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July 29, 2003
Tuesday Tattiness
The First Lady of Waikiki. The Sheraton Moana Surfrider was the first hotel in Waikiki (circa 1901). As such, it is unique in many ways. I'm talking about being the location from which the original radio show "Hawaii Calls" came from in the 1930's. I'm talking about the old world little things that separate the great hotels from the also rans like changing the floor mats in the elevators, each with a greeting for good morning, afternoon, and evening. I'm talking about having high tea on the veranda in the afternoon. I'm talking about a grand piano in the lounge and an opera trained singer to go with it. I'm talking about a host giving you a lei as you check in.
The Moana is where we stayed last Friday. It was a gift to celebrate our wedding anniversary from my step-daughter. But be aware that since the hotel is old, and if you stay in the original Banyan Tower as we did, you have to understand what that means. It means the rooms, while larger than a standard hotel room, were not designed for modern conveniences like electricity. So don't be surprised to see electrical conduit running along the baseboards. And don't be surprised to smell a certain mustiness in a room older than some countries. And don't be surprised if the wooden floors of the lanai creak a little when you walk on them.
Still, if you want to experience things from a bygone era, this is the place to stay.
Danger Will Robinson. Feel to skip this as it will be your standard rant about ThePhoneCompany. In this case, it's Verizon. Both in its incarnation as a wireless and also as an Internet provider.
First the wireless. I've had problems using their on-line automatic bill paying from the start. It took them months and numerous phone calls before they got their act together and started automatic payments from my credit card. But eventually things settled down and all was well.
That is, until they decided to switch their billing company. That's when things went down hill again. Out-of-the blue, I get a notice that I've not paid my wireless bill. Hmmm. That should be impossible being that I have automatic payment of the bill. But leave it to the phone company to get that wrong.
So I call the number on the bill for these types of questions and speak to someone who says they have no information regarding any automatic payments for my account. Hmmmm. Since I've been doing this for over a year, that seems improbable, if not impossible. So he transfer's me to Finance and someone named "Crystal".
Crystal tells me about a recent change in billing company and how a mere handful of customers had problems - me being one of them. But don't worry, all I have to do is make the June payment and the July one will be automatically deducted as before. She suggests I go to their website and make the payment via credit card. Which I do. At least, I go to their website and try to find a way of paying a single payment via credit card as I am already signed-up for automatic monthly payments. I seem to find a way of doing so but decided to check back the next day to make sure the payment was made.
The next day I check, and sure enough, no payment. Sigh. In addition, my automatic payment plan has now been deleted and no payments are being made. Further, there does not appear to be a way of reinstating the automatic payments. The only options available are "On Demand" payments, which means I have to log-in each month and go through this system that is not working. Sigh.
I wait one more day and sure enough, all the options are back. So I change my "no payments" to automatic payment via charge card. This morning, I get an email from Verizon saying I can not change to automatic payments because I already have another type of payment plan in place. It does not say what type of plan in place, only that I can't change it. But as far as I can see, the plan I have is no payments at all as none are occurring.
I should mention that all during this time I'm getting bills in the mail saying I am past due and they will terminate service. If these cell phones weren't for my mother and wife I would terminate their f*#king service and switch to someone else (which I may do anyway). As it is, my own service is through AT&T. Say what you will about them, but at least they get the billing right.
And now for the land-line side of the story. I get Internet access through Verizon ADSL. The posted speed is 768 down/128 up, or at least, that's what used to be posted. Verizon recently made some changes and their website no longer indicates what the residential speed is. All they say is they are much faster than dial-up. They also used to say how they were faster than cable modems but they no longer say that either (which is a good thing because 768 down is about half of what I got via RoadRunner cable service. In fact, at times, I got between 2 and 3mb/sec. Once you've experienced that kind of speed, dropping down to 768 seems like running in molasses).
In any case, Verizon recently lowered the price of this service, and according to the Verizon person I talked to on the phone, they also increased the speed to 1.5mb/sec. Hmmm. I know that's what they said, but I'm still barely getting 700kb/sec. So the person checks to see if my line is qualified for 1.5/sec and after a short delay, the answer is yes, it is. So why aren't I getting 1.5 or something close to it? They can't tell me, but will gladly transfer me to customer service so I can find out.
As many of you know, customer service is seen as a cost center and thus, something that must be minimized. Hence, while I got a sales representative in under three rings, I am put on hold when I need to speak to customer service. And hold I am for five minutes before I give up.
When will a company realize that I would be willing to pay a little more if they acted as if the money I pay to them runs their business? That I would loyally stick with a company that acts as if the customer is not a disruption to their business plan, but rather is the most important piece?
I am sick and tired of being treated like rubbish. I am the customer. My money pays their inflated salaries. I refuse to bend over and say thank you to service that isn't even of minimal quality.
Aloha!
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