Don Larson linked to this article detailing Ameritech’s woes. How bad is Ameritech? It’s so bad that it’s really having the same effect that poor service and high costs of land lines had in much of Europe and Asia — it’s really accelerating the already high rate of cellular adoption. I know quite people who simply don’t use the poor quality land line that Ameritech offers preferring instead to go completely or almost completely cellular.
Almost everyone I’ve talked to in Michigan has one horror story or another about Ameritech, especially their snotty, annoying customer disservice representatives. Plus their hours. Find a problem with your service when you get home Friday night at 5:30 p.m.? Too bad, call back on Monday — they don’t take non-emergency customer service calls Friday nights or on weekends anymore.
There are some competitors offering competition for local service, but they are hampered by Ameritech in a number of ways (if I want to switch from Ameritech to a competitor, for example, I can’t take my phone number with me). Even with the limitations, however, I’m surprised at the number of people who have switched just to get out from under the thumb of Ameritech.
I actually came close to having my phone service shut off once because they kept sending me this bill for $800 or $900 with a name that definitely wasn’t me, though they had the correct address. I called several times and gave them the phone number and they’d tell me they couldn’t give me any information because the phone number wasn’t in my name, even though I was receiving the bill, and it was possible they would shut off the phone service if the bill wasn’t paid. Talk about a nightmare.
The entire problem turned out to be an almost year old ISDN installation that I had cancelled after finding out about hidden charges they hadn’t bothered to inform me about. They never cancelled the order in their computers and then improperly billed the charges under the name of the woman who had previously had the phone number they were going to give me for voice over ISDN.
The other thing that really annoys me is if you call customer service about the exact same problem, half the time you will get very different answers as if the people on the other end are just making up policies and procedures on their own. It’s very frustrating when someone tells you to do X and Y to resolve a problem and then when you call back a couple minutes later because they’re making the same mistake all of a sudden the person on the other end is telling you to do C and D — and, of course, they can’t believe anyone from Ameritech might have told you X and Y. Oh no, you must have misunderstood because the customer is always wrong at Ameritech.
Unfortunately since I’m probably moving to the Chicago area next fall, I’m going to be stuck with Ameritech for at least a couple more years.