In the spirit of Derb’s bashing the service at
Home Depot, I have to tell you I’m pulling my hair out over dealing with
SBC, which provides DSL service for north Texas. I’ve been waiting for them
to get my DSL service straight FOR A MONTH! They keep screwing up,
apologizing, and screwing up again. Now they tell us we’ll have DSL service
on June 1. I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t want to overreact –
though I use the Internet for my work, and have to have access at home –
but this does remind me of the ridiculous go-rounds I had four years ago
with MCI Worldcom and its horrible billing and service problems with its
wireless business. I spent a lot of time on the phone with all kinds of
people at MCI Worldcom, trying to straighten out the messes they kept
making. I’m a very polite and patient guy, but after weeks of trying to work
things out with those people, I was reduced to yelling. I thought, “Is this
just happening to me, or is this indicative of a badly-run business.” As we
later found out when the company collapsed amid scandal, the way this
company dealt with me was symptomatic of bigger difficulties.