Century Link: A Study of Incompetence

So, how did I spend my 35th birthday?

Awesome cake and birthday brunch by/with the wife and daughter.

And some vomit inducing moments with our new internet provider, Century Link/Qwest. I swear, the ISPs just keep getting worse. And I have not been impressed. And yes, if you Century Link customer service web crawlers are reading this, feel free to get in touch with me to apologize.

Because the other ISP was steadily increasing its charges over the years, we decided to make a switch. And so last month, July 20th to be exact, we had our DSL installed. A long cable ran from our house, to the back and diagonally across. Why the tech didn't connect us to the nearer box right behind us, I don't know (I think he needed new glasses).

Anyway, we were told the cable would be buried within a week.

And then the weeks came and went. Finally, on week 3, someone came to make the burial. Except this seemed like a bright fellow, and made a new connection to the nearer box so that he didn't have to dig into our neighbours' yards, and buried THAT cable. He said he would contact Century Link to have the service transferred to the new, nearer box instead, and they can then remove the old unburied cable. He suggested I call too, to get things moving faster. And therein lies the problem. 7 tranfers between incompetent customer service reps, with 1 dropped call, and FIFTY NINE minutes later, the last guy finally said, "I have trouble contacting the buried cables department. Can you call back later?"

WTF. And so, to avoid a cerebral hemorrhage from the hypertensive crisis they were putting me through, I decided to give it a break, and see if they would come.

A week and half later, no word. The cable remains unburied. My neighbour's kids have already tripped on it several times (no word on any lawsuits yet). And today, one of the lawnmowers went over it and severed the cable (it was an inadvertent but expected outcome- the damn thing runs across the yards of 3 homes!).

And in this day and age of 'high speed this-or-that', it will be.... taa daahh... 72 hours before someone comes to rectify this.

Strangely enough, things moved a lot faster before I became a customer... but once they had me hooked, things seemed to slow.

And to think this is a telecommunications company. Bullshit.

Maybe I should go back to dialup.