January 3, 2008 - 5:54 pm
As you may remember, I had many, many tortuous days dealing with Verizon this summer. They cut through cables, stopped traffic, quit when it rained, and knocked out my neighbor’s phone. It got so bad that I realized the only thing they seem to be really good at is being completely incompetent.
In retrospect, I think this was actually a carefully orchestrated scheme to lower my expectations to the point where any internet connection would do. Let’s face it, after a month of no connection, even something resembling dial up starts to look attractive.
It’s been many months now since they’ve hobbled together my “blazing fast internet” and for the most part it’s great - certainly not what I envisioned after buying into their promise of lightening speed and knowledgeable staff (I know, you’re thinking that “being in the advertising business myself, I really should have known better”… and you’re right, I should have.) but it’s better than the alternative. You know, the one where I become a permanent fixture in the corner Starbucks - my children wondering “Where’s Mama?” as I get my fix of caffeine and wifi.
That’s not a future I wanted for any of us. So in the end we stuck it out with the Devil we know rather than starting all over again with one we didn’t.
And it turns out we’re not alone. Smoke Rings, Coffee Stains is in New England and in that area, Verizon is the best option anyone has. Poor bastards!
In fact, the other options are so bad that people are putting up a fight over Verizon trying to sell out the New England area to Fairpoint. I shudder to think about the incompetence of Fairpoint if they can get people to champion Verizon.
So it got me thinking, what is it that implores us to stick out various situations - from “not what you’d hoped” to “downright soul sucking” - with a person, company, job, whatever just because it’s familiar? Is the Devil you know really better that the Devil you don’t? Does this compulsion have something to do with our fear of change, fear of the unknown, or fear that it won’t get any better than this?
What do you think? Have you ever stuck it out with an itchy, scratchy (but somehow predictable and familiar) Devil instead of forging ahead in search of “something better”?
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I never thought I’d see the day I’d stick up for Verizon, but lo, it has come.
January 4th, 2008 at January 4, 2008 - 10:06 pmI was thinking this about customer service in general recently. Why on earth should we put up with half-ass service, when we’re paying for quality. When we deserve better. I was rung up by two teenage girls at a CVS recently and they talked the ENTIRE time about their drunken Friday night. I walked over to a nearby manager afterwards and said, “I don’t expect 16 year olds to really care about their jobs, but you should at least require your employees to say hello to the people they’re checking out.” I didn’t feel that much better after saying it, but why should we put up with that?
January 6th, 2008 at January 6, 2008 - 5:00 pmOk - that is terrible.
No matter what we’re buying, bad customer service just isn’t acceptable! It’s insane how much this problem seems to have gotten out of hand. Do you suppose it’s always been this way and I’m just “getting old” (& cranky) or do you agree that it’s getting frighteningly close to an epidemic?
January 9th, 2008 at January 9, 2008 - 7:17 pm[…] I ran across a few examples of suckass non-service just skimming through my feeder this morning. Matthew at Childs Play x2 warns his readers not to shop at Home Decorators. Planet Nomad writes about inexplicable weirdness at Starbucks. CrankMama has a few choice words to say about Verizon. […]
January 23rd, 2008 at January 23, 2008 - 5:54 pm