Am I an a$$hole?

[Grantri]

OK my turn for a rant...

XM radio..I have three units on my account , 1 for each of our cars. I've been a customer for 3 years. My bill comes in the mail, due yesterday for the three units for a year. $314.21

Cash is a bit tight at the moment so I decide we'll move to the "quarterly plan" ,its a bit more expensive and I understand that and I'm willing to pay the upcharge. I figure it out on their website and come up with a figure of $88 & change for the next three months, about $10 more than the reduced annual rate but fair enough. For some reason their website cant seem to handle this change so we are forced to call them in an effort to pay the bill .

So my wife, card in hand,calls in to change the account to quarterly billing and pay the $88 . Ten minute phone call to some call center in "Indopakiwhereverthehellistan" with some guy with limited English and she recieves no joy. Guy wants $128 for the three months and he cant seem to make the math work to her satisfaction ..

So then its my turn , knowing I'll get someone else. I end up with a guy named Ben,who's English isnt much better. He tells me that my annual account ended on Dec 14th and I'll have to pay $37 to cover the accounts till Feb 1 then the $88 dollars for the next three months.

Aint happening, Ben. I have a bill for the year due today that I want to pay a quarter of. If you wanted to be paid Dec 14th you should have sent me a bill stating the payment was due Dec 14th. So Ben puts me on hold....Comes back with the same story, again I state my case, again I tell him I have payment in hand again he puts me on hold...I'm trying to pay you people and I'm on hold ...again?

Ben finally comes back on the line and tells me he is going to send me an invoice for the $37 and I'll get another bill for the $88 Feb 1. I can feel the hot blood in my damn ears!!Apparently Ben isnt getting it and I'm pissed at this point. So I ask if there is anyone there that speaks English. Nothing

One more time I tell Ben that I am looking at my bill for $314.21, due today 1/22/09 and I want to pay a portion of it. Hold again? Again Ben comes at me with the $37 bull****. At this point ,well I got a bit offensive and I told Ben that if he sent me an invoice for $37 I would set all my XM gear on fire and mail the ashes & invoice to him so he could sprinkle them in the Ganges and I would spend the $314.21 setting up "www.XMradiocustomerservicesux.com". Yeah... that might have been a bit much but I had been on the phone trying to convince Ben to take my money for 28 minutes at this point and I had caught my limit.

Anyway I ask Ben to have someone who is capable of handling my payment to contact me and I tell him I'm hanging up .

"Is there anything else I can help you with, Thanks for calling us"

"Help me with ? (dead)) Ben are you on drugs?"

38 minutes on the phone in an attempt to PAY someone and I came up empty Ugh

So I send a pretty hot e mail to the billing department complete with account numbers etc. The response is spam telling me about all the wonderful new XM BS , no mention of my specific issue...

So , dammit, I'd really like to keep my XM service but there is no way in hell I'm dancing with Ben or his buddies again. I have emailed, they have my contact info if they want my business they can call me .If not its "XM BBQ" and postage to Ben in "Somedamnwhereistan"

[jester911]

If you make another call to just cancel the whole thing they probably will offer you a deal at that point. If not then the idea of sending the ashes to them sounds fun.

[Doppelgänger]

Sounds like my dealings with DISH over the past few days.

First off, I work for Echostar, which is part of DISH, we do all of the programming/testing/software/development. Since I am an employee, I get a helluvadeal on my bill...practically free. So recently, Jenn and I bought a new 37" tv and want tp upgrade out satellite box to one that allows HDTV (current one is just plain sat. and DVR). So I call customer service and get a lovely English speaking girl...probably from our Denver call center. She tells me that to upgrade i'll have to pay a fee of $50 for the new box and there would be no ongoing monthly fees either, and that extra HD channels would add up to an extra $10 each month (like 40+ channels). Cool. I tell her I need to discuss with my gf and i'll call back. So I call back the next day and get a hold of some Habeeb who claims his name is like Sam or some "American friendly" name. This guy is a repeater, the one who constantly says the same thing as is rearing off of cue-cards to constantly remind me of the sat. box and it's features and the prices. Yeah, the prices. Mr. Samabeeb tells me that i'll need to pay $150 up front and that there will be a $100 credit on my bill for next month...and that there is a 24 month committment required. Ummm no, this is NOT what I was told the first time and Habeebasam starts with the whole "i'm sorry someone mis-informationed you"...yes... mis informationed.. you read that correctly. So I cut the call short and hang up, call back again to try to get someone with no damn accent. After making about 6 hang-up calls on various operators in 47 different countries, I get a hold of some lady with a minimal accent. Maybe she might help. This time I get straight to the point, "Yes, I am a DISH employee here in Atlanta. I called before to get some information on upgrading my service to HD. I need to replace my 625 box with a 622 HD and add the local and national broadcast HD channels. I was told this will be $50 for the box and $10/mo for the extra channels". Well, Ms Shalamamama put me on hold while she looks up my account..again. Then she tells me that if I don't want the 24 month committment I will have to buy the sat. box at the cost of $495!!!!! But with the 24 month, it'll be $180 with a $130 credit on my bill and that there would be several fees each month (I kinda tuned this out because I was now getting quite irritated). In the end, I still have not upgraded to a HD box...and i'll eventually call back and get a hold of someone in Denver who actually gives a sh!t.

I feel your pain Grant.

[matredd]

Outsourcing sucks for the end user.

[wildfire0310]

Outsourcing sucks for the end user.

Yes it does. I always get a good laugh at my mother cause her company outsourced their IT department, and so she has to deal with normally 3 people who can't speak English worth a ****, atleast 45 mins worth of hold time and get lucky that someone that she gets bounced around to can fix her problem.

The last issue was trying to get a network print reset to a set IP address some anyone global could send there statements to her. She said she was on the phone for over 2 hours to get in the end... "We will put a notice in for it to get done with-in the next 48 hours. Thank you".... Oh yea... Make me so happy to work for a smaller company that still has in house IT :banana::banana::banana:

[metalman]

All of this reminds me of AT&T/Cingular.....a company which will never see one penny of my business again. They're so stupid they actually tried to come up with more charges AFTER closing my account. :lol:

[Atlanta93LE]

I tried to have DirecTV come out and do an install, but either there is no line-of-sight (tech. says 0% signal anywhere he looked...odd, both my neighbors have it...) or the tech was an idiot (likely). Regardless, the install was a failure, and I had to call and cancel. DirecTV sent a lovely note apologizing for the inconvenience, and would I please accept a coupon for a free pay-per-view DirecTV movie as repayment? :lol:

[Grantri]

I tried to have DirecTV come out and do an install, but either there is no line-of-sight (tech. says 0% signal anywhere he looked...odd, both my neighbors have it...) or the tech was an idiot (likely). Regardless, the install was a failure, and I had to call and cancel. DirecTV sent a lovely note apologizing for the inconvenience, and would I please accept a coupon for a free pay-per-view DirecTV movie as repayment? :lol:

Brilliant!!

I managed to locate the email addy of an XM exec through a consumer reports site.Seems my issue is SOP with XM. Thank God they dont have my CC info as it seems they like to bill without authorization. We'll see what Joe Zarella can do to keep my business

[ben91]

don't pay. your xm will still work for a few months. ours went 3 months after it expired.

[wildfire0310]

don't pay. your xm will still work for a few months. ours went 3 months after it expired.

my old roommates is still working. She canceled her plan and they gave her 3 free months. Its been over 9 months and it is still working:biggrin:

[Doppelgänger]

I tried to have DirecTV come out and do an install, but either there is no line-of-sight (tech. says 0% signal anywhere he looked...odd, both my neighbors have it...) or the tech was an idiot (likely). Regardless, the install was a failure, and I had to call and cancel. DirecTV sent a lovely note apologizing for the inconvenience, and would I please accept a coupon for a free pay-per-view DirecTV movie as repayment? :lol:

Now, did they just do this on your roof or did they walk around the property and look for a spot to put it on a pole? I kow when they came out to install my dish, they went to the spot where someone put a DirecTV dish and couldn't hit both of Dish's satellites, so they put the Dish dish on the other corner of the house. You can probably get Dish at your house.

[MeFryRice]

When I worked for Wireless Toyz, I'd switch phone carriers 4 times in two years only because I had no 2-yr commitment nor any early termination fees. When Amp'd Mobile came out, we were the first retailer in the state of GA to carry them so a co-worker and I decided to switch from Sprint to Amp'd. We signed up on the employee plan, which consisted of every amenity they had to offer, for $20/month. 3-4 months goes by and I realized that I have yet to receive a single invoice for my service. I asked my co-worker and he stated that he had yet to receive one either and neither of us had received any phones call from Amp'd about this so we let it be. After having Amp'd for 6 months, my phone wasn't working so I called Amp'd CS to see what's up. They had indicated that my phone was turned-off due to non-payment. I told them the situation, yada yada yada. Well the phone was turned back on within a couple hours and my bill was paid. (after 6-months, my bill was still only $40.xx, apparently someone can't add) Two days later, my phone was shut off so I gave Amp'd another ring. Apparently they had confused my account with someone else and had actually closed my account so I lost my number all together. Knowing how to work the system, I acted irritated but was still nice to the CS rep and because I was so patient with her, she had put a note in the system to ship me a Motorola Q at no charge. She said I'd have it within a couple days. A week goes by and I still have not received the phone so I call them up and like everyone else on here, I get a completely different story. Needless to say, I paid them what I used for those two days and switched to AT&T.

FYI, for those that are going to say something about me neglecting to pay my phone bill for ~6 months, as employee's, Amp'd did not require a social security number and nothing has shown up on my credit report. :) Amp'd was only around for ~1-yr before having to file bankruptcy as they neglected to invoice any of their customers for 6 months and when the customer did receive the invoice, they were not able to pay the bill.

[Grantri]

my old roommates is still working. She canceled her plan and they gave her 3 free months. Its been over 9 months and it is still working:biggrin:

Yeah... a bit of research tells me that (possibly) I can cancel, turn the radios off for a week or so and they wont recieve the deactivation code. Due to limited bandwidht that code can only be broadcast for a short time.

Damn shame is that I'm willing to pay for the service and these idots are making it impossible

[Atlanta93LE]

Now, did they just do this on your roof or did they walk around the property and look for a spot to put it on a pole? I kow when they came out to install my dish, they went to the spot where someone put a DirecTV dish and couldn't hit both of Dish's satellites, so they put the Dish dish on the other corner of the house. You can probably get Dish at your house.

Interesting...he did try several different places, but got "0% signal" everywhere he checked. Maybe his little tool was busted, cause he said he normally never gets below 50% or so, and they won't install with less than ~90%. He even checked right where there is an old DirecTV dish from the past owner, and nada.

[Grantri]

Update (as I'm sure you are sitting on the edges of your seats)

I get a response to the scalding e mail I sent to XM via their website from "Hyshan" asking for my account info...which is of course in plain view on my original e mail to them and on his response... Guessing he isnt gonna be much help either.