Yesterday I was doing my monthly bill paying chores when I realized that my internet bill was more than double what it usually is. This of course prompted a call to CenturyLink to find out why. Apparently, my six-month promotion rate had ended. I didn’t even know I was on a promotion in the first place. When I signed up I was told there was no contract and I could cancel anytime, so I assumed that the price I was paying was just the regular everyday price.
After I expressed my distaste of the situation, the representative offered to transfer me to their “Customer Loyalty” department. Which is a creative way to say the poor suckers that have to deal with pissed of customer department. Anyhow, I`m back on hold waiting to speak to a representative from the customer loyalty department. When I finally got to speak to someone, they offered to reinstate the promotional rate for 12 months if I agreed to sign up for automatic billing. I hate automatic billing on promotional rates, if you are not paying attention at the end of the promotion there is no telling how many months you will be charged at an outrageous price, before having to call back and renegotiate your promotional rate.
This of course is what they are hoping for as they thanked me for being a loyal custom by not retroactively extending the promotion to the last month’s bill, so I am still on the hook of the outrageous charges for the non-promotional rate.
If they truly wanted to thank me for being a loyal customer, they would not play these games. I should not have to get pissed off every six month to a year because my bill jumped up unexpectedly, and have to waste 30 minutes of my time sitting on hold, calling to threaten to cancel my service if they don’t extend the promotion.
They should simply send me an email saying, “hey, thank you for being such a loyal customer; to thank you we are extending your promotional rate for another year”. If they did that, the next time a friend tells me how much they hate Comcast, I would tell them “hey try century Link, they take care of me”, but no, now instead of praising them I will be sure to say, “Yep CenturyLink sucks ass too.” Ironically, I was not thinking of changing service, I was happily bumping along paying my reasonable monthly bill, that is until they wasted my time, and raised my blood pressure. I`m sure there is a fee I would have to pay to get out of the year contract. I wonder if another internet company would be willing to pay that off to earn my business.
The games they make us play demonstrates that they don’t care about their customer. I can’t imagine treating my customers in this manner. Each customer is like a golden nugget, and should not be so carelessly tossed around, or you just might lose them.
