{"id":3116,"date":"2016-08-18T10:48:09","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T15:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/?p=3116"},"modified":"2016-08-18T10:49:56","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T15:49:56","slug":"how-windstream-business-makes-sure-they-are-the-worst-in-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/2016\/08\/18\/how-windstream-business-makes-sure-they-are-the-worst-in-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"How Windstream Business makes sure they are the WORST in customer service."},"content":{"rendered":"

You hate Comcast customer service?\u00a0 Think the former Time Warner was evil to do business with?\u00a0 Ha! Amateurs.\u00a0 Windstream Business has engineered a way to make sure there is no direct customer service conduit available.\u00a0 They funnel everything<\/strong> through a single 800 technical support number.\u00a0 That magical number is 1.800.600.5050.\u00a0 If you or ever unfortunate enough to dial this number, plan for suicidal tendencies.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Once you finally reach the automated attendant you get four options (verbatim as of the date of this posting):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “If you are experiencing down or bouncing issue on T1 or DS3 services press 1”<\/li>\n
  2. “an issue with data services such as Internet, Ethernet, MPLS or other managed services press 2”<\/li>\n
  3. “If you are having trouble with POTS or local lines press 3”<\/li>\n
  4. “Experiencing voice relate issues with voice services such as Voice over IP press 4”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Notice none of these options are for customer care or billing.\u00a0 None.\u00a0 They all transfer to “technical support”.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 They insist they must stay on the line because the possibility of getting cut off is a good bet.\u00a0 Then you wait 15-20 minutes.\u00a0 Once connected to customer care I voiced my complaint about the lack of number straight to them, having to go through technical support.\u00a0 My customer care representative said “it says for customer care use option 3”.\u00a0 Odd.\u00a0 I played the greeting I dialed into again:<\/p>\n

    3. “If you are having trouble with POTS or local lines press 3”.<\/p>\n

    I am not having a problem with POTS or local lines.\u00a0 I have a problem with bills you are sending me for data services that were turned down in April.\u00a0 This has precisely ZERO to do with POTS and local lines.<\/p>\n

    Windstream cut off some of our business services that we discontinued in April 2016.\u00a0 We are still getting bills for these accounts in August.\u00a0 They are disputing we never formally disconnected the account through our account rep, supposedly a person named Byron Ball.\u00a0 I was insured by “customer care” that my request for Byron Ball to contact us has been escalated.\u00a0 Despite several emails, no Byron Ball.\u00a0 Some at Windstream have told me he doesn’t work their anymore.\u00a0 Now they are telling me he does and will be giving me his bosses information.<\/p>\n

    Meanwhile they gave me Byron Balls bosses number, Bryon Waters.\u00a0 Now I get to call him and see what the excuses are.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Their goal is to get legally binding contracts signed to initiate billing and then forgo any semblance of customer care or account management.<\/p>\n

    If anyone thought Windstream might be better at business services than they are residential services, for which they’ve lost lawsuits, think again.\u00a0 This company is the worst in telecom.\u00a0 Do not make the mistake we did and select Windstream or their former Paetec as a carrier.\u00a0 Pay more to AT&T or Time Warner Telcom.\u00a0 They suck too but at least you get someone to talk to about the problems.\u00a0 What Windstream is doing deserves an FCC investigation, except the FCC is padded with government insiders.\u00a0 Another perk of the marriage between government and business.\u00a0 It’s not just residential consumers getting screwed, it’s businesses across America too.\u00a0\u00a0 These corporations do not discriminate in who they rip off.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    You hate Comcast customer service?\u00a0 Think the former Time Warner was evil to do business with?\u00a0 Ha! Amateurs.\u00a0 Windstream Business has engineered a way to make sure there is no direct customer service conduit available.\u00a0 They funnel everything through a single 800 technical support number.\u00a0 That magical number is 1.800.600.5050.\u00a0 If you or ever unfortunate … Continue reading How Windstream Business makes sure they are the WORST in customer service.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3118,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}