Fairpoint Customer Service - LOUSY

For those who follow me, I blog about horrible and superb customer service experiences and everything in between.  I am finally online today so I can write and publish this blog.

OK, we have a house in Vermont because of the lifestyle.  We have no TV at our house (House has the name of Coniston), and we did not have internet for about the first 6 months.  We added satellite for a few years and a year ago, we caved in and switched to Fairpoint.  It was about 1000 times faster than Wild Blue Satellite and we have been very please for a year.  We do not live here full time but when we are here, the speed of the DSL has been adequate.  Rod can watch Netflix, which is the largest connectivity we need.

Yesterday morning, we both got up and tried to check email, and neither of us could get mail.  Our modem was live but we could not connect to the Internet.  We shut off electronic equipment went on our way.  2 hours later we checked again and still nothing.  We had our iPhones if we really needed to call of find something.

Last night at 8, when we got back from the activities of the day, still nothing.  We are going on 12 hours now, and truth be told we were both twitching a little bit.  I called customer service and they knew nothing about when we would be back up.  The rep at that point said to call back in the morning and there would be more information.  Again, we are in Vermont, we don't encourage technology at our house, and we could live another 12 hours, AND I have my 3G iPhone still.  Yes, I still have a 3G iPhone which is getting replace as soon as Apple releases their next iPhone and I will buy a 5S.

This morning I called at 8am, and got this message "We are sorry but due to the high volume of calls we cannot take your call."  I have worked in technology, and I have taught customer service and this was like waving a red flag to a bull.  There was no way to talk to anyone, nor leave a message, nor ask a question.  Their website was not up-to-date with outage information.  Yes, it is pretty slow to surf the web on my 3G phone but I did while my coffee was brewing.

I called back at 10 and got through to a live person in Texas, Brittany.  I asked her if she knew when we would be back up.  NOPE.  I asked her if anyone in Fairpoint knew when we would be up.  NOPE.  She started being very defensive and definitely had an attitude.  I asked her why she was being defensive.

In my experience, and in customer service training, you never are defensive with the customer.  I reached my limit and asked to speak with her supervisor, Curtis.  He was teflon, in that nothing stuck to him.  He had no information, did not know who did, did not know what the problem was, etc.  Rod at this point emailed the CEO of Fairpoint, and I started tweeting (which I never do but I have a Twitter account).  Down Detector have both of our tweets and face books posts on their page about Fairpoint.

Two things astound me.  That we are some of the few tweets and Facebook posts on the Down Detector site.  AND That Fairpoint is still in business.  Maybe the lifestyle in Vermont is really such a lay back one that people would not complain about the Internet being down for 36 hours.   I am sure there are people in Vermont who have Fairpoint and Twitter.  Do Vermonters not complain like we flatlanders from Massachusetts?  Is Fairpoint's reputation such that people are used to being down? The few tweets out there indicate that it is down a lot.  Does Fairpoint has few enough customers in Vermont that there is no one to complain?  If this is the case, please leave a note about which provider you are using in Vermont for internet connection.

I worked in technology and was on calls for 24 hours at a time where tech support was trying to solve a problem.  What we learned was to give customers information, be transparent, let them know when you would give them an update, and give them one.  The first outage we did not do that, and we suffered the repercussions, on twitter, blogs and other social media.  The later outages, customers thanked us for the transparency on twitter, blogs and other social media.

So, I told Curtis that I blog about customer service, both good and bad and here it is.  One person's experience with Fairpoint DSL and today my experience was LOUSY!  AND I got online by changing DNS settings on my computer, a solution which I found from a poster on the Down Detector website.  He can figure out how to get around the problem but the Fairpoint tech support cannot.  HMMMMMMM?

Liam, snakes and gardening

WOW, I really thought that I had already blogged about this.  One of our first years at Coniston, Christopher walked up the boardwalk to the house and jumped back when a snake slithered out of the woodpile.  My sister stayed here for a few weeks and named the snake Liam.

Rod said when Christopher jumped back "He is a lot more afraid of you than you are of him."

Christopher said "Then he must be shitting his pants."

We have retold this story many times since that day.

Today while out gardening, weeding actually, a snake slithered out of the weeds and I jumped back and screamed loudly.

Rod said "What, a snake or a spider?"

Sally said "A snake, I don't scream for spiders, and only call you for wolf spiders."

So, Christopher comes by this fear of snakes honestly and I have yet another reason not to garden or weed.

Packing for a Month

This is a crazy summer.  All good things are happening but maybe just too many of them all packed into the same summer.

In light of that I reflected on packing for all of these trips.  We went to Star Island last week, and I usually reserve my Star t-shirts to wear for the week.  After Star we will primarily be staying at Coniston so rather than pack again for Vermont and Coniston, I am going to wear my Star t-shirts all summer up there.  EXCEPT, I will need a few collared shirts for golf if I want to play golf this summer up in Vermont.  OK, so when I go home this week for 3 days, I will have to remember my golf clubs and because I want to sew some quilts I will have to remember the correct fabric and all the right accessories for those quilts.  YIKES, this is getting very complicated.

I wonder how Mom used to pack for the summer when we went to stay most of the summer on Gardiner Island on Lake Champlain.  Did we just throw all of our clothes into a duffel bag? did we pack our own bag or did we pack with a sibling?  We always seemed to have enough clothes although we spent most of the summer in our bathing suits so maybe it did not matter.

For our first wedding of the summer we had to pack for a black tie wedding.  Evening gown and tux.  For our second wedding of the summer, just a regular dress sufficed, and a suit for Rodney.  For the 4th of July, I remembered to pack my red, white and blue hat.

So it will be a miracle if I remember everything, and if everything is in the right place, but when it comes down to it, as long as I have something to wear, I can rent golf clubs and sew something with the fabric already up at Coniston, or I could go buy more fabric.  These are all first world problems.  I carry the essentials in my backpack and everything else is just an add on.