Customer Service

So yesterday during the mondo-huge snow storm, my satellite went out. And since I'm currently unemployed and sit at home all day long, I was a little bit bugged so I called Dish Network to see if it was an everywhere thing, or if I was just special.

After talking to the guy and getting it figured out he started harping on the fact that I mentioned that it happened frequently. When I told him it goes out randomly, about once every couple of weeks but I just play with the settings until it comes back, he decided that it was his duty to go above and beyond on the call of customer service. He made me run all sorts of tests and read all different kinds of messages to him (at high noon on my cell phone, mind you) so he could figure out why it frequently went out. It's a satellite, dude. If a bird flies through the signal, it goes out. I've learned to deal with it and so should you.

Keep in mind this took much longer than it should because he felt the need to dumb down everything he said, "Press the menu button, scroll to 7 and press select," and "Highlight yes, and press select." So eventually he has me run some test that says that I'm only getting half the signal I need and has me save some setting. Suddenly, I only have the local channels instead of all of the channels which I'd had just three minutes prior to that and now he's got to schedule a technician to come out to my house.

"He'll be there tomorrow between noon and five. Please let us know 24 hours in advance if you need to reschedule."

"So, like right now?" I questioned him. To which he brilliantly replied, "Huh?"

"You said to let you know 24 hours in advance if I needed to reschedule but you just scheduled him to come out exactly 24 hours from now. So you need to know right now if I need to reschedule the appointment you just set up for tomorrow? Right?"

Honestly, when the conversation ended and I finally hung up, he still didn't get what I was asking him. So I figured I was on my own. I played with the settings, changed a couple of things I didn't really understand and ran the same test again until I got all of my channels back and saved the day. So the moral of the story is - don't bother with customer service. Just run random tests until you get the result you're after on your own. Take the reins and be your own hero, damn it!

PS After all of that, the technician didn't even show up today. But did they didn't bother to call me 24 hours in advance to reschedule? You know the answer so say it with me, "Huh?"