Time Warner Cable (TWC) cable went out today. I took a couple of hours to diagnose the problem to ensure the problem was with the service and not my equipment. I know how to do this, as I’m a professional at doing that.
The people at TWC customer service offered an upgrade to my service so that I could enjoy higher speeds.
It was, of course, a terribly inappropriate time to talk to me about upgrading my service when I’m calling to say I’m not even getting what I’m paying for.
This point was entirely lost on them, until the first one abruptly hung up on me. I asked him they deliberately interrupted my service in order to get me to call and ask for the upgrade? Then, click.
The second one was willing to help, and I had to tell him how inappropriate it was, and it didn’t really sink in.
I think these customer service agents have some kind of incentive to sell instead of repair. And it’s even conceivable that they are using software tools to send signals to customers’ modems to wedge them. The service goes down, people complain, some of them go for the upgrade which, gee, just so happens to take a non-working connection and make it a working connection.
Maybe this isn’t policy at TWC, but I think it’s going on anyway, and upper management may be blissfully ignorant of it.
Has anyone else seen a pattern like this with their internet service providers?
As I was complaining to the second person, my connection came back up. I do know that it is possible to send a modem a signal or reconfiguration, so this agent just might have “done the needful” as some of my colleagues so eloquently say.
So it’s entirely conceivable that they act like this, earning bonuses by disserving us. If the tools are there to make such a scheme, it’s a safe bet that some people would eventually build it, for the same reason a dog licks his testicles, because he can.
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