Customer Service (or lack thereof)

Gotta do a bit of a work rant today - cause I am dumbfounded by the lack of customer service that I have received by Verizon over this year and am ready to scream.

So, we have a calling center with 20 lines (to do our telefunding). Each August we turn the lines on, each April we turn them off. Every year I've done this without a hitch.

This year it took about 3 emails and 5 calls to get them on. We then had a problem with 1 of the 20 lines having the wrong long distance. 2 weeks to get someone on the phone because the only contact number I had, had a full mailbox. And when I pressed 0 or option 1 the line just rang, and rang, and rang - one day I waited for over 40 minutes before I had to get up from my desk.

Now, mind you this is all through their Enterprise Direct. Their "big business" special customers. And this is the service - thank god I'm not a small business.

So spring comes along, and it's time to turn off the phones. I send an email to the account rep (the one that had the full mailbox in October, but I figure she had to check it by now) and don't hear anything back. About a week later I call, mailbox still full, I try again the next week (because I'm in the middle of major spring events and can't dedicate my life to finding one person) and finally decide it's hopeless. (And by the way, the website is useless cause you need a password, and to get a password you need to talk to your rep who, as stated before, had a FULL MAILBOX). So I call the random customer service number, get someone who I can't barely hear or understand, explain my issue and he tells me I have to talk to the person who's not there. So I ask for her supervisor, I get a number, call that and am told by that person that I need to speak to someone else. I call that person, they are out for the day and my week ends.

So today, I finally get a call back and am given another person to contact. I'm also told that our original rep has been out of the office since SEPTEMBER. Ya think someone could put the little "out of office" message on her email or check her voicemail and change it to say that she's unavailable.

So now, I am ready to spit daggers I'm so frustrated, and am wondering if there is anyway we wouldn't have to use verizon for our call center next year.

By the way, I expressed my disappointment in so many words when I sent my little email to them. But this venting feels oh so much better!

gf