[UPC] Tech Support/Fault Repair Nightmare

jeffreylebowski

Hey folks,

I've been with UPC since Feb 2009. While my initial experience wasn't great (a technician who came to the house and made racist comments, registered the wrong mac address for my modem and then didn't make a phone call to correct it as he said he would) I found I settled in and things have been mostly very good since.

I moved address in Feb of this year and they were relatively quick about getting me set up at the new place.

On Saturday 12th I called to report loss of connection, I was told by the tech support agent to power cycle the modem which I did, and when that didn't help matters she said I needed "second level support". I wasn't very pleased, what is the point of differing levels of support if that's as far as the first level can go? Could just have been an agent who wasn't very competent, I let that go.
She said she couldn't transfer me to level 2, she would have someone call me back. Fair enough. I asked for a window of callback, she said no more than 24 hours. Pretty awful but ok.

I got off the phone, did the usual unplugging and replugging all cables and it came back after a little while, couldn't tell if it was cabling or not to be honest.

I got a callback at 5-ish on Monday evening, they left a voicemail saying that the issue was resolved.

Connection was intermittent between then and Thursday 18th, at which point it died completely and I called to report it. They found a fault on the line, which in fairness they said they could only see since Monday night, and said they would have a technician come by the following Tuesday 23rd.

Technician came by, said it was an outside cabling issue, said I should have someone the following day to fix it. I called the support centre to confirm, they said they couldn't guarantee but I would get a callback to confirm. No callback occurred.

Wednesday evening around four thirty I got a direct-to-voicemail call saying the issue would be resolved by Wed 1st December.

I called UPC a few times over the next couple of days, two manager callbacks didn't happen. Ended up opening a complaints case, told them I was off Wed and Thurs the following week and they could call then.

Complaints called me Monday and left a message, I rang support to get back to them, you can't call them they have to call you. Asked them to call Wed or Thurs. Asked for manager callback. No callback.

Complaints called me again Tuesday, left message. No calls since.

I kept calling UPC every night until eventually on Saturday evening 27th Nov they said it would absolutely definitely not be resolved before Wed 1st.

Then of course, snow falling meant they said I'm out of luck and that's that, no contact since then.

Obviously they can't do repairs in the snow, I can live with that (Though Eircom's repair crews have been working with delays but still full time through out this), but they should have had the issue resolved long before the snow.

So, I'm going to chase up the complaints dept when the connection finally gets fixed, and I'm wondering if anyone here has any advice in what I should say dealing with them? I'm very bummed and I do internet radio stuff that I have to record from home so they have seriously inconvenienced me, but I don't feel like shouting and being rude about it all the same. I want to be polite and decent about it, but I'd like advice on what I should say while seeking reparations from them, and advice on what reparations to seek.

As of today, no updates at all on when I can expect service restored.

Thor

Don't think there is much you can do, Just hope it gets fixed soon.

If the connection was down for a month then you should be given 1 months credit back and thats it.

I sure hope they fix it for you soon.

vibe666

as far as the 1st line support goes, they're more or less just there to log a ticket and get you to reboot the modem, which will fix a surprising amount of issues and is something quite a lot of people don't actually think to try before calling for support. its the ISP equiv. of the "did you try ctrl+alt+del" defence.

Thor wrote: »

Don't think there is much you can do, Just hope it gets fixed soon.

If the connection was down for a month then you should be given 1 months credit back and thats it.

I sure hope they fix it for you soon.

you should aim higher than that tbh, i had intermittent phone issues for a few months and i got 3 months half price broadband for my troubles even tho it was only a relatively minor issue for me. if you've been greatly inconvenienced by their lack of decent support (never mind lack of action) then i'd already be looking for at least a month free or more if they aren't going to be fixing it any time soon.

make sure you get on to someone with at least some technical skill OR some kind of manager and you need to come across as disgruntled, but maintain a cool head and do your best to not get upset with them or try and place the blame directly on the person you are speaking to. i find it helps to actually apologise to the person you are on the phone to for being upset and say that you know its not THEIR fault directly but that you're just so frustrated that its taking so long to fix and how much of an inconvenience it is to you. i know every bone in your body probably wants to bite their head off, but getting empathy from them is your best weapon to get the most out of them and make them feel like they want to help you. in that job, everyone wants your head on a stick, so someone who is nice and respectful to them is more likely to actually get something done.

jeffreylebowski

vibe666 wrote: »

as far as the 1st line support goes, they're more or less just there to log a ticket and get you to reboot the modem, which will fix a surprising amount of issues and is something quite a lot of people don't actually think to try before calling for support. its the ISP equiv. of the "did you try ctrl+alt+del" defence.
you should aim higher than that tbh, i had intermittent phone issues for a few months and i got 3 months half price broadband for my troubles even tho it was only a relatively minor issue for me. if you've been greatly inconvenienced by their lack of decent support (never mind lack of action) then i'd already be looking for at least a month free or more if they aren't going to be fixing it any time soon.

make sure you get on to someone with at least some technical skill OR some kind of manager and you need to come across as disgruntled, but maintain a cool head and do your best to not get upset with them or try and place the blame directly on the person you are speaking to. i find it helps to actually apologise to the person you are on the phone to for being upset and say that you know its not THEIR fault directly but that you're just so frustrated that its taking so long to fix and how much of an inconvenience it is to you. i know every bone in your body probably wants to bite their head off, but getting empathy from them is your best weapon to get the most out of them and make them feel like they want to help you. in that job, everyone wants your head on a stick, so someone who is nice and respectful to them is more likely to actually get something done.

I think that's all excellent advice Vibe, I'm not a shouty type myself, I've worked in ISP tech support enough to have some empathy so I'm always polite to the person I'm talking to. If anything that's one of the obstacles I find, it's difficult to get some agents to respond while being polite. The nice ones respond incredibly well to politeness but the bad ones not so well.

I've been bewildered at their blithe promises of callbacks that don't happen, I know if I ever saw a case like mine while working in an ISP I'd be horrified...

Someone's supposed to be coming to fix it today, complaints still haven't called me again.

vibe666

jeffreylebowski wrote: »

I think that's all excellent advice Vibe, I'm not a shouty type myself, I've worked in ISP tech support enough to have some empathy so I'm always polite to the person I'm talking to. If anything that's one of the obstacles I find, it's difficult to get some agents to respond while being polite. The nice ones respond incredibly well to politeness but the bad ones not so well.

I've been bewildered at their blithe promises of callbacks that don't happen, I know if I ever saw a case like mine while working in an ISP I'd be horrified...

Someone's supposed to be coming to fix it today, complaints still haven't called me again.

been there myself (working for an ISP) and done that (UPC, BT, Eircom etc.) ISP customer for years.

it baffles me that their callback system isn't automated at this stage, it should be holding your place in the queue and automatically calling you back and handing you off to a 2nd level agent when you get to the front.

i have this mental image of the whole of the UPC call centre covered floor to ceiling in scribbled post-it notes with little "give cust. xyz a call" notes on them. :pac:

they really need to boot out their current cust. services manager and hire the guy who runs customer services for Airtricity. those guys are awesome.

jeffreylebowski

Airtricity huh? That sounds nice... I think UPC have mostly broken my spirit at this stage.

I should say, I've met a couple of very nice agents in there but you know how it is, they can't do all that much by themselves. They're nice and helpful and they book a callback but then the supervisor doesn't do the callback, so the overall experience isn't much improved.

I was with BT years ago and found them quite helpful though looking back I was ridiculously undemanding, my sync went down late every Wednesday night for a few hours but I just worked around it.