the drink orders and consulted with a manager and promptly told us she couldn’t put the order in until the table next to us left. We were six people seating around one of the tables that seats 4 people. Apparently it’s a rule. Well, the people next to us never left. We got our drinks (and she asked for everyone’s id…even the 40 and 50 year olds in our party).

Of course one drink was not what was ordered and the waitress left us confused (as she left the drink on the table) and then walked away. She returned telling one of the women at our table that the manager will have to speak to her about removing the drink. (Did we do something wrong?) The manager came and we told her the wrong drink was delivered, a regular margarita was ordered. Ok that’s fine the manager replaced it. Isn't it odd that the waitress couldn't replace the drink on an order she screwed up? This whole exchange took quite a bit of time. Meanwhile, everyone would just love to have an appetizer. The people next to us still hadn't left yet.

So we move onwards to the table (one table for 10) and things went much smoother until the food arrived. Everyone’s food arrived except mine. Turns out there is a rule against how many orders can be put in at one time. My food arrived 15-20 minutes after everyone else’s. What I don’t understand is why weren’t the salad and soup two people ordered considered appetizers so that my food could come with the group.

What odd rules!!! But really good food. I had the ribs tonight and they were delicious!