My coworkers amuse me!

[ke4peo.livejournal.com]

So get this...it's non-pay disconnect night here in Knoxville. What does that mean? It means all those people out there 30 days or more past due get all their digital boxes and modems disabled. This is only the first step and usually gets people to pay up.

Now, a bit more backstory. As employees, we get free digital cable and high speed internet. If you just get one box, and one modem....you pay nothing unless you order PPV movies.

And so, I get a call from one of our call center employees asking about his service. He had been disconnected for $45.61. $.46 was 60 days, $40.15 was 30 days, and the rest was current. I looked at his account and sure enough, he's got a $0.00 rate. Which means he has just the free digital cable and box. You'd think it wouldn't be so hard then to pay your bill. But his service was disconnected for non-payment. He called in raising hell about how this should never happen to an employee, and even more so it shouldn't happen for $45. (Which is crap, because I've seen accounts shut down for less than $1.00. You're past due, you're past due. There is no discrimination.)

So I sympathize with him and just roll along listening to how he's going to call and leave a voicemail for the General Manager of our office. How he's going to get it fixed so that there's always a supervisor here since there wasn't one available at 4am to restore his service. (This is laughable, as the supervisor would have just told him to pay the bill.)

*sighs and shakes head* I mean, really folks. My cable bill runs about $25 a month because I have a DVR and 2 additional boxes. And I still manage to pay my bill. Sure, sometimes I skirt it close to the edge of disconnect...but never once have I been disconnected.

Comments

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

perks of the job being abused. I think some people have an issue telling the differance between an employee right, and a benefit.

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

What a familiar story! I'd almost think you worked for the same company that I used to. (I left a couple of years ago, but not until after my fair share of customers and employees alike yammering on because they were soft-disco'ed, with a hard disco soon to follow.) In fact, even the terminology is all the same.

Unless these are terms that every cable co. develops when it starts using Cable Data (and I know you MUST be using it, or a derivative, because you were able to see the monies in 30 and 60 day status...) I'd have to bet we share a common entry on our resume.

However, in my market, we get two digi boxes for free. :P I was still paying extra for my HD box, though.

Enough rambling. Just wanted to say I've been there, and I really do bet I worked for the same company as you. I've got no problem blurting out what company I think it is, but don't know if that's what you want, so I won't say anything before you do. I think we've both said enough that fellow employees can identify it anyhow.

Best wishes to surviving another year of customer support,
Teri

[jecook]

Um, don't blurt out the name of the cable co. Some people here would rather not mention names, and frankly, it's one of the reason why we keep rolling.

The 30 day and 60 day is a common business practice for any type of delinquent account, regardless if it's cable, telco, or shoes. Every accounting package I've seen has the ability to show this type information.

Example: ask you credit card company what they will do to your card if you go 60 days past due. they'll suspend the card and crank up the interest rate to something the Mafia would term "brisk". And they'll send your account to collections for good measure.

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your concerned follow-up. You seem a bit upset at me, so I just wanted to offer a few points...

I said I had no problems saying the name of my former employer. However, you'll notice I did not and left it up to the OP, because I'm frankly not trying to cause anybody trouble. (And boy do I EVER know what kind of trouble it can cause ... I used to post on DSLReports with a nick that was personally identfiable and had my managers at said former company come down on myself and others.)

You're absolutely right that some people would rather not mention names. However, I didn't see any rules about that, so I always figured the choice was left up to the employee themselves. Which is exactly where I let the choice remain.


Also, I understand that 30-day and 60-day status is a common thing, however the way the OP worded it is the same way a particular application that is widely used in the Cable industry (Cable Data - which I've used at three different Cable co's...) would word it. I wasn't commenting on the business practice of handling deliquent accounts so much as I was commenting on the particular language the OP used.

I hope this clears things up, and I'm sorry for rubbing you the wrong way with my statement about posting the company's name.

[jecook]

Ah. no problem.

I had zero caffine in my system when I read and replied to that. Hence, the snarkiness of the reply.

But I'm caffinated now, and I can actualy make something approaching sense. :)

[ke4peo.livejournal.com]

Hehe. I'm sure you do. And yeah, it's Cable Data. Although we're moving to Comtrac after the first of the year. :)

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

Although we're moving
to Comtrac after the first of the year.

Ouch, geeze. I'm terribly sorry... they started to roll that and TTS out in my market when I was leaving. I think TTS was the nail in the coffin in reference to my tenure there, but Comtrac helped me out the door.

I hope they've resolved some of the major issues with it over the past few years. There were things with it that were outright broken and those of us who were trained on Cable Data and intimately familiar with it would often have to fix accounts in Cable Data that were unrepairable in Comtrac. Still, it's been two years since they started to pilot it, so I'm marginally hopeful for you.

Heh heh

[elcaminohippie.livejournal.com]

Could be worse. I used to work in a call center for auto loans. One of the Big Three. We would have employees who would go over 30 days past due on their car payments. How can you expect them to function as a collector when they can't pay their own bill? If we knew someone was working there was delinquent on their auto payments they were fired. So it was a mini-drama every time we would see a tow truck cruising the parking lot.

[hylerj.livejournal.com]

I also work for in the call center of a certain cable service provider. I totally relate to that story. I hate when an employee calls in who should know better, especially if they are call center employees and are fully aware of the scheduling issues that had arisen at this one particular time when digital services were being "upgraded" and MANY customers were having problems receiving certain channels. This girl actually whined and moaned at me that I couldn't get her the soonest appointment and that she would have to wait, when she damn well deals with the same thing from our customers every day.