My favorite company -- yeah, right. Fact is Suddenlink has one great pro that it's Internet is reliable and speed acceptable. However, the overriding quality, or lack of, is it's Customer Service/Support if you ever have a problem. This was a monumental issue they created that affected my mother-in-law's Home Phone service.
Day 1, evening, I receive an email alert indicating she was going to lose her Home Phone service 4 days. She is 94 and needing the phone for emergency use.
This was a shock -- neither she nor we requested, nor authorized it. Think SLAMMING from some other carrier. Let's call that carrier X since they apologized to the nth degree. Problem was that X submitted an order to Suddenlink to order the porting of her phone service to them. Let's say her number ended in 78. The order should have been to port a number ending in 70 (other numbers the same). Instead the order sent to Suddenlink was to port her number ending in 78. A simple typo that resulted in her account being LOCKED until it was processed and executed on day 5. Being 94 and relying on that phone for emergency service this was not acceptable.
I called immediately on Day 1 to try to get an answer re what the alert really meant -- a lot of hmmms --- and was finally told by a later rep that her number was being ported to another carrier. Would you not think that BEFORE accepting the order from carrier X Suddenlink would have called her to confirm this? Didn't it also include an account number? Of course you do for you reading this Common Sense blog! They didn't and accepted the order which then locked the account from any other changes. Now here's the kicker. They would NOT tell me the carrier name so I could pursue with them how this happened. Note: we still did not know carrier X sent a wrong number. Suddenlink would not reveal the carrier name, but after about 1.5 hours and onto the 4th person I was transferred to a woman that actually WANTED to help me rather than the other who only read their script and said they did. She sent a request to get the details,...
Day 2
But, that request went pending. Of course I could not get back to her specifically since Suddenlink's auto answering system get you just the Next Available agent and they have no directory to get to a specific person despite a first name in the info log! And the merry-go-round restarted. Person after persons, manager after manager could not resolve the issue. By this time I had over 8 telephone hours in!
Day 3
I hits gold, I thought. After being transferred to many incorrect departments including two in the Mobile phone departments, I finally got to their Retention department by calling and saying i wanted to cancel my services. Can you believe? An experienced lady understood the problem, didn't know the answer, but looked at the pending report that a previous rep looked at and wouldn't give me the carrier name. She did! Carrier X was now known. I called and was told they do not service any apartments in this location and have no record by address, name, or phone in their system. Oh boy...fraud? More calls to Suddenlink to recheck the carrier name and determine the process followed to accept it. I was told ONLY a phone number with no other information from an authorized carrier is needed to port a number. Unbelievable. I remember in my past I signed an authorization form that included more, so I looked it up here. And, behold, it needs name, address, account number. This proves not only didn't they call consumer, but also didn't check number on the form to the account info. What a mess!
Day 3 continues bouncing around Suddenlink to new people and more wasted time until finally I got back to the same Retention Department and got to talk, yes a new person, but another qualified Rep who outlined the process in detail and said only Carrier X (another confirmation) could cancel the order. She tried calling them and went on the wait queue until disconnected. I called carrier X again, got same person, and same answer. But, this time I said fine, the FCC has already served Suddenlink and their investigation will involve you. In one ear out the other I assumed.
Day 4
I bought another ticket on the merry-go-round and spun, but now put call into Altice Corporate only to have them disconnect me after a 15 minute wait. Useless. Fortunately I received a call from a personal phone 4-5 hours later, after another 10 or so Suddenlink reps stuck in mud, and it was the woman I talked to at carrier X. She search for phone numbers that began matching ours except the last 2 digits omitted. Gold! She found the correct person who should have been ported and the mistake on the order request where 78 was used instead of 70. She apologized at least 30 times, and got me a confirmation email for the cancellation of the order. Issue resolved.
Except, now I wonder what information Suddenlink sent back to carrier X re our phone number. All I need is a security problem to work through Suddenlink! They didn't even have a way to get to a Fraud department! Let alone security. Maybe I'll update this later.
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