I dreaded making the call, but it has been over a year since my original U-Verse installation and contract; upon noticing the latest bill's full price I decided to try to negotiate another year of locked in rates. I called the almost super secret customer retention number found online -- (866) 446-4115 -- and, armed with current U-Verse and local competition's deals, I made the call.
It actually went OK. The CS person took me through the exact hoops I was expecting to jump and fairly quickly offered $20 off full price per month for the next year. I was happy.
The funny, perhaps sad, part of the call was when I mentioned our local cable offer; 30Mbps service + phone for $5 less than U-Verse's current offering (which is actually $10 less than their offer last year that I signed up for). I guess I made the mistake of saying "30 Mbps" because she went into a short spiel on how I should be cautious of the competition's inequivalent speed terminology. She continued to warn me that while they may offer 30 Mbps (megaBITs per second) upload limit, my current U-Verse plan was in fact 12 MBps (megaBYTEs per second).
I was taken back for a moment, but figured that this CS person was probably not technically trained, rather she was most likely trained in customer service. I attempted to make a correction, stating that I have measured my download speeds hundreds of times and done many speed tests and I was surely getting 1.4 MBps max, which roughly translated to 12 Mbps. She hummphed as if to indicate there must be something wrong with my service and continued to insist that U-Verse offered packages in MBps speeds, e.g. 6 MBps, 12 MBps, 18 MBps, etc. I corrected her a bit more firmly this time, saying I'm absolutely sure what speeds I was promised and what speeds the service is actually performing at, both upload and download, and further I have only ever seen ISPs advertise in Mbps in the 15+ years I have used and shopped for ISP.
I got some flak for my more aggressive contradictory statements so I couldn't take it anymore and said, well I'm not going to discuss it anymore because what you are saying is absolutely not true. She bounced off of the subject impressively well and we finished up the renegotiation without another hitch.
After the new rate had been determined I had cooled a bit and though that this person really didn't know -- but SHOULD know -- the truth about their service, so I attempted one more tactful effort at enlightenment. I apologized that I had already beaten it into the ground but I had to try once more to let her know how U-Verse advertises and delivers their service; I pulled up their internet bundles page and read off the speeds, noting the lowercase 'b'. Within another moment I learned that this was a futile effort, as she huffily told me "well, I have a Master's in IT, so...". I didn't go into asking what an IT Master degree entailed. I just chuckled lightly and said thank you and goodbye.
↧