Couple of things:
- You are not a “customer service adviser,” or some other fancified title like that. You are a salesperson. You are not interested in making sure I’m getting the best deal for my voice and data and video services. You are interested in making sure Comcast is getting a maximum amount of money from me. I am not stupid, nor looking for a friend. Don’t treat me like a mark.
- Yes, you are correct (duh) that I am getting cable TV and Internet service from Comcast. You are also correct that Comcast would be more than happy to sell me voice (telephone) service as well. But when I tell you flatly that “I am not interested in getting voice service from Comcast,” do not verbally nod and say you understand I have “hesitations” and then give me your canned pitch for why voice service from Comcast is so incredibly keen. Because then I will say the same words again, add a thank you, and hang up.
Now, if you’d actually asked what my concerns and reasons (not “hesitations”) were, then I might have told you. Perhaps it is Ludditism on my part, but I kind of like having simple POTS lines into my house for voice service, from a different vendor than my cable vendor. Given that our data and video services both have occasional hiccups and outages (sometimes lasting for a prolonged period), running the risk of my voice service suffering from a similar problem (especially at the same time) does not sound like a great idea. Power outages, too, make things problematic.
(Yes, I could use a cell phone in such a case. But our cell phone coverage at the house is irritatingly poor.)
POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) works. It works both technically and this arrangement has worked quite nicely for me for some time. So any proposal also needs to overcome the idea of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
(Just to show I’m an equal opportunity curmudgeon, I give Qwest — now CenturyLink — the same cold shoulder when they suggest I sign up for DSL on our phone line + a Dish TV deal. For most of the same reasons.)
Given that I have received many, many, many emails, fliers in my bills, mailings, and even salesfolk at my door every six months or so, and have never once taken Comcast up on this offer may in fact indicate that I am not interested.
Now, if you’d actually asked me, and I’d told you that, perhaps, just perhaps, I might have been willing to listen to your pitch to my points. I might have become interested. You could have touted impressive system uptime figures, answered questions about how/whether VOIP works when the power is out, given me what the actual costs were in a way that I could compare to my POTS cost and decide if the cost differential was worth the added risk. Maybe.
But you handwaved my statement, stuck to your script, and got (politely) hung up on.
Oh, well.
I know how frustrating it is. BTDT. The only really good experience was when I canceled my cable service. The young woman asked me with what service I was replacing the cable. I replied, “Rabbit ears.” There was silence for a moment, and then giggles. She pulled herself together and said (still giggling a bit), “We don’t have a code for rabbit ears. I’ll figure something out.”
It is frustrating, maddening and irritating, but the poor phone monkey (and some of you out there will recognize that term) who is talking to you really doesn’t have a choice as to what to say. The job is to follow the script. Too bad. The companies which employ them might do better to allow a little leeway.
I battered an AT&T rep at my door today with a thousand questions as to why the service he was selling was better than what I have now. I figured, if he was going to take up my time, I’d get the most I could from it. But the chances of me switching to Uverse are very small, for a whole host of reasons.
On the rare occasion when I pick up the phone (rather than having the answering machine screen the call), I just say “I’m not interested” and hang up. It’s a bit rude but it saves both of us time.