Josh needed a water softener for his new house, so he went to Sears and used their installation service. Maybe he should have known that things weren’t about to go well with the installer when they showed up and charged an extra hundred dollars. Then he got home and discovered a puddle in his basement. The install was sloppy, and the water softener’s drainage hose emptied into his basement’s sump pump and thus out of the basement. Or so the installer thought. Josh’s basement doesn’t actually have a pump. [More]
installations
Cancel Crappy AT&T DSL Service, Get Billed For It Anyway
By 6.25.12
Beware, Michael warns Consumerist readers. Beware of handing over access to your bank account–that is, your debit card number–to companies that might auto-bill you. For services that you’re no longer receiving, and never really in the first place because the connection never worked properly. Michael had been an AT&T customer for DSL, but never had very good connection speeds. So the Death Star offered him great incentives to upgrade to U-Verse. He did, but the promised rebates never came. He offers this cautionary tale about putting your debit card information in the hands of a mercurial public utility. [More]
From FiOS, To Cablevision, To Hell, And Back Again
By 11.11.11
Oliver tried to two-time FiOS after he got burned on a bad install. But Cablevision didn’t treat him right either, reneging on its promise to pricematch his old bill. Now he’s back again trying to rekindle a relationship with FiOS but they’re still up to their old ways and not giving him the tender loving he deserves. [More]
HomeDepot.com Rejects Your Overbilling Complaint
By 10.18.11
Jeffrey was overbilled for a garbage disposal by Home Depot and had a bad experience with the service technician. Then, we he tried to submit a complaint about it through the Home Depot website, the site rejected his story and said it violated their terms of service agreement. [More]
TWC Tech Saves Boy From Drowning
By 8.1.11
Usually just getting a cable to tech to show up at the right time is worthy of a trophy, but last week a Time Warner Cable went above and beyond the call of duty and saved a 7-year old’s life. [More]
Instead Of A Kitchen, Best Buy Leaves You With 3 Big Empty Spaces
By 7.28.11
Best Buy sent some real stumblebums to install Amy’s stove, dishwasher. and kitchen range. First, Best Buy sent the wrong kind of workers, then they sent the wrong dishwasher, and then the right guys showed up with the wrong tools. Now she’s going to have to end up waiting a total of five weeks to have all the appliances in her kitchen installed correctly. Kind of a crappy way to treat someone who just plunked down for three major appliances with you. [More]
FioS Install Rips Up Your Azaleas, Cuts All Your Lines, And Disappears
By 6.2.11
Well at least they didn’t start a fire. That seems to be the only thing Verizon FiOS didn’t mess up with they did an install for reader janvir. They destroyed our reader’s new flowerbeds, mucked up the mulch, and cut several lines going into their house. Phone, alarm, TV, and internet were all cut. Despite promises to fix it, FiOS was a no-show. Oddly enough, Comcast actually had better customer service than FiOS, coming out and promptly fixing the lines FioS had cut. Here’s Janvir’s complaint letter: [More]
DirecTV Installer: Oh, Most People Don't Notice Our Stealth Warranty
By 1.19.11
Was it an error, or a sneaky upsell tactic? When Brandon’s grandfather moved, taking his DirecTV service along with him, he declined an extended warranty. The final paperwork for the installation included the unwanted warranty, however. When Brandon pointed this out, the installer noted that most people don’t notice this stealth warranty. Oh, yeah? Brandon declined again–so, of course, the warranty showed up on the next bill. [More]
Here's What Happens When You Trust A Big-Box Electronics Store
By 12.23.10
Ben’s father is the kind of lucrative and delectable customer that big-box electronics store salespeople love. Or perhaps they just love their bank accounts. A few months ago, Ben writes, his dad walked into an Ultimate Electronics store knowing that he wanted to buy a 3D TV, and…not much else about what he was looking for. Ben knows enough about electronics to conclude that the local Ultimate store sold his father products that he didn’t need, then botched the installation. [More]
When AT&T Schedules An Install, It's More Like A Suggestion
By 11.17.10
David is trying to get AT&T DSL-only installed, but the techs keep missing the appointment or show up without the tools to complete the job. See, the problem comes down to a simple difference in definitions. What you think of as “scheduled appointment,” they think of as “suggestion,” a snippet of melody for them to jazz riff off if they please. And if they don’t feel like it, they’ll go eat a sandwich and come back another day. Or not. [More]
Comcast Installs Cable By Draping It Across Yard
By 10.21.10
Reading this story, I imagine that on September 1st, the Comcast worker was standing there on the lawn, looking at the cable he had just installed for the two octogenarians. The cable went from the cable box to the house. It lay on the yard like a large, immobile black anaconda. He crossed his arms and said, “Yep, that looks about right,” and drove away to go eat a sandwich. The cable has now been lying out there for almost 2 months. [More]
Charter To Customer With Five Failed Service Calls: "You Haven't Bugged Us Enough To Resolve Your Problem"
By 9.21.10
Charter tells it like it is: the problem with Eric’s incorrectly installed Internet service is that he hasn’t been trying hard enough to fix it. Here’s a copy of an email that Eric tried to send to Charter’s CEO last week, but it bounced back. Maybe someone at Charter can read it here? [More]
AT&T Thinks 0 Kbps Counts As DSL Service
By 9.8.10
AT&T wants to charge Derek a $100 early termination fee even though the DSL they’re giving barely even works. His downtime is almost 12 hours a day, and on the rare occasions it does work, it’s only 100kbps. It’s like watching taffy grill on a Georgia sidewalk. AT&T says they’ve lived up to their part of the bargain, with one customer service rep telling him, “If AT&T were to provide a constant speed of 0 Kbps this still qualifies as service within our contract,” and so now he must pay his contractually stipulated ETF. Also, he must have imagined that a technician came and visited his house. [More]
Mirror Shatters To Floor, Installer Shrugs
By 9.8.10
Alan and his wife awoke to a giant crash from their bathroom. Their 3.5’x5′ plate glass mirror they had professionals install 12 years ago had fallen, shattering all over the tile. [More]
Comcast Guarantees You Will Have Your Entire Day Wasted
By 9.1.09
We’re happy for Comcast that it’s a giant company and all, but is it really that impossible to have someone in Connecticut talk on the phone with a Connecticut-based customer about a no-show installation tech who we presume should also be in Connecticut? Maybe that’s the problem—maybe the technician was accidentally outsourced and is presently driving around Mexico or the Antarctic looking for Karah’s address.
AT&T Is Convinced Your Apartment Doesn't Exist, But They Can Still Overcharge For Service
By 5.17.09
Rouzbeh has tried six times to sign up for AT&T’s U-verse service, but each time AT&T cancels his installation request because they don’t believe his apartment exists. Nevermind the small details like the DSL service AT&T provides him, or the $287 bill they insisted he pay after they accidentally sent two modems to his apartment along with a charge for three months of service.
Comcast's Twitter Reps Save The Day (Again) From Ineffectual Customer Support
By 5.13.09
Comcast might want to slash the budget on its Live Chat service and devote more resources to Frank and Sherri over on the Twitter side of things. The only good stories we hear about Comcast customer service comes from encounters with them, it seems.
Got A Verizon Installation Problem? Tell Us Where It Took Place
By 4.18.09
Might I make a suggestion for further Verizon Customer Issue articles? It would be helpful to know where the incident took place. As I’m sure you know, different parts of the county have different installation teams. Here in the New England region, installations are handled by real Verizon employees. Where in other areas, they contract installations to a third party that pass themselves off as Verizon. Also most regions have a VP email address for employees to help expidite such issues.
