ARTS & FARCES internet

I have cellular service, er, excuse me, Advanced Digital PCS service through Qwest, formerly US West, which everyone from here to Seattle knew as US Worst. I think the name change has something to do with an illusional questing to be a decent telephone company.

Anyway, the reason I use their service is they’re the only provider here in the hinterlands that can link my cellular service to my land line. When a call comes in to my cellular line, I can configure the service so unanswered calls route to my land line/voice mail. And vice versa—unanswered calls on the land line route to the cellular. So I only have to deal with one voice mail box and my calls follow me around.

So I called them to find out whether or not I could add another cellular account linked to the same land line. After deftly navigating Qwest’s arcane customer service phone menu (why do they ask you to press “1” for English and then talk to you in both Spanish and English), I actually got a human representative on the horn. Or at least it was a reasonable fascimile.

I asked the question. She said she understood what I was asking and her voice trailed off. “Yes, you can do that….” came the timid response. “Are you sure? You sound like you’re not quite certain.” Her response was “Yes” but it was unconvincing.

I thanked her for her time and decided to send an email to the address cited during the telephone menu instructions. Here’s the response I received:

*********************************************************
This acknowledgment was generated by an automated server.
Please do not reply.
*********************************************************

Dear Michael,
 
Thank you for contacting Qwest Wireless. We received your
email request at 06:13:37 PM on Aug 28, 2001 MST. Our
current hours of operation are from 7:00 a.m. MST until
7:00 p.m. MST, Monday through Friday. Based on our current
email volume, you may expect to receive a response to your
email request within 5 business days, or Wednesday,
September 5, 2001.
 
If you are experiencing an emergency with your Qwest
Wireless service, or wish to deactivate your service,
please call our Customer Care Center at 1-800-879-0611 or
by dialing *611 from your wireless handset. If your service
request is regarding an Official Company Services account
or Qwest Corporate Employee handset, please do not contact
the Customer Care Center. Your email request will be
processed through the appropriate department.
 
Again, thank you for contacting Qwest Wireless. We value
you as a customer and we look forward to serving you. We
appreciate your patience as we work to respond directly
to your request.
 
Please do not reply to this auto-acknowledgement. 

Five days to respond to a simple email. And don’t you dare try to respond to this email, bucko. We are, after all, The Phone Company.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been spending a lot of time lately asking everyone from computer manufacturers to credit card companies to telephone companies—all of whom I have existing business relationships with—the same very simple question:

Tell me again why I should be doing business with you?

Dead silence is the only response I’ve received from any of them.

What scares me isn’t that they don’t want to answer—they desperately want to, I can hear it in the silence on the line—it’s that they don’t have an answer.