Went to look at a computer problem a few days ago. She wanted to run AOL on a laptop after canceling Comcast Broadband, but for some reason the laptop wouldn’t dial out to AOL. After half an hour of trial and error (mostly error thanks to the stupid way Comcast decided to wire the phones) I managed to get it to connect to AOL. Reactivated the former account, but their access plan did not include dialup. (Apparently AOL has a new package where e-mail and IMs are free as long as you have your own access. If you want to dial into them, you have to pay.) So we try to call AOL to upgrade the access plan, only the idiot in customer disservice made it absolutely impossible. He wanted verification of the account holder, and asked for a credit card that was canceled years ago. Without this information, he was completely unwilling to help. Basically, we were saying “We want to pay you MONEY” and the guy replied,”sorry, we don’t want it.” Even tried talking to a “supervisor,” which was worthless as well. (I put supervisor in quotes because I don’t believe it really was. I worked customer service before; most of the time when someone asks for a manager, the guy puts them on hold and asks “okay, who wants to play manager this time?” Real managers don’t actually exist.)
Okay, on to the backup plan. Call Comcast and reactivate high-speed internet. The usual phone tree (there’s never an option for “press 5 to talk to a real person”) and get someone who says “no problem, we’ll just hit a few keys and -” click. Oh, yeah, did I mention that Comcast covers the phones too? Well, resetting the modem also kills the phone. At least Comcast called back. Over and over again. 45 minutes and 5 disconnects later, it finally worked.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to help. It just amazes me how, years later, large companies get stupider and stupider.