Vary funny....

[Mort]

What follows is a superb example of British humour in A LETTER THAT WAS
TRULY WRITTEN AND SENT. The piece suggests two things:

1) Americans and Canadians are not the only ones who get poor service from
their ISP, cable and/or alarm companies. (NTL is a cable operator in
Britain).

2) The Brits probably write the world's best letters of complaint.

"Dear Cretins:

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your
four-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, telephone, and alarm
monitoring.

During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service
which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and
stupidity of monolithic proportions.

Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue
your professional prerogative and seek to rectify these difficulties -- or
more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading
material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking
vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.

My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my
spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your
technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57
minuteslistening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying
Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website. HOW?

I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes --
an activity at which you are no doubt both familiar and highly adept. The
rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the
technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools -- such as a
drill-bit, and his cerebrum.

Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone
calls over four weeks my modem arrived, six weeks after I had requested it
-- and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet server's downtime is
roughly 35% -- the hours between about 6 pm and midnight, Monday through
Friday, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone
connection.

I have made nine calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been
unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals who are,
it seems, also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that a
telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be
transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is
available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone
(and then been redirected to an answering machine informing me that your
office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been
redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman. And several other
variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a
thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of
those crucially important testicle moments to attend to.

Frankly I don't care. It's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my
frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music.

Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought British Telecom was shit; that they had attained the holy
piss-pot of god-awful customer relations; and that no one, anywhere, ever,
could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering
service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well,
there isn't anyone else is there?

How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable
dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you
truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of
the highest order. BT -- wankers though they are -- shine like brilliant
beacons of success in the filthy mire of your seemingly limitless
inadequacy.

Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to
receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any
potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which
you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver. Any such
activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief and will
quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat's litter
tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and
your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become
desiccated during transit -- they were satisfyingly moist at the time of
posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not
experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the
very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.

Have a nice day. May it be the last in your miserable short lives, you
irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twits."

[Marbus]

That's halarious, never thought of sending cat shit before, hah.

Marb

[Shaerra]

hahahaha I may need to borrow excerpts from this little gem.

[Seebs]

I long to be insulted by Brits. Its almost flattering.

[Krimson Klaw]

Haha my students are staring at me like I am crazy. That rocked.

[CalandraWindrose]

That was exceedingly amusing

[Cotto]

Makes you proud to be in the U.K

[Akaran_D]

LMAO.

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

Very, very funny.

[pyrella]

I had real shitty service with Pacbell DSL a couple years ago - sorry about spacing and grammar and such, but I was really pissed =P I use 'in fact' a lot too!


Pacbell Rant


Let me go ahead and preface this with a warning or disclaimer here. I'm not trying to be the dissatisfied customer where one thing destroyed my whole view on you guys. I will explain exactly why each of these recieved the lowest score possible. Please understand that I am in the MIS department where I work and support ~2000 users and ~2500 machines. I know exactly how these types of things are supposed to be handled, sure company policy varies from place to place, but there are a few common sense rules, let me explain:

1) How well the support technician understood the problem or question you described: Of all the technicians I spoke with on the phone (at least 15 by my count), maybe 2 or 3 actually understood the problem. I even had to resort to laymens terms for a few of them.

2) The clarity of the support technicians explanation: Again, most of your techs, didn't seem very technical - now I don't have a problem with laymens terms or anything like that, or even slang, but when one of your techs has problems directing me to get to network properties, there is defintely a problem here.

3)The support technician's proffesionalism/courtesy: Here is where you lost the most points, if your satisfaction went to negative numbers this would be an easy -5. I had one guy I was speaking with about my problem start easting pretzels in my ear, and he was supposed to be a supervisor. I immediately asked to be transferred to HIS supervisor which he did so reluctantly, and then I get to talking with a guy who is apparently the CEO of PacBell DSL, or at least it would seem that way since according to him he was the final step, no one was above him who could make a decision on this, AND if I didn't like it, I had two choices: a)Deal with it. b) Terminate service and pay a $200 disconnection fees. Those were his exact words. From what I understand, the CEO isn't even a male. I could go on and on about how unprofessional the majority of your techs are, but those were the main two problems I had that stuck out in my mind.

4)The effectiveness of the answers or proposed solutions: Again, you failed miserably. I was instructed to basically dissasemble my computer for nothing, in fact what they had be dissasemble my system for was not even required, hell I have things the way they wanted me to change. Again, I am not, I repeat NOT an idiot. In fact when the problem was resolved I have a feeling it was to cover up the fact that when I told them the problem was on YOUR end, they didn't want to admit it - in fact according to the tech, the proposed solution was to have me remove and re-insert my patch cable between DSL and NIC - but remember, a previous tech had me remove everything from my system, WHICH INCLUDES REMOVING CABLES. In fact the last tech I had spoken with had me wait 10 minutes after I had told the 5th tech in a row what i suspected the problem to be, and he finally put me on hold to speak with a manager and I have a feeling that what I instructed them to do was the solution. But hey, if your truth telling is anything like your customer service, I'm sure we will never know.

5)The overall time it took to get the answer or solution: Well, 2 weeks is not extremely fast in my opinion, in fact that's horribly slow, more than a few hours should require emergency attention. I have had DSL since July of last year I believe it was, and before I moved a month ago or so I called your office ONCE for something basic like settings I believe. Since the move, I have called at least 5 out of every 7 days, and have spent AT LEAST 45 hours on the phone with techs and supervisors and managers and everything else. I'm not even including at least 10 hours+ of hold time that I sat through. Also, you guys need to update your phone lists, at least once or twice a week I would be redirected to another number that wouldn't have anyone there, or my wait would be an hour plus. In fact a couple days before I got the DSL working again, just to test something since the tech was SOOOOOOOOOOO sure there would be someone there to assist me I decided to go ahead and hold through the horrid muzak that is played. I was able to prepare dinner, let dinner cool, eat dinner, clean up after dinner, do dishes, dry dishes, put dishes away, and then my battery was running low in my phone so I had to hang up or get disconnected. Total time waiting for the guy that would DEFINITELY be there and never was: 2hours 18 mins - not very speedy in my opinion.

I suggest someone call me up and speak with me so we can find some resolution to this matter. Yes, my DSL is functioning as I wish to at this moment, however there is still another issue that is part of the original call, and I have been playing phone tag with people for over a week now. I would really like to get this foul taste out of my mouth, before this whole scenario started I thought the world of PacBell and had even referred 4 friends to sign up, however I have also since advised them of my current situation and my thoughts on it, and they are afraid of similar things happening to them. We are also aware of the fact that you hold a monopoly for DSL in our area, and yes I am aware there are other companies offering DSL service, however the lines are still PacBell, and the problem I was having would still be handled by that. I would like to restore your good name to myself, my friends, and most importantly you. So far the time I have spent on the phone and off the phone working on this myself is worth at least twice the amount of time I actually have left on my contract. And I'm sure the amount of time I have taken from your techs when they could have been dealing with people who's situations they were able to handle, has got to be worth more than the rest of my contract.