The Ups and Downs of Customer Service

I’m going to do something that almost no one does: I’m going to say something nice about my cable company.

Since this spring, my family had noticed a steady decline in our broadband speed with Comcast.  By July it had started averaging little more than 1.5Mibps on a line that is listed as being up to 6Mibps with a boost to up to 20Mibps during large downloads. After some email exchanges with the Area Vice President, a couple of guys came out to see what was going on. Turns out it was a combination of a lot of things: two different cables losing A LOT of signal, a modem that had degraded trying to deal with a weak signal over time, and a router/switch that was a wee bit past its prime.  So, after a two-hour service call, and a bit of rewiring (and me going out to get a new router), our broadband speed increased to an average of 15.0Mibps — a ten-fold increase.  We likey.  So, thumbs up to Comcast for that (‘course, with a cable bill that is more than a couple of Benjamins, I’d hope that we would rate that kind of service…I’m just sayin’).

On the other hand, there was my brief dealing with Hoover.  Because of some vacuum issues, we’ve dragged out out old, circa-1970 vacuum. Thing is, we can’t find belts that fit.  The ones Hoover recommends are a little small, but since they are all we have, we stretch them onto the drive and get one or two uses out of them before they shred. I emailed Hoover about this.  Since this is an old machine, it doesn’t have one of those fancy schmancy model plates or mega-digit numbers that companies seem so enamored with these days.  Just a simple three-digit model number molded into the chassis.

Hoover got back to me and said that they didn’t know that model number and that I should truck the thing down to a repair center. Seriously?! That’s the best they can do?  They can’t even be bothered to check their own database to see how the old number equates to their newer numbering system? Not even a request for more info on my part to further identify the machine? So, the thumb-up-their-ass award goes to Hoover customer service.

It’s just sad  when a long-respected business can’t even come close to matching the attention that one of the most vilified businesses offers. In this day of slim margins, it’s really customer service that separates the leaders from the strugglers.