PhotoDude.com

“No, they quietly soak me for an extra $120 per year. I know, don’t be a victim, it’s the customer’s responsibility to demand proper service. But it’s good business to give your customers equal treatment.”

This sounds like my Mom:
“What the hell, Mom! Do you still have that rental phone?”
“Ooh, they don’t charge much on my bill and it works real good….”
“But you’ve spent over $30,000 on that thing! You could’ve had a new car for that!!”
“Ooh, ho ho. Lord knows I don’t need a new car.”

I heard there wasn’t an hour hold for Earthlink Support any more. Oh, wait, I just remembered my last go-round with Earthlink and I know why you don’t call. The Support tech or sales-weasel will interpret your request for an updated price structure or upgrade as an immediate account cancellation. And won’t tell you that you have to call back in two weeks to open a new account. That is, if they still service your area.

Never mind.

What I found interesting is that “closing your account” is one of their menu options and I was on hold for less than 5 minutes.

All my tech friends say speedfactory.net is like Mindspring in the good old days.

Donkey said: “The Support tech or sales-weasel will interpret your request for an updated price structure or upgrade as an immediate account cancellation.”

I know you’re joking. But this is a serious concern of mine. Over the past three years, I’ve had multiple experiences contacting “support” in which they misinterpreted the reason for my contact, and/or told me they would not do things that they then literally did within five minutes of getting off the phone.

Somewhat stunningly, within about four hours of publishing this, I got unsolicited contact. From someone who cares. A veteran of the Mindspring regime. Who says writing in blogs is a waste of time? Well, me, sometimes, I guess…

Bill: “All my tech friends say speedfactory.net is like Mindspring in the good old days”

I have heard the same thing, from multiple people I trust. But I’m a weak and battered victim, too timid to change things, and too dependent on that constant connection to risk it. Inertia is a powerful motivator. Or de-motivator.

And the truth is my connecton itself is damn solid. My modem broke the connection last night, and when I checked, it had been up for nine days straight. And it had only gone out nine days ago because of a power blip that made my Netbox reboot.

As long as I don’t have to interact with support, I should be satisfied. If some Donkey wasn’t constantly bragging about his 48mbps connection.

Reid said, “Donkey said: “The Support tech or sales-weasel will interpret your request for an updated price structure or upgrade as an immediate account cancellation.â€?

I know you’re joking. But this is a serious concern of mine. Over the past three years, I’ve had multiple experiences contacting “supportâ€? in which they misinterpreted the reason for my contact, and/or told me they would not do things that they then literally did within five minutes of getting off the phone.”

Actually I wasn’t joking at all. After I moved and DSL finally came into my new neighborhood, I called up and ordered Earthlink after subscribing to Bellsouth for awhile. They gave me the dialup access while I waited for the DSL install. After two weeks, dialup access no longer accepted my password. An hour later after getting someone at Support I found out that I had called in and cancelled service, so they dutifully removed my account. “Huh”, I said, “I’ve been waiting for a DSL install. I didn’t cancel”. “Sorry”, click. So I called back to re-order service and wait another two weeks only to find out that I couldn’t get DSL in my area. “But I can”, I said, “I just ended a contract with Bellsouth and I wanted to switch to Earthlink”. “Sorry”, they said, “it shows here that you can’t get DSL”. So I then called Speedfactory and was connected the next day.

I only left Speedfactory because my voip phones were choppy. They work fine over cable internet. Which, btw, isn’t scheduled to go up to 48mbps until next year. In a couple months I’ll go up to 15/1, but right now I can only get 8/768. $52/mo. I hate to brag, but you don’t know what a year of being called “Dial-up Boy” can do to a person while certain other favored Mindspring subscribers get to beta test DSL.

I was truly a “valued EarthLink member,� someone in Earthlink’s employ would have found a way to point out to me, “Sir, you’re still paying the same $49.95 per month you’ve been paying since Sept. of ‘99 for 1.5mbps service, but we only charge $39.95 for that for new customers!

A little praise for an unrelated company, but for a related reason.

I had Wachovia in college. Loved them.

I never really liked First Union, but when I came back to ATL, they had a branch in my building, and a merger was in the works. I had heard that the Wachovia people would actually be in charge of the new company, so I went ahead and got the First Union account. They merged and became Wachovia.

Last summer I got a call out of the blue at my work number from a Wachovia rep asking if I wanted to upgrade my savings account for a Money Market Account that does exactly the same thing but pays five times as much interest?

Why, yes. Yes, I would like that!

Imagine my surprise when this turned out NOT to be a scam.

Somehow the Wachovia guys won the same battle that the mindspring guys ended up losing.

(postscript – I’m not sure how long the benign nature of mindspring would have lasted anyway. All but one of my Tech buddies who worked there ended up working for a certain firm in suburban Seattle. The other breaks gets paid into break into his clients’ networks for a living.)

This is actually a real issue for me. I can’t tell you how irritated I am while watching Directv and have to sit thru (yeah, I know I can flip the channel – whatever) endless ads for great deals for NEW customers. Meanwhile, I’m still paying up the *&% for my service. And, like you, I could call and fix it. I would totally do that if I could do it online, but existing customers can’t get any good deals online-”Sorry no online specials available, call 800-waitonhold for special offers”.

Several years ago I got a call from a company with which I had a monthly delviery scheduled (OK, it was Gevalia, sue me). They were doing a customer satisfaction survey, which I gladly answered. At the end of the call they thanked me and attempted to end the call. I took the opportunity to say “What do I get? I’ve been a customer for 3 years and any schmoo who calls you gets a free coffeepot, mugs, and blah blah blah”. They sent me a really nice set of canisters, both filled with coffee. So, there ya go – sometimes you just have to ask.

Now I have Illy coffee service (only because I got a supercool espresso machine for 1/4 the regular price for signing up). Illy knows how to treat their customers! Every year I get a fantastic calendar from them, and little bonuses every few months.

And, lastly, if I haven’t lost you, I was an early Mindspring customer too, not sure of my number but it was back when they were in some office (I think on West PEachtree). I’ll never forget going to pick up our new customer packet and they had practically no furniture in this funky office. I miss those days. But, I rarely have to call Earthlink and when I do, I prepare for a long wait and try to be patient. I can’t bear to give up that email account.

“not sure of my number”

Check your invoice. It’s near the top, as the account number, I believe.

See, I think there’s probably lots of folks like us. Not all of them have blogs and are lucky enough to have an Earthlink exec just happen to drop mere hours after they vented.

There ought to be some geek at EL who could code a run through their database and find those paying “above the going rate.” You could simply adjust their rates and send them a nice email, which would generate goodwill. But you could also try to upsell them and market additional services, like their “true voice” long distance phone service, their wireless bundles, etc. Things the vast majority of customers would have no clue about, unless and until they visted the EL web page … which I do about once every six months, maybe.

I remember when “The Works” (all the dialup you could eat at the then prevailing speed of 28.8kbps) was $35/month. Then one day Mindspring announced they were changing the price. You would now get “The Works” for $26.95/month, and it would be reflected on your next invoice.

Sure, it was a drive to be more competitively priced and thus bring in new customers. But the existing customers didn’t get the shaft by being stuck at the old rate … they got the new deal, without having to lift a finger.

Or, you could leave things as they are, and let residual resentment build up in every one of those loyal early customers who’s now paying more … because they were an early adopter and supporter.

Like I said, I’m thankful someone at least contacted me, but there ought to be a “culling” of all imbalanced accounts like this, to take care of those who aren’t inclined to be a public curmudgeon.

Like some people are.

My experience with Earthlink over the year I had a contract with them was:

1) Transferring my DSL service from DirecTV (which I loved, and would love to use again; but they abandoned the DSL biz), and having Earthlink cut off my existing DSL service within 30 minutes, and then ship my new modem by ground delivery from Miami to San Francisco, and only once I phoned them after delivery did they turn the service on. I was on dialup for almost a month, for which they charged me full price.

2) Paying a $15 monthly premium for static DSL so I could run a server, only to discover that the “static IP address” I got with that premium was a local Earthlink address, not a fully routable one. Apparently, the difference between “static” and “dynamic” was that every time I connected to the PPPoE server, I got the same LAN address. But they never gave me back the $15, in spite of the fact that their sales rep…well, I don’t want to said he lied; he may not have understood what “static IP” actually means.

3) I’m in the IT business, so when I have a service interruption, I go into a 2-3 hour troubleshooting cycle. I only call tech support once that troubleshooting has failed, and I have eliminated the objects under my control as sources of the problem.

Earthlink tech support always seemed very knowledgeable, but aggressively unhelpful. The five service outages I had were all caused by regional outages utterly beyond my control; some were general phone system stuff, and some were Earthlink-specific to Northern California. In none of those cases was I ever able to get Earthlink’s reps to admit that the problem was on their end; and although I always requested a callback once they’d checked on the regional problem, I never got one. My confirmation was from the updated message on the voicemail system.

When I switched ISPs again, they disconnected my account in 30 minutes.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the…”

As for Mindspring: The rumor on the West Coast in the mid-90s was that it was owned/operated by a cult. I don’t recall which one, although the Moonies sticks in my head.

Hmmm. Either you’ve got your rumors confused, or I’m only aware of the East Coast variant: Earthlink is a front for Scientology.

But I know Mindspring wasn’t owned/operated by a cult, unless you considered the cult of founder Charles Brewer to be a bit odd, run out of his apartment, with a three legged dog, and with 24 hour tech support via beeper … except during the 30 minutes per week the Simpsons was on.

So it’s likely the roots of Earthlink were equally normal.