![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Profiles in Customer Service
One problem is solved. One problem is not. Let's see how it goes.
Let's start with Xfinity and the unresolved problem. Gretchen and I went upstairs on Thursday night and discovered that our Xfinity set top box was stuck in a boot loop. I tried unplugging it and restarting it without success. Then I went onto the Xfinity app and started the troubleshooting process where they eventually said that it would take an hour to run the automatic tests and that they'd text me when they were done. I figured that I'd love a text at 2 AM, so go ahead. Gretchen and I used the smart TV to stream some Hulu before going to bed.
There was no text in the morning. The text didn't show up until around 11:30 AM. At this point, I could now try to speak with a tech. After some time repeating all of the troubleshooting that I had already done with the tech, he agreed to send out a replacement box. I emphasized that I needed a wired 4K box, since they have a tendency to ship me wireless boxes (bad, when the TV is as far as possible from the modem in the basement) or HD boxes (bad, when the TV is 4K capable). And nigh miraculously, the correct replacement box arrived this afternoon.
I immediately unboxed the thing, took it upstairs, wired it up, and fired it up. It got past the boot loop problem that I'd had with the old box and then got to the screen with the language selection that you need to make with the remote control.
I grabbed my old remote control, pointed it at the screen, and nothing happened. Well, of course not. I would need to unpair the remote. I went to the Web, got the unpairing instructions, unpaired the remote, pointed it at the screen, and nothing happened.
Ok, I've got *another* *newer* remote in the drawer. Let's unpair that and try again.
Same result.
I asked K to run down and get me the remote that had shipped with the new box. She did and we noted that the batteries were already installed in the remote. This is unusual in my experience. Pointed it at the box and fired. Nothing happened. Unpaired it, pointed it at the box, and nothing happened.
I am *now* beginning to believe, given that the remote already had the batteries installed, that this is someone else's unit that went back to Xfinity after the user experienced a similar failure to the one that I am seeing right now. It was then plugged in, someone said "Hey, it works!", and then boxed it up to send it to me.
Back to the chatbot on the Xfinity app to try to get an agent so I can get a working box instead of the piece of crap that they have sent me. It wants to try troubleshooting (oh, joy!) but then announces that it can't troubleshoot anything because there is a service outage in my area.
I call downstairs to Gretchen, "Is the cable TV working?" Shortly thereafter, she has turned on the TV and announces, "Yes!" I try the chatbot again, get the same response, and when I try to look at the outage map, I am taken to a screen with a header, a footer, and no content.
I pull up the search engine on my phone to get a phone number to call. This, unsurprisingly, gets me a phone robot, which is *insistent* that it needs to text me a link to go to the non-working chatbot. I am, by this point, screaming at the phone, but nothing will get it to relent.
I hang up and call back and just start yelling "Agent" at the phone. It tells me how much simpler it would be to use the chatbot, but I can wait for someone or they can call me back when it's my turn in the queue. Given how well their systems are working today, I decide to stay on the line.
After some interminable number of minutes, a woman gets on the phone and starts running through her troubleshooting script. I am overjoyed. I explain to her how I have tried two different remotes with the TV, have run through the unpairing steps, and the TV does not respond to either. She tells me how the box reads as being fine on her software. Maybe it does, but I explain how nothing happens when using the remote. We restart the box and it still doesn't respond to the remote.
At this point, I ask K to go downstairs and get the new remote that came with the box. It is identical to the newer remote that I hate and -- interestingly and contrary to my previous experience! -- comes with the batteries preinstalled.
It does not work either.
The lady on the phone says that my batteries (the new ones in the new remote, apparently as well as all of the batteries in all of my other remotes) are showing up as weak, so could I please put some new batteries in? Of course, I have no spare batteries upstairs. I try to get K to run down and get some, but older child is now unresponsive, so I go down, fetch the batteries, install them, and the remote does not work and my batteries are still reading as weak.
(I have noticed on various of my TVs lately that the software is *always* convinced that the batteries are weak, leading me to believe that there is a problem with the software. That, or it has been calibrated with the belief that we have installed a Tesla Wall in the remote control.)
The tech continues to insist that the problem is with the remote control, despite the fact that we now have *three* remote controls that the box is not responding to. At this point, I tell her that I have a fourth, unopened remote control downstairs that I can try. I go get the *fourth* remote, *install* the batteries (because new remotes come with the batteries in a little sealed battery package in my previous experience), see that the remote fails.
She then starts trying to tell me how to unpair the older remote. I inform her that this is the newer remote and I have just unpaired it, but I'll try it again using the protocol for the *newer* remote that doesn't have a setup button, since that is the one that will work on this remote.
You may be unsurprised to hear that this did not help.
At this point, she suggested that the problem was with the remote control and that she needed to send me a new remote control.
Dear God.
We now have *four* different -- and two *new*! -- remote controls, none of which will cause the TV to advance to the next setup screen, all of which have successfully finished the unpairing procedure, and I am supposed to believe that a *fifth* remote is the solution to the problem? I explained to her that I did not care what her troubleshooting script says, if *four* different remotes fail to communicate with the set top box successfully, then the problem is with the box being unable to process signals from the remote, *not* with the *four* remotes (two known working) that are all failing to talk to it.
She now agrees to send me a new box.
I emphasize that we need to send me a wired 4K box. We finally complete the complicated dance to approve the order -- as I note to her that there is no way to tell from the information I am given exactly *what* they are shipping to me, which seems like an additional flaw in the process. She says she will attempt to get me a credit against my bill for the afternoon's entertainment, tries to sell me cellphone service which will be more expensive than what I have now, and I finally get off this call.
At some point, we will get another box and we will see if that works.
This is another fine example of the rotten service that you get from Xfinity. Sadly, there are no good alternatives here.
However, the rotten customer service that you get from Xfinity is *light years* better than the customer service that you get from OptumRX.
But that is another story...
Let's start with Xfinity and the unresolved problem. Gretchen and I went upstairs on Thursday night and discovered that our Xfinity set top box was stuck in a boot loop. I tried unplugging it and restarting it without success. Then I went onto the Xfinity app and started the troubleshooting process where they eventually said that it would take an hour to run the automatic tests and that they'd text me when they were done. I figured that I'd love a text at 2 AM, so go ahead. Gretchen and I used the smart TV to stream some Hulu before going to bed.
There was no text in the morning. The text didn't show up until around 11:30 AM. At this point, I could now try to speak with a tech. After some time repeating all of the troubleshooting that I had already done with the tech, he agreed to send out a replacement box. I emphasized that I needed a wired 4K box, since they have a tendency to ship me wireless boxes (bad, when the TV is as far as possible from the modem in the basement) or HD boxes (bad, when the TV is 4K capable). And nigh miraculously, the correct replacement box arrived this afternoon.
I immediately unboxed the thing, took it upstairs, wired it up, and fired it up. It got past the boot loop problem that I'd had with the old box and then got to the screen with the language selection that you need to make with the remote control.
I grabbed my old remote control, pointed it at the screen, and nothing happened. Well, of course not. I would need to unpair the remote. I went to the Web, got the unpairing instructions, unpaired the remote, pointed it at the screen, and nothing happened.
Ok, I've got *another* *newer* remote in the drawer. Let's unpair that and try again.
Same result.
I asked K to run down and get me the remote that had shipped with the new box. She did and we noted that the batteries were already installed in the remote. This is unusual in my experience. Pointed it at the box and fired. Nothing happened. Unpaired it, pointed it at the box, and nothing happened.
I am *now* beginning to believe, given that the remote already had the batteries installed, that this is someone else's unit that went back to Xfinity after the user experienced a similar failure to the one that I am seeing right now. It was then plugged in, someone said "Hey, it works!", and then boxed it up to send it to me.
Back to the chatbot on the Xfinity app to try to get an agent so I can get a working box instead of the piece of crap that they have sent me. It wants to try troubleshooting (oh, joy!) but then announces that it can't troubleshoot anything because there is a service outage in my area.
I call downstairs to Gretchen, "Is the cable TV working?" Shortly thereafter, she has turned on the TV and announces, "Yes!" I try the chatbot again, get the same response, and when I try to look at the outage map, I am taken to a screen with a header, a footer, and no content.
I pull up the search engine on my phone to get a phone number to call. This, unsurprisingly, gets me a phone robot, which is *insistent* that it needs to text me a link to go to the non-working chatbot. I am, by this point, screaming at the phone, but nothing will get it to relent.
I hang up and call back and just start yelling "Agent" at the phone. It tells me how much simpler it would be to use the chatbot, but I can wait for someone or they can call me back when it's my turn in the queue. Given how well their systems are working today, I decide to stay on the line.
After some interminable number of minutes, a woman gets on the phone and starts running through her troubleshooting script. I am overjoyed. I explain to her how I have tried two different remotes with the TV, have run through the unpairing steps, and the TV does not respond to either. She tells me how the box reads as being fine on her software. Maybe it does, but I explain how nothing happens when using the remote. We restart the box and it still doesn't respond to the remote.
At this point, I ask K to go downstairs and get the new remote that came with the box. It is identical to the newer remote that I hate and -- interestingly and contrary to my previous experience! -- comes with the batteries preinstalled.
It does not work either.
The lady on the phone says that my batteries (the new ones in the new remote, apparently as well as all of the batteries in all of my other remotes) are showing up as weak, so could I please put some new batteries in? Of course, I have no spare batteries upstairs. I try to get K to run down and get some, but older child is now unresponsive, so I go down, fetch the batteries, install them, and the remote does not work and my batteries are still reading as weak.
(I have noticed on various of my TVs lately that the software is *always* convinced that the batteries are weak, leading me to believe that there is a problem with the software. That, or it has been calibrated with the belief that we have installed a Tesla Wall in the remote control.)
The tech continues to insist that the problem is with the remote control, despite the fact that we now have *three* remote controls that the box is not responding to. At this point, I tell her that I have a fourth, unopened remote control downstairs that I can try. I go get the *fourth* remote, *install* the batteries (because new remotes come with the batteries in a little sealed battery package in my previous experience), see that the remote fails.
She then starts trying to tell me how to unpair the older remote. I inform her that this is the newer remote and I have just unpaired it, but I'll try it again using the protocol for the *newer* remote that doesn't have a setup button, since that is the one that will work on this remote.
You may be unsurprised to hear that this did not help.
At this point, she suggested that the problem was with the remote control and that she needed to send me a new remote control.
Dear God.
We now have *four* different -- and two *new*! -- remote controls, none of which will cause the TV to advance to the next setup screen, all of which have successfully finished the unpairing procedure, and I am supposed to believe that a *fifth* remote is the solution to the problem? I explained to her that I did not care what her troubleshooting script says, if *four* different remotes fail to communicate with the set top box successfully, then the problem is with the box being unable to process signals from the remote, *not* with the *four* remotes (two known working) that are all failing to talk to it.
She now agrees to send me a new box.
I emphasize that we need to send me a wired 4K box. We finally complete the complicated dance to approve the order -- as I note to her that there is no way to tell from the information I am given exactly *what* they are shipping to me, which seems like an additional flaw in the process. She says she will attempt to get me a credit against my bill for the afternoon's entertainment, tries to sell me cellphone service which will be more expensive than what I have now, and I finally get off this call.
At some point, we will get another box and we will see if that works.
This is another fine example of the rotten service that you get from Xfinity. Sadly, there are no good alternatives here.
However, the rotten customer service that you get from Xfinity is *light years* better than the customer service that you get from OptumRX.
But that is another story...