Today I had one of those customer service experiences that was positive and professional, but it never should have happen in the first place. This morning I was unable to login and check my email. I always preview it on webmail before downloading through Outlook. I didn’t think anything of it at first. I just thought a server was down, or something like that. I thought that until I got an email (on my work address) from Meg telling me that she responded to my email from the night before and it was bounced back. It said the account did not exist.
I called Earthlink Customer Service immediately.
The rep told me what had happened, fixed it and stayed on the phone until I confirmed that everything was back to normal. That part was fine, but it was the cause of the situation that was bone-headed. When I moved two months ago, I transfered my cable internet to my new apartment. I made it very clear that I wanted to transfer my existing account. Well, apparently two months ago a new account was created for my Time Warner access. I never paid any attention to this, if I even knew it happened at all. I continued to log in with the account that I have had for nearly ten years.
So, last night, during a system check, they found people or locations (or something other esoteric criteria) with two accounts. Rather than contacting the account holder before making a change, or even making an assumption and combining the two accounts, they de-activated one of them. I don’t know what kind of idiot was in charge of this procedure, but in my case, they deleted my account that has been in existence for nearly ten years, has multiple email addresses, and if they checked their login records, is logged in several times during the course of the day. And they kept an account that has existed for two months that does not have one iota of activity. Even an automated program could flag these accounts for review, rather than delete the active one.
And the customer service rep told me that I was not the only one with this problem this morning. No wonder they laid off half their work force. Maybe it is time use one of the gmail accounts I have and do something else for broadband.
