Rob Talk: Non-Fiction Stories & Amazing Events

The People PC experience!

Her phone bill came last month with a service charge of $85.00, which kind of confused her because she had no telephone problems or issues!

Hi, I’m Rob. I live in Salt Lake City under the roof of my girlfriend’s condo. Last year while driving back to Salt Lake from work for the weekend as I usually did to spend a couple of days with my honey; a washing machine came flying threw the air landing in front of my little Ford Ranger causing me and my little truck to glance off of the massive obstruction and roll for two or three hundred feet. Did you know that at 75 mph you can roll your truck at least 5 times! I did! What took the fun out of rolling the truck so many times is that the constant bouncing off my head caused moderate neck damage and massive back problems including a compression fracture of a lower disk! Luckily I was wearing a seat belt! I ‘m pretty much ruined except for my writing ability. I am sure glad I have the opportunity to write! Thanks Today.com.

I am being taken care of by my girlfriend. She has her stuff and I have mine! In this case; I have the internet and she has her phone line!

I have been with People PC for years. All of which had been dial up until recently. Last year People PC made the plunge into giving there customers the opportunity to sign on with DSL!  I signed up for the DSL package in January. I thought it was the best deal on the market! Everything was fine with the exception that on my bill after several calls I could not get them to change my first name to what it is…Robert! They were billing me as andyRobert. (lol). I guess pretty embarrassing for them not being able to change a billing name. This should have tipped me off there was trouble around the bend! Maybe People PC wasn’t ready to be a DSL carrier. Run with the big boys and all!

Somewhere at the end of November I recognized that my DSL speed at my home office was sluggish, 6 Kb/s or so, or my signal was just dropping out all together. I was supposed to have 1.5 Mb/s.

I called my Internet Service Provider to complain about my connection being sluggish. First my internet provider assumed that the problem was a network wide outage, and said that it would clear sometime during the day! The next day still having the same poor quality of service, I called again! The technician thought that my slow speeds were due to a problem back at the main switching site, “The HeadEnd or Hub”. He came up with this conclusion after conducting several tests! He asked me to try different things on my end and had the headend technician on the other line trying different things to assist him as well. During our three-way call two technicians determined that they had a problem out in the field or right there at the headend in front of them!

Nearly three weeks later I spoke with my internet provider about cancellation. I told them that I have had enough. They told me they would credit back one month’s payment for me not having acceptable service!  I agreed to give them one more week to find and fix the problem.

The next day a technician from Qwest; my girlfriend’s phone provider showed up at the door and said that he found no problem outside at the service entrance box. He came in and un-plugged and plugged back in the wiring from the modem to the wall. No visible problems detected! He said he had no meter to test the lines. But said he wasn’t supposed to be touching the modem anyway! It was my provider’s responsibility!

Okay here’s the first question: Who is supposed to fix inside problems if they exist?

Two days after the visit from Qwest, I noticed that my internet speeds were clocked at 12 Mb/s. It was really quick. Someone somewhere obviously found the problem. The 12 Mb/s was usually from technicians tweaking on knobs to compensate for the slow speeds. Technicians without the proper troubleshooting skills will often “tweak”, instead of locating the real source of the problem. I know I was a technician myself!

Here is where it got sticky!

My roommate received the dreaded “Service Charge” on her next monthly bill from Qwest!

She called Qwest to see why in the world they charged her for a service call? Qwest’s customer service replied that it was a service call generated by her household! She asked if I called. I told her I didn’t call Qwest for problems on the phone and that the service technician had found no problem while troubleshooting here when People PC called them. The customer service rep. told her if the technician had found a problem with the wiring; no service charge would have been applied to her account! She replied that she had no problems with the phone lines and gave nobody the right to call and place an order on her behalf!

The following day (12/02/08) People PC called Qwest with me on the line! Qwest told us that a company called EarthLink is the one that generated the service call! People PC told us that EarthLink was their sister company providing the DSL. I said okay you heard it! You guys generated the service call so you guys are responsible for paying it!

People PC said they would get back with us in 72 hours! They needed to get this information to there corporate offices.

I told them that they owed my roommate $85.00 for a service call they generated with her phone company without her consent! And that they are responsible for the up keep of the transmission path between them and us! Not my roommate! I pay $40.00 a month for reliable service! My roommate will not pay for your outside plant problems! She doesn’t even have internet, I do! This is something that you should have anticipated on your end as operating expenses I said!

On 12/8/08 we still had not heard back from People PC.  I called Qwest back and Kelly said People PC had done nothing about the $85.00 charge.  Kelly then put a Do Not Treat on the $85.00 charge, so I would not get penalties and late charges attached to my bill because of a charge that should never have been there.

On 12/9/08 we called People PC back to ask why nothing was getting resolved.  For an hour and 45 minutes we were transferred 5 times and put on hold at one point for 20 minutes (which I finally hung up).  One of the techs said they would write a follow up message with there headquarters.  When we asked for a manager to straighten this out we got two replies, no I can’t give you my managers name and sorry there is only 40 minutes left until business close and there are no supervisors or managers available.  What kind of company do you run?

On 12/10/08 I called People PC again.  At 4:18pm never got to talk to a rep was automatically put on hold.  I tried again at 4:25pm got transferred twice and put on hold till 4:37.  I called again and just tried to ask for a phone number to your corporate office.  I was given a number of 866-000-8558, which I found out was a fax machine.  The tech never told me that.  I called again and got another number 415-000-1314 and explained to the tech the last number I got was a fax machine.  He said that is the only number they have to corporate.

My roommates feelings at the end of all of this were; Quote: What I don’t understand is how EarthLink and People PC who are having the problems at their hub are having my phone company come out and check my phone lines.  If your company is having problems you don’t go and have someone come to my home and then charge me for the service call.  It’s your problem not mine. You have problems, you get them fixed, and you don’t go and charge me to fix the problem that is coming from your end. Un-Quote!

We got the same reply from EarthLink; we would have to speak to People PC because essentially they are our service provider!

I am not going to bore you with all the details of all the calls we made for the following month after this conversation day by day, hour by hour. We spent hours on the phone with 3 to 4 transfers to different operators. We really got annoyed with the same old greeting and security checks with every transfer. We had to repeat the same information to them over and over; our phone number, password, your name and what the problem was you were calling about every transfer! This was crazy; you had to start your appeal for getting resolution every time you transferred all over again. The new operator after your transfer knew nothing of your case! We went threw every emotion! We were upset, dismayed, distressed, depressed; we were on the verge of tears… What a circus!

We wrote the President and VP of both People PC and EarthLink getting nowhere! No replies and the same old crud, rudeness and ignorance continued on the phone! Then we went for outside help; Get Gephardt! Our local “help the little guy anchorman”, hopefully they could put this nightmare to bed.

We fortunately got word back from the producer of “Get Gephardt”, Utah’s favorite KUTV Channel 2’s “Watch out for the little guy” news anchor!

Once we received notice back from Doug Edwards the producer for “Get Gephardt” KUTV Channel 2 news we immediately forwarded the email to People PC. The email from Doug Edwards simply asked; are you still having a problem with these guys?

The following day we received a call from; upper management “EarthLink”. His voice mail on our phone said that the $85.00 check was in the mail. And apologized for the inconvenience!

People PC sent me an email that same day stating that there would be a $50.00 customer appreciation credit applied to my account, $10.00 every invoice for five months! Starting this month (January)!

If it wasn’t for “Get Gephardt” we would have just been taken for $85.00 dollars.

Just think! Because People PC does not own the telephone lines like Qwest they rely on your local phone provider to keep them running! Qwest would love to get your business because they offer DSL also. If companies like Qwest decided to charge, like I guess they all ready have to my roommate; instead charge People PC with all of the, “no problem found service calls”; it would sum up to be $85,000 dollars per 1000 customers! That’s a pretty hard hit! A great way to have an impact on there competitor! But smarter than that, upset the customer! If Qwest just charged us, the customer, the customer would come running to Qwest who doesn’t have additional charges for there service! Showing it’s better to skip the middle man and go direct!

This gets better; People PC just doesn’t get it!

In January of last year People PC decided to merge with a company named EarthLink to provide their entire customer base with DSL if there customers would like to have it!

The People PC DSL deal was $10.95 for the first 6 month’s to there new DSL customers and then an increase to $40.00 a month for the following six months. Then they would charge only the $10.95 after the year’s contract.

We called People PC two weeks before the end of the 1 year period to see what the bill would be? Just to make sure. Their online operator said that our next bill would be $10.95. I have the actual transcripts copied of this conversation; pasted below!

From: PeoplePC LiveChat [mailto:tech.support@peoplepc.com]
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 8:11 AM
To:xxxxxxxxx @peoplepc.com
Subject: Transcript of your chat

I even called via “land line” in January before the bill date just to make sure! I got the same response; $10.95 throughout the rest of the year!

When People PC invoiced my bank they took $19.95!

Again I called People PC and asked why we were invoiced $19.95. They said that my monthly charge was $39.95. And I received two of my $10.00 customer appreciation credits! I told them I expected a $.95c charge for 5 months. And that I was told my bill was supposed to be $10.95 per month for the remainder of the year. The $10.00 customer appreciation credit would make my monthly bill $.95c for 5 months.

After going back and forth with them again for another week they got the billing right! At least on paper! But still insist that my bill will be $39.95 after all of the credits have been applied!

If I would have known that! I would have gone with Qwest’s DSL plan of $14.95 a month for the year and then the $29.95 there after! With People PC I averaged $25.47 for the year! What a rip off!

Back to the $19.95 they invoiced my bank via check card withdraw.

I only keep enough in that bank account to pay internet costs. It is my protection from hackers penetrating my private information on the internet and getting at my money!

By charging my bank the $19.95 over and above the regular bill I was promised, of $10.95 it would have generated a $35.00 overdraft! But I knew better! Don’t trust People PC! I went down and spoke to my bank and they allowed me to deposit money to cover it! Thank goodness I had the money! Thank goodness the bank allowed me to cover the overdraft without additional charges!

I still am left with People PC’s over charge and we haven’t to date received our $85.00. What do they think we are? A People PC / EarthLink fowl-up loaning institution?

If you are a customer of People PC Watch Out, make sure you get all the details in writing!

 DON’T LET THEM DO IT TO YOU!

If you have comments or would like to discuss this article please fill free to respond! I will reply in the order I receive your comments!

RobTalk

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