Tuesday, June 27, 2006

1-800-THIS-SUCKS

Okay, I knew that getting and setting up our merchant ID would be a big pain in the neck, but I never expected it would be such a pain in the neck to get a darn 800 number! We've been searching for a vanity number that fits our needs, the name of our business, and is easy to remember for about a week now. But we also want to find a company that won't screw us over royally with their per minute cost.

We've talked with a few companies, including our current local service provider and I must say, nothing is grabbing me yet. We assumed it would be easy, just add an 800 number to our local service. Oh were we wrong!! I've come to realize Vonage SUCKS! We use them for our local service and they are the cheapest around. However, trying to get any technical support at all is a nightmare. You call, wait on hold forever, then get to talk to someone who doesn't speak much English. So even trying to get the easiest problem solved becomes a major headache as you try to reiterate the problem in a million different ways trying to get the person on the other end of the line to understand! The calls go something like this:

Me: "Hi, I'm calling because I can't get a dial tone"
O: "Hi, you want to set up new service?"
Me: "No, I have service, I just need to find out why I'm not getting a dial tone."
O: "You must start service first"
Me: "I already have service with you, I am having problems calling people."
O: "Oh, okay, you need to add another line?"
Me: "NO, I can't even get this line to work, why would I want to get another one?"

On and on it goes until I ask to talk to the supervisor, then out of the blue, they begin to understand me. Now, I have nothing wrong with people who have strong accents, and work in the USA. However, I do have a problem with trying to talk to someone, over the phone, who can't understand me. It drives me nuts in fact. Especially considering, these people probably aren't even in the US but instead are in some other country where it's cheaper to employ them, which puts people here out of work. Darn corporate principals. "Who cares about customer service, lets make money!!!"

Anyway, we called them about a week ago about getting a specific vanity number, well after about 20 minutes going round and round about whether or not they could even do vanity numbers, and me threatening to talk to the supervisor, we finally got them to agree to check and see if the number we wanted was available. That was last week, they were supposed to e-mail us within 48 hours and let us know if we could get that number. Well, today I finally got around to calling them back (I have to psyche myself up and clear my schedule to dial that darn place). Well, after talking to them today, they have decided that they can't do vanity numbers.

Now we're back at the beginning, with a few prospects, but nothing set in stone. At this point, I don't even care about the darn vanity number, in fact, I've lost all will to live after going through this 800 number hell!

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