I’m having a hell of a time with my current ISP (sitting at 18 days now without a connection) and I’m having to bite my tongue every time I’m talking to them (Remember The Human and all that)
Whilst the front line support are nice people and answer the phones quickly they are honestly pretty useless and they never really sound like they know what they’re talking about, also seemingly none of the departments seem particularly good about communicating what’s going on so it’s hard to get a straight and useful answer out of them.
Have you ever lost it with a rep? What happened? and did it ever help push things along?
I did. Back in the old days we had phones connected to wires called land lines. The phones were controlled by shitty companies similar to cell service providers or cable companies (almost as archaic as land lines).
I was having trouble getting my land line up and running after a move. A bad day at work, money trouble, and a phone that still wouldn’t work, set me off. I totally lost my shit on a poor, under paid rep. I mean, I went off. It was brutal. I think I made her cry. The people in the room I was in (rental office at the new apartment complex) all left the room.
After a solid 2 or 3 minutes of me just ripping into this innocent person, I caught myself. I realized what I was doing mid-rant and just stopped. I sort of gasped and said “oh god. What the fuck is wrong with me?” or something similar out loud. I spent the next couple of minutes apologizing and telling this person how big a shit head I was being. I admitted that I had crossed a line, commended them on their professionalism, and took full responsibility for making this their problem when it clearly wasn’t. I was sincere and I was honest. I told her that she should hang up on me and make a note in my file that I’m a problem. I also said that I’d never yell at a rep like that again. And humbly asked if ther was anything she could do to help me. She did. She solved whatever bullshit problem there was and was so rad to me.
She went so far above and beyond after I treated her like shit. That was close to 30 years ago and I still have never even raised my voice to a rep since. As bad as some places are, as poorly trained as some reps are, even as shitty as some reps are, I’ll never forget how rotten a person I was in that moment. I don’t want to be like that. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. And frankly, fuck a dude that would talk to me like that.