I'm the Goddamn Nightwyrm

My friend wrote this love letter to her internet service provider. Too much awesome not to share.
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Dear Telstraclear

I know that most businesses welcome feedback. So I thought I’d put down some of my thoughts on what it’s like to be a long term customer of yours.

I joined up with the original paradise dial up in the 90s. Later when broadband came on the scene I stayed with you and also enjoyed the cable tv. I still have my home phone and internet with you so I guess you could call me a loyal customer. Mostly I think you suck.

My problems with your company started 6 years ago when I moved house. There were lengthy (months) delays to get broadband installed and I was ‘lucky’ enough to be given a ‘free’ clear dial up account. It never worked but I was billed for it every month for the next 8ish months. Every month I rang up.. many apologies.. ‘it will never happen again’. Not sure that anyone pressed save button on that because I kept being billed for the non-existent account again and again. That was to be the start of wasting large amounts of time on the phone to your lovely staff!

At that time I was also given a clear.net email address. I never had any access to it but all correspondence from you appears to go to that phantom address. I have never been able to convince your staff that I have a paradise email address; some say that they will fix the error (again with the non- existing save button!). Other staff treat me like I am stupid and keep repeating over and over that my address is clear.net. Not sure what I am supposed to say to that. Maybe they think that I am illiterate?

When we finally got connected with broadband it didn’t work. While there was a connection it was extremely intermittent. I called and I called. Is there ever a time when your technical team isn’t experiencing heavy call volumes? You should listen to your own hold music sometime. I mostly experienced the ‘turn it off and then back on again’ (complete with condescending tone) approach to customer service. Some staff were occasionally helpful. Some were rude. One man asked me to sit at my computer for 24 hours and take note of the times when there was a connection and when there wasn’t. He wanted me to ring back with that info the following night when he wasn’t working – no kidding! Epic fail. Finally after calling for around 18 MONTHS someone took pity on me and sent round a technician. He fixed something wrong with the connection on the street in ten minutes and pondered why no one was sent earlier. I pondered that too.

We have moved again since then but still have problems with internet reliability. No one seems to want to know. I do love that when I ring up to report a problem your automated voice prompts me to your website. I wouldn’t need to be ringing you if I could go to your website would I?

By now you are probably wondering if I am a complete idiot. Why on earth would I put up with that level of (dis) service? I’m not sure myself. Apathy I guess. In my defense I must say that I did request to cancel my contract a few times. The first time was on the phone where I was ‘transferred’ to someone who could help me. I have noticed that in your call centre the word transfer is a synonym for disconnect. A couple of emails have never been responded to. I suppose you may have been sending responses back to my clear.net email. Maybe.
I must say you do have some efficient departments. Your sales team are very onto it. Last year a guy rang me many, many times to persuade me to get a cell phone with you. He wasn’t willing to take no for an answer so just kept ringing to ask again. He was also good enough to send lots of info about it to my clear.net email address. He explained that my problem was that I didn’t know what my own email address was and if I logged in I would find he was right. In the end I was mean enough to palm him off on my poor unsuspecting husband.

So as you can tell by this novel I have had a long standing love of your call centre staff. I’ve never kicked up a big fuss though until today. Today I’m really quite annoyed. Last month I didn’t get my bill. I meant to ring and get you to give me the total but time got away on me. Today I received this month’s bill with the overdue amount and quickly went online and paid. A couple of hours later I get a phone call from a rude man demanding my name (hello, you called me!) and saying that I hadn’t paid and I was going to be disconnected. Well blow me down – there is a way to leave you guys! No reminder letters (maybe you emailed my non-existent account?) no friendly reminder phone call. Just rudeness. You really suck.

Tomorrow I call Telecom.