"Love" might be a strong word, generally if we need to have someone work on our system we're just happy if they show up on time, do their work and leave with no traces they were ever there...other than perfectly working HDTV service. Despite that somewhat tenuous relationship, this New York Times article is focusing on the part of the service beyond
adding more channels and
extra features,
customer service. From the techs coming to the house or the callcenters, now that many people can get
TV from their phone company or phone and internet from their cable company all of them claim to go the extra mile to keep customers happy. Of course there is the occasional disastrous video of a sleepy tech but while most service calls are a bit more low key, a bad experience can definitely lead customers to look elsewhere with more competitors fighting for their attention.
[Via
digg]
posted Aug 27th 2006 7:38PM
Only if it's the Canadian one who can speak to the masses with his arse.
Well, I just switched from Adelphia to DishNetowrk due to content availability...very dissipointed that I can't get basic "antenna-service" to other TVs for free...but I love the additional channels and am happy with having a DVR...although it's not "truly" a dual tuner HD-DVR; meaning it cannot record two simultaneous over the sat HD signals....but since i'm forced to have an antenna for 5 local HD channels, it does allow dual recording of HD content that way, so I'll make it work. This totally goofs up my ReplayTV service that was using the bare antenna-service from cable, as it only gets 4 useful stations now...hmpf... So, I'm still torn. And now I'm going to get DSL and have to pay a high price for that...
Anyway, about that cable-guy comment. We were scheduled 8am-noon. I get a call around 9:15 stating he'll be late. I was happy to get that call, mind you, as at least I knew, instead of them just not coming until they come. His scheduler set him up with 5 AM calls...good luck with that. But other than being late, I was very happy he called to prepare me for the later install and when he got there he was very helpful and courteous. I've been pretty lucky that I've pretty much always got great customer service, in person. On the phone, I was very PO'd by one person and her manager on the phone for DISH. And I was surprised that when I set my account up online that I got a call asking about my order...fine, but they tried confirming about the 200 dollar charge on the ViP622, as if their website wasn't clear enough on the charge...it was as if they were trying to downsell me. But this call was nice and I'll take it as a courtesy of not being surprised with a large unexpected charge. So, overall, so far, so good!
Lastly, I don't get locals off the satellite in HD, but I think that's for the best due to the higher bit-rate OTA and how I can record 2-HD feeds at once, as long as one is on a local network.
I have 2 vip622 and I can record 6 things on the two boxes. I'm thinking you're having a couch to remote issue. :)
My personal experience with adelphia made me choose dish, service was absolutely terrible. I had the guy come out to fix my low signal, he tries to tell us its because we still have my community cable coming into the house. I rolled my eyes and called it a day.