Well I have to say this is a first, an excellent experience about TelCo’scustomer service. After being shocked in my last post about security on a wireless providers web site I can now say that it’s not as bad as it seemed and customer service was “a pleasant experience”. I can’t believe I just said that cause being on that side of the conversation is not easy…. to a certain extent I live it every day.
As for the encryption issue on the website it would be preferable the site was encrypted rather than wrapping the data up, making the connection then sending, it is a little misleading to users. None the less after some testing and packet sniffing I went ahead with my port from CDMA to a GSM carrier. The phone arrived last Firday and since I was traveling over the weekend not much I could do. I went through this before and it was a frustrating experience. This time, maybe since it was wireless to wireless and not wired to wireless, it was much smoother.
When powering the phone on it comes up “SIM not provisioned”, a quick google notes to call customer service… this most notably happens with 3G SIM cards. So a call to Customer Service finds no record of my “new” account. This was not surprising since the automated option couldn’t find it and neither could the web activation. I figured it was part of the porting process. So here’s where things got interesting. Once connected with a rep from the porting team we proceeded to dissect every aspect of my signing up for service and acquiring a phone. The porting rep found a problem which appeared to be caused by my “stopping” a few weeks ago and not completing the sale when running into the page not being encrypted. Their were three pending orders under my name, not just one. Once that was fixed and the rep was able to attach my ported number to my account, however powering off and on again still showed the same message. A check in another place and ID’s from the phone/GSM card were attached to the account either, again caused by the issue with the three pending orders. Once that was done no error occurred when powering on.
At this point I was already impressed in each instance the rep took information, updated what was necessary and then checked to make sure what was done worked. How many times have you gotten “That should do it, if you have any other problems please let us know”, thanks alot have a nice day. To top this experience off their was one last surprise, I was told the port was complete. What !!! it was three weeks the last time. The rep commented they don’t ship the phone until the carrier accepts the port request, that was 9/26. So while I was on the phone the rep did two tests, I call another number and the rep calls my number. This of course with my old phone turned off … Icing on the cake. I don’t think I’ve ever had that attention to detail from a TelCo in 10 plus years of dealing with them, any of them. I’m an average consumer at $50 a month. The time on the phone was 35 minutes and never did I get a “call back if you have a problem”.
I could be a little premature but it is a good start.
