How stupid is SBC?
Really fucking stupid.
So a few months ago Pazen had the bright idea of calling SBC and seeing how we could have "Element Creative" show up in caller id when we called someone, instead of my name, since I set up the account.[1]
Several botched customer service experiences, about a week's worth of fubared voicemail, fewer features and a higher bill later, when we call someone it says "Element Creative" on the caller id. Yay! Oh, and Pazen jumped ship shortly after making this oh so helpful suggestion.[2]
During several of my many calls with the completely incompetent and unhelpful customer service reps at SBC, I asked no fewer than three different people to have a manager call me back to discuss our account. To date, no one has ever called me. Well, that's not true. One woman called to subject me to a customer satisfaction survey (HAH!), which resulted in some technical supervisor calling me because the woman had incorrectly noted that I was unhappy with the service I received from the technician that came out to make sure our DSL service was still working. He was in our office for approximately 30 seconds. I had no problem with his performance. He was probably the most helpful and competent person I met during this entire ordeal, in that A) he only took up about 30 seconds of my time and B) he didn't break any of our shit.
One of the "features" of this switch is that now the SBC website login we'd been using for nearly 3 years is no longer associated with our still-active phone number. Even though our phone number never changed, our account's status changed, and therefore we had to create a new website account. A minor inconvenience, sure, but when added to all the other complete incompetence I encountered, the annoyance factor was magnified.
So today, I get an email from SBC, regarding the old username:
Our records show that you do not have any active telephone accounts associated with your MySBC (SM) account.
If you would like to continue to use our online services, please add a telephone account to your MySBC account by doing the following:
1. Go to http://www.sbc.com/mysbc.
2. Enter your User ID, XXXXXXXXXX, and Password and select Log In.
3. Select the My Profile tab.
4. Select Add a new acount and follow the directions.
If you do not add an active telephone account to your MySBC account by 11/17/2006, we will remove your online account from our database.
Thank you for using SBC Online Services. We look forward to continuing to serve you.
Suck it SBC.
[1] When I first set up the account, I told them it was for a business, and they went ahead and set it up as a residential line anyway. Thanks, dickheads!
[2] I keed! I keed!
Here's a case where outsourcing a customer service job to India would be a good thing.
carl 09 Mar 2006