3 Hours 20 Minutes to Put Internet on Vacation, We Leave in Less than 40 Hours Now

At home in Holiday / Tarpon Springs Area

Today Marcia went to Bible Study, Skruffy and I took a small load to the Motorhome and turned the Fridge on.  At 12:20 Marcia was done, we were waiting for her, and back to the Condo to get more stuff ready.

 

I then took our reclining chair apart, brought in the two wicker chairs that are out on our covered patio area, and went to get the motorhome to put the chairs in.  (above that is Skruffy in her bed between the chairs, her towel on the chair to the left, and my shirt in the chair to the right with my shoes and socks on the floor.)  I could have waited and made this change on Tuesday, but the chairs are not light, and I wanted to split up the work load even though it is 30 minutes there and 30 minute back.  Add in a stop at the store to get spring water and diet tonic water, the whole process took over 3 hours.  Tomorrow I bring the motorhome over again and we load up the refrigerator, the pantry, our clothing, toiletries…just about everything except for one days of clothing and our computers.

Shortly after 8 pm, after we ate a nice dinner, I needed to contact Frontier, our Internet provider, to put our service on vacation.  We got Frontier on November 2016 with the understanding that we can put our account on and off of vacation with no charge each year.  We have a 2 year contract, and the contract years will only count down when we have and pay for service.  We also have a 100 MPS line for the price of 50 MPS…it comes to $65 per month after taxes.

I logged onto the account, then started a chat.  I was unsure which of the four categories they offered was the right one to contact, so I tried billing…and a message said that no one in billing was available during this time period.  I next tried Tech Support, and I immediately connected with Mahala.  Note the time above, it was 8:15 pm. 

One minute later she is transferring me to customer service (an option that was NOT on the list I had to pick from earlier).  Note:  8:16 pm…..

Above you see my last communication with Mahala….8:16 pm.  My next contact was at 11:01 pm.  In between this what I saw was a Queue….first was “You are the 37th person in the queue…” type of message.  SLOWLY the queue got shorter and shorter until Angelica shows up 2 hours and 45 minutes later!

So I reply that over 2 1/2 hours in queue is not what I expected…then went on to provide my account number (which I have taken off the chat above), and that we want vacation time again and the fix of an overpayment from when we came off  vacation back in January.  You see, in January they charged the 100 MPS amount.  However, when I called, they said it was going to be fixed…and future bills did fix this, but I never got credit for the $35 overcharge for January.

Things are moving along now…in just 3 minutes we are down to business, but she asks me the date for vacation despite the fact that I provided that already…

Then there is the “You will be charged…”, at which I told her NO, I was not charged last year, at which point she looks it up, sees that I was not charged, and waves both the one time charge, and the monthly vacation charge.  Ok, now let’s work on the $35 credit from the overbilling…..

So in seven minutes, Angelica has us on vacation starting Friday, and starts working on the $35 overcharge….

Ten minutes later, much of which is dead noise (no communication with her) I finally get her to admit that she is now on queue, at which I can’t help myself and say, “not another 2 1/2 hours I hope….”

At 11:30 she finally gets permission to process the $35 adjustment, after I said, “Look, this is pretty easy….”

Five minutes later she is done with me…it took from 8:15 to 11:35 to get this done.  And I follow her directions, AFTER I get a pdf printout of the chat conversation, and guess what????  There is no survey at the end of it….when I choose “end chat”, chat ends, it goes away, but no survey.  I remember the last time I did a chat with them, I thought I could get a printout of the chat after the survey, and it went to the survey, but I lost the opportunity to print out the chat.  Well, I got this one, and it is on file, and I will use it as I need to in order to get past the extra charges they attempt to throw on you.  Of course, I could change over to cable tv, that is with Brighthouse…but from people say, they are just as bad.  But I have learned my lesson…this contact needs to be done first thing in the morning when the wait is not nearly as long.  But 3 hours and 20 minutes????  That is beyond long….funny when I said, “I have reached beyond my boiling point”, she was able to immediately give me my credit.  Talk about customer service….

Final Frontier–Boldly Going…

Well, not sure about the “final” part of this, but we are “boldly going” and it has a lot to do with “Frontier”.

Yep, it is this type of “Frontier”.  On April 1, 2016, Frontier Communications took over the Verizon Fios in parts of California, Texas and Florida that Verizon had.  This has been a shaky start for Frontier, that is for sure.  Here in the Condos, everyone who has Internet and/or a TV service has it through Brighthouse…which, by the way, just changed to Charter Communications' Spectrum brand.  Up until yesterday, we strictly relied upon our 40 gig air card with Verizon…but with use both on the computer so much, we eat through 40 gigs in a month while in the condo because the speed is so fast that too much data is transferred even when we click on a page that turns out to not contain what we are searching for…and with so many pages offering short videos…well, they just load away even though we are not going to watch them.

So we decided to go with Frontier, which, for $55 a month plus tax, gives us 100 mb speed, fiber optic to the house (so increasing speed or service in the future will be easy if needed), unlimited usage, no hook-up charge, 2 year contract with decreasing fee each month of use if we stop early, and ability to suspend/vacation when we are gone for only a $12 charge for each month…but it also freezes contract until we start up again.  Since we foresee 5 months of use, this will cost us about $375 a year…which is less than the $100 extra each month for data overage each of the five months we are here…and worrying about how much we are using.  Yes, with Verizon one can normally adjust their use…but we have a deal with 40 gigs for 1/2 the going rate due to a Christmas Special we got 2 years ago.  While on the road, we can use anywhere from 20-40 gigs, but never really over the 40.  So for us, this works.

As for the “Boldly going…”, well, so far we are fine with it.  When Frontier took over, they had a hard time getting it together.  First, they had to hire out phone assistance overseas to handle the new work load.  We all have been there….”Halloo, dis is Joe, hows cans I halp you todays?”  (of course, “JOE” is not his real name)  The communication gap makes for bad service.  Good thing, they have hired and trained new communications staff, and all reps you talk to now (as of sometime in October) are from the USA…and in my experience, all have been good.  Second, the new work load was hard to handle even though many of the old Verizon workers came into the Frontier family.  The tech who installed us said that anytime there is a change like this, it makes people nervous…but that everything seems to be clicking now.  Third, when there is a change, customers get contacted by the competition, and many times are lured away…which has happened…but there has been a slight up-swing.  And here in Florida where Brighthouse changed hands, they can now go after the Brighthouse users who are not happy with that change.  And in the Holiday/Tarpon Springs area, there are only two games in town unless you want to go satellite…and here in the Condo, satellite is not an option.  I already had one person inquire, and I told her I would let her know how it is working out.  She is paying over $120 per month for basic cable, Internet and phone…I think she can get the same with Frontier for around $85-$90.

Boldly going at light speed … just hope we aren’t just turning our wheels and going nowhere.