I wanted to close my business Internet account with Charter/Spectrum, so I took my modem and went to their storefront on the other side of Worcester. There I waited for 15-20 minutes because, although there were plenty of people working, each customer took a long time. Finally, my name is called, and I go to the agent’s station. explain what I want to do, and confirm my account information (with ID).
The agent looks things over on his screen, leaves for a few minutes, and comes back to say that they can’t close a business account here. I have to call a special number, which he writes on a yellow stickie note. I ask if I can turn in my modem. He said no, but I could drop it off at any UPS store.
Puzzled, I left. From my car, I made the call. The automated system asked if I wanted to use voice recognition to speed up the verification for the future. I said ok and then waited.
The call center agent took my information and said, several times, that she was “waiting for the page to populate.” Oh, and did I have my security code. No, I didn’t. I was calling from my car and couldn’t get at any billing statement. She found another way to confirm that I was who I said I was.
After another five minutes, she said that she couldn’t close the account because there was a pending work order. I had had messages about an outage, but didn’t respond because I wasn’t going to be at the place where my business Internet was located and was going to close it anyway. This work order had to be cancelled so that I could close my account. I heard the agent say softly “Customer changed mind,” as she cancelled the work order.
“I’m going back out and try it again,” she said. “This should allow me to move forward with the disconnect.” While waiting, she asked if I wanted their mobile phone service. I didn’t want to ask if I could do that without being a Charter/Spectrum customer because that would prolong and already too long conversation, so I said no.
Finally, the account was closed. She gave me a 20-digit confirmation number and told me to go to any UPS store to drop off my modem.
That 15-minute phone call, after a comparable wait at the store, could have been handled either at the store or by a web transaction. But, in the name of customer service, I guess, they made it a lot harder to do something so very simple.
And, yes, I did drop off the modem at the UPS store. That was easy.