Customer Service, The Weak Link in the Chain
Written: May 04 '03
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Pros: Quantity and quality of channels offered, uninterrupted service and interactive on screen program guide
Cons: Customer service; No communications between customer service reps and technicians
The Bottom Line: If you have the fiber optic upgrade and digital cable available, go for it. It's also less expensive than a comparable satellite dish package.
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| wdsnls's Full Review: Adelphia |
I have been a subscriber to Adelphia for over twelve years and to the digital service for a year. I can relate many horror stories over the years, i.e. service outages, poor picture quality, limited channel offerings and poor customer service. At present my only complaint would be their poor customer service.
The first sign of improvement was after the system in my area was upgraded to fiber optics. This was a very trying time when it was quite common to have no service for periods of six to eight hours per day over a period of several months. It was all part of their upgrade work. Another problem during this period, was even routine deficiencies and outages were wrongly attributed to this upgrade work. Not until repeated calls were made was anything done. After the upgrade was finished the picture quality became excellent. With fiber optics I no longer had outages and degradation during bad rain storms, which is very common with a satellite dish. I thought premium channels were clear on an analog feed but they are much clearer, almost DVD quality, on the digital feed. With the digital cable there comes the ability to carry many more channels. My system carries both east and west coast feeds for the premium channels, which is very convenient when you want to tape a movie for future viewing. The forty-five commercial free music channels are fantastic. I even stopped listening to broadcast radio and stopped buying CD’s. There are many sports packages and pay movie packages available. Your only limit is what you are willing to spend each month. Not only has the quantity of channels increased but more importantly the quality of channels offered. This became very apparent during the recent world events. The availability of not only our American cable news channels, but channels that show feeds of foreign newscasts showed first hand what people in those areas were being told. Another feature that has become a necessity with the quantity of channels is the “On Screen Program Guide”. Not only do you see a description of everything that is presently on, but you can check out what is on up to a week in advance and even set shows for VCR recording or for on screen reminders. No newspaper or magazine can list all the channels and descriptions of each show like this guide does.
Customer disservice! Improvement in this area has been very limited. I find that almost every time I have contact with one of their representatives, it escalates into an argumentative conversation. They are rude, arrogant and most of all very uninformed or untrained about the cable service they provide. I have called about no picture on one channel and was told to call that channel for help. I have been given reasons that poor picture quality was caused by full moons, wet ground from rain, dry ground from lack of rain and even shuttle launches. I am really annoyed when the reported problem is corrected, you call back to cancel the scheduled service call and the cable guy still shows up. It seems no matter what complaint you have, even if it can be corrected on their end, they still send repair.
A recent event really angered me. Upon waking one morning, the digital display on the cable box was going through a repeated series of numbers, which made no sense to me. The box did not respond to anything I did. The cable was working fine, as I do have three other TV’s and a straight cable input into the set the box was connected to. I called and was told they had done a software upgrade over night and to wait another two hours and call back if the problem was still present. Of course, as usual, they had no other calls about this problem. I called back and was then told it was probably a bad box. They wanted to dispatch repair two days later to change the box. I advised them if it was definitely the box, I could remove it myself and exchange it at one of the local offices, which they directed me to do. This was not enjoyable and very time consuming, as I have this box in an entertainment center with numerous outputs and inputs connected to it. At the cable office I was admonished that if the box did not show these error codes, they would not exchange it. I hooked up the new box and the same problem existed. I called and was told I probably got another bad box. After going through numerous people and asking to speak to a real technician, he advised me that the software upgrade had not taken correctly and it was affecting every digital box. He advised me to leave the box hooked up and he would call me back within a half hour. Ten minutes later the box was working fine and he did call back to apologize for my inconvenience.
I have researched the cost of having a satellite dish and digital cable and the latter is the way to go for me. I live in a community where our homeowners’ association negotiated a very attractive reduced, cost package with Adelphia for the basic cable channels. There are close to 600 homes in this community and only five have a satellite dish. I do understand that most of my satisfaction is probably due to the upgraded system and the preventative maintenance they are now performing on a regular basis. I have also noticed that since Adelphia’s filing for bankruptcy, their customer service has somewhat improved.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50.00
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Epinions.com ID:
wdsnls
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Location: Palm City, FL USA
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 0 members
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