Scott’s Blog of Doom

I think this one sums up everyone’s feelings about TNA pretty damn perfectly at this point:

So Sasktel, my cable, internet and phone provider for the past three years and a bit, recently added a DVR service to their lineup, which needless to say I was pumped about getting.  I booked the appointment on the date they announced it, a week in advance of my install time, and then things got really frustrating from there.  Here’s a copy of a letter I sent to their customer service department after all was said and done, which I’m sharing with you now because I never got the satisfactory resolution from them that I was hoping for, and maybe this will shame them into it:

To Whom It May Concern;

I wanted to relay my concerns about a very irritating installation of the new Max DTVR service that I encountered this past Wednesday and Thursday.  Having heard of the service announcement the week previous, I immediately called and signed up for the new box on September 4, and was told that I was booked for installation on September 12 during the day.  I booked that day off from work to make sure that I’d be home for the install, not knowing exactly when Sasktel would be showing up to change the box over. 

At 2 PM on Wednesday the 12th, my primary Pace box (the one to be replaced) was apparently shut down remotely and began to cycle on and off.  I figured that this was a necessary step for the changeover and watched TV on my secondary box instead.  By 4:30 my primary TV had been out of service for 2.5 hours with no install yet, so I called Tech support to investigate the problem.  The person I spoke with told me that I was scheduled for a 4:00 install (this was now the first time I had been told an exact time, mind you) and that the installer was probably just running late and I shouldn’t worry about it. 

By 6:30 that night, still no installer present and my wife and I had plans to go out, which we had been delaying while waiting for a 4:00 installation time.  I called Sasktel again looking for the source of the problem, and the girl I spoke with put me on hold to check with the dispatcher.  After 10 minutes on hold, she returned to tell me that Sasktel was not doing their own installations and instead Jump.ca was handling it, and would I mind waiting on hold again while she checked with them instead?  So I waited on hold for another 10 minutes, at which point she returned to inform me that in fact although my appointment was booked for that day, no installer had actually been assigned to me!  The girl offered to have someone come out and do it as soon as possible, and luckily I also had Thursday the 13th booked off and was available to wait for another installer.  In this case, the best time that she could offer was “From 11 until 8″.  She also promised to pass the whole thing along to management and have someone call me back during the same hours, a call which I never received, I should add. 

I thought this was ridiculously disorganized and asked to have my TV at least switched back on, at which point I was put back on hold so that I could be transferred to tech support.  After another 15 minute wait, I spoke with someone in that department, who informed me that my original box was not just deactivated, but deleted entirely from my account, although he did add that “they weren’t supposed to do that.”  I was given no choice but to wait until the new box was installed to even watch TV again!  TV service that I’m paying for. 

So on Thursday afternoon I waited until 2pm with no word from Sasktel as to when someone would actually be showing up, and called for confirmation that someone was indeed assigned to me this time and when they’d be arriving.  The girl I spoke with sounded amazed that things were going this badly, and I would like to commend everyone in the Sasktel customer service department for at least being friendly and as helpful as they could be, regardless of whether there was anything they could do for me. 

Finally, after a Sasktel rep contacted Jump.ca to figure out who would be coming and when, I was informed that someone in the field would be contacting me between 4:30 and 5:00, and installation should be done at 5:30.  This would mean delaying my dinner plans, but at least it would get done.  However, less than 10 minutes later at approximately 3:00, someone else from Jump.ca called me back to offer me an install immediately, apparently unaware that a previous Jump rep had told me 4:30.  Either way, the earlier the better, so I happily accepted and she arrived at 3:30. 

But it didn’t end there!  The girl obviously didn’t have much experience doing installations, because she forgot to plug the ethernet cable into the box and also connected the red and white audio output cables into the component outputs, and seemed mystified as to why she wasn’t getting a picture.  I checked out the box for her and fixed her wiring problems, thus essentially doing the installation myself.  I shudder to think how it might have gone if it had been my non-technical wife waiting for the installer instead of myself.  In the end, we got it working quickly and I was satisfied with the outcome, but I thought I should drop someone a line to express my total dissatisfaction with the absolutely atrocious process required for such a simple installation.  The other times I’ve had a similar installation done by Sasktel have been excellent, so I’m hoping that this one was the result of growing pains due to changing over to Jump.ca and not a bad sign for the future.