Happy/Sadzy

Today, someone in my house was either doing some serious streaming porn, or the interwebs were just slow, but I got annoyed with my dsl speed. I’ve had my ISP for about 5 years, and while I am very concerned that the suck factor might go way up after their recent acquisition by a Big Box Retailer, they’ve been very good. Only a few outages that I’ve noticed and reasonable speeds.

So I went and looked at the marketing pages to see what sort of prices they were offering. The package I bought 5 years ago isn’t present, and the materials are pretty light wrt specifics, so I was not particularly weirded by what appeared to be somewhat higher speeds and somewhat lower prices.

I called the sales office up to enquire about an upgrade. At first it appeared that I would be able to upgrade my existing 1.5 down / 768 up to something along the lines of 8 down / 1 up for about 50% more, and no new equipment required, just a modem reboot. Not too shabby, let’s do it.

Then he called back to let me know their info was incorrect, and I would max out at 3 down / 768 up because we’re about as far away from a phone CO as you can get in the city. Sigh. Bonus points: My price would decrease by about $25 a month.

Rewr. “Really?”, I asked. Yes really. Isn’t that a great deal. It sure is, but why oh why didn’t you offer me this magic upgrade before? Well golly we’re very very busy what with 50k+ customers. Uh huh.

You have not provided me with excellent customer service, ISP. Particularly for a loyal customer of 5 years. While staying has the advantages of me not having to do a damn thing except enjoy lower bills, this irks me enough to wonder if I might be able to get even faster speeds for slightly more money with just about anyone else. Loyalty counts, and shitty customer service drags your brand down.

So, his advice to me, and mine to you, is check in with your ISP frequently to see if they’re screwing you around by inaction.