You hate Comcast customer service? Think the former Time Warner was evil to do business with? Ha! Amateurs. Windstream Business has engineered a way to make sure there is no direct customer service conduit available. They funnel everything through a single 800 technical support number. That magical number is 1.800.600.5050. If you or ever unfortunate enough to dial this number, plan for suicidal tendencies.
This time I dialed and was greeted with “Thank you for calling Windstream Business” then dead air for a total of 2 minutes and 47 seconds according to the call timer on my phone. Once you finally reach the automated attendant you get four options (verbatim as of the date of this posting):
- “If you are experiencing down or bouncing issue on T1 or DS3 services press 1”
- “an issue with data services such as Internet, Ethernet, MPLS or other managed services press 2”
- “If you are having trouble with POTS or local lines press 3”
- “Experiencing voice relate issues with voice services such as Voice over IP press 4”
Notice none of these options are for customer care or billing. None. They all transfer to “technical support”. Once you get one of these technical support representatives they will be very aggravated they have to handle a billing call because apparently the hand off to “customer care” is a painful process for them. They insist they must stay on the line because the possibility of getting cut off is a good bet. Then you wait 15-20 minutes. Once connected to customer care I voiced my complaint about the lack of number straight to them, having to go through technical support. My customer care representative said “it says for customer care use option 3”. Odd. I played the greeting I dialed into again:
3. “If you are having trouble with POTS or local lines press 3”.
I am not having a problem with POTS or local lines. I have a problem with bills you are sending me for data services that were turned down in April. This has precisely ZERO to do with POTS and local lines.
Windstream cut off some of our business services that we discontinued in April 2016. We are still getting bills for these accounts in August. They are disputing we never formally disconnected the account through our account rep, supposedly a person named Byron Ball. I was insured by “customer care” that my request for Byron Ball to contact us has been escalated. Despite several emails, no Byron Ball. Some at Windstream have told me he doesn’t work their anymore. Now they are telling me he does and will be giving me his bosses information.
Meanwhile they gave me Byron Balls bosses number, Bryon Waters. Now I get to call him and see what the excuses are. Chances I’m going to ever got to speak to Mr. Bryon Waters are damn near zero since all of this is just stonewalling by Windstream. Their goal is to get legally binding contracts signed to initiate billing and then forgo any semblance of customer care or account management.
If anyone thought Windstream might be better at business services than they are residential services, for which they’ve lost lawsuits, think again. This company is the worst in telecom. Do not make the mistake we did and select Windstream or their former Paetec as a carrier. Pay more to AT&T or Time Warner Telcom. They suck too but at least you get someone to talk to about the problems. What Windstream is doing deserves an FCC investigation, except the FCC is padded with government insiders. Another perk of the marriage between government and business. It’s not just residential consumers getting screwed, it’s businesses across America too. These corporations do not discriminate in who they rip off.