Continued from Part II
I literally go from the airport, to Gumby's office, and thence to G's house to watch basketball. I'm absolutely shredded and a long weekend away from it all could not be better timed.
Hoops with the gang is sacred. I know next to nothing about basketball, but the gang puts up with me anyway. We eat a lot, drink a lot and loaf a lot - which is good for your mental state.
And my mental state needed a helping hand. I'd booked my PTO back when the West Virginia trip was not a threat - then the trip was moved to be right on top of Hoops.
Not cool. I ride out the weekend and soak up the camaraderie. Then I slouch back home to deal with Arwafn.
First there's the anxiety tag: Nerdhaven, like any business, has factions - and the loudest faction at present is the SMEs. The SMEs are frontline staff, up to their eyes in subject matter expertise, but also expected to perform a slew of customer contact, sales & support.
Since they have real jobs, they're not deeply plugged into what goes on back at Nerdhaven, and a lot of the work that our UX team does seems (to them, at least) to come from outer space. There are a lot of reasons for this: distance, iterative design, and a long history of unsatisfactory dealings with UX.
We don't build exactly what they ask for. Largely because every request out of the SMEs starts with a solution. They are smart people, and they know what they want.
Being in UX, we know that any solution causes more problems - and the trick is to look for root causes before you "just build what they ask for." It doesn't mean that UX folks have the answers (lord knows we don't) but our approach is to get more data to see if we can gain enough insight to make a 'big win' kind of solution.
The SMEs don't have time to wait for that kind of thing. They need answers yesterday - and are confident that their chosen approach will begin paying off immediately. They may be right - but one of the things we hear from our end users is classic alert fatigue: the users have more warnings then they have time to respond to. And a lot of the requests from SMEs amount to 'gimme a new alert option.'
Its difficult, and frequently frustrating for both UX and the SMEs and I don't see a good way out of it.
* * *
With that bit of background, you can appreciate the amount of anxiety tag that is ripping through the SMEs after the launch of Arwafn. They've done demos of the report in front of clients. They've described its many features and clients have oooohed and aaaaaaahed. And now the product has been flipped on for their clients and the result is a big, wet, thud.
And it's the SME on the horn or in the room with the client having to take the abuse, not me. Nobody in UX is on the phone with a baffled customer trying to explain why their numbers don't add up. Historically, the SMEs have to run with whatever features make it out of UX and they quickly share the skinny on what they've seen so they can go into client contact forewarned and forearmed.
I'm eventually cc'ed on a series of messages between the SMEs "Did you hear? This filter is a failure across the board!!" and that SME tells the next one, and the next - and soon you have a whirlwind of anxiety making its way to the higher ups.
The higher ups have seen this movie - and they rapidly direct their power on various minions who are ordered to bring them clarity about what the hell is going on. One of the higher ups is Gumby, new to Nerdhaven and that means I'm getting pulled into their office and other meetings to explain everything I know in detail.
I spell it out over and over again. I state my mistakes and assessment of where the product is at the moment. I spell out the issue with TURN codes and list out a half dozen other things that could be made to work better.
Then I do it again in front of the the execs. I have to go before the Wizard, who is mighty, but never really says much. I live in mortal terror of having to go before MGM, who is mightier still, but those fears are thankfully not realized.
Airing the TURN issue in front of this crowd means we are going to fix the issue. HockeyOne will be happy, Ajax will be relieved, and our client's data will at last be made whole.
And the exec level folks will make our lives an unending hell until all of this is done.
Product is leaving the company - completely unrelated to this situation, they just got a VP gig elsewhere, so this 'fix the Arwafn' effort is going to need a point person.
Absolutely no one volunteers. So, after a loooooong pause, Gumby raises a hand.
As the newest manager at Nerdhaven, Gumby has a free pass in the situation. They had nothing to do with what has happened up until now. Their role is enthusiastically endorsed by a roomful of cowards.
* * *
The boss is in this up to their neck, and UX is now on the hook in a larger sense. Gumby has to prevail.
And Nerdhaven has to fix Arwafn. All of it.
Showing posts with label Bad customer service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad customer service. Show all posts
Friday, May 22, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Derailment, part II
Continuing from Part I
Arwafn is coming undone. And for a reason I first started hearing about a month after I came to Nerdhaven.
One of the base data elements of Arwafn is something I'll call TURN. TURN is a series of codes that factor into the key datapoint of the Arwafn report. Calling it the lynchpin of the report would not be overstating it. The customer sends Nerdhaven TURN codes and we group them, count them, and make them look beautiful.
Classically, a TURN code is a single character value. Like T, or U, or R, or N. And Nerdhaven's process is built on this standard.
Single character come in, single character go into database. Arwafn is happy.
But what if TURN comes in as multiple characters?
Instead of T, let's say it comes in as T<*
Then what?
This question had been posed and answered for me by Noddy. Noddy had raised an issue about multichar TURN codes in their usual manner: Airily, arrogantly "raising a concern" via email to a slew of senior staff. Runner and I were cc'ed so we would be aware of his brilliance.
Look at me!
That's Noddy, and the truth is - its hurts their message, since the resulting eyeroll drowns out the content. But the issue sounded serious.
According to Noddy, when a multi-character TURN code came in to a system I'll call Dragon, it would get truncated. Dragon would take just the first character and bin everything else.
T<* would become simply, T.
And that didn't sound so bad, and really wasn't bad, until new values were added to the TURN code like NO and TDD. These were values that were distinct from T, U, R, and N.
But if Noddy was right, Dragon would take an incoming code like TDD and convert it to T. NO would become N.
And that really would be a problem. Because now our system would be adulterating client data - and that is not cool. Arwafn would be inaccurate, and other features in our product would be wrong as well. TURN is deep, deep in the works. And Noddy wants us to know he's found this problem.
I remember Heater responding to Noddy's initial email. Heater had a few stories written up to deal with this issue - they'd never been given priority before, but maybe now the time was ri-
Dragonman kills that noise almost immediately. Dragonman is lead dev on the Dragon system, and his response took the wind out of Noddy & Heater.
Here's a count of all the incoming TURNs we've received in the past two months: out of millions of messages, we're only gettting a few hundred N values. Even if all of them were really 'NO' values, its a negligible amount of data.
In other words, Dragonman was saying this is not a problem.
Heater lives in fear of Dragonman, and Noddy never follows up on anything. So that was enough to make them drop the issue.
I'd remember talking with UXDir and they were frustrated that we weren't fixing this issue. "We shouldn't treat this like a tech support call! Who cares if there isn't a lot of volume now? We should make this right, so we future proof the system!"
I also remember talking to Product & suggesting that supporting longer TURN values might be a selling point for our product. Product said we didn't have any data to support that it would be worth it. Between that and the technical pushback, the idea was buried.
Yeah, we truncated the TURN codes, but it didn't matter enough to warrant allocating dev resources to fix it.
* * *
That answer became the party line: We truncate, but so what?
Months later, even I used that line to shoot down Suit when they tried to grandstand on the discovery that OMG, we're truncating TURN values!
Suit was engaging in that same chicken little exercise where "lookee everybody! I found a problem (and gosh, aren't I smart?)" and I was in no mood. I forwarded Dragonman's original response on TURN to Suit and cc'ed about everyone. This is a crap issue, leave it alone.
I felt proud of myself, too. I knew what was going on under the hood with TURN. It's no big deal.
* * *
Rewind to about five months ago. I'm on the phone with Goldeagle, one of our beta testers, and they are looking at their version of Arwafn and they are confused.
The numbers for this item just look wrong. It's way too high, and I think the count is off.
I'd seen this before, but it had always been a setting problem. The user had misconfigured things and broke the output. But a quick check showed that Goldeagle had the settings right. The numbers were just wrong. I told them I would figure out what the problem was.
This was weeks after Arwafn went live to over 100 customers. And this was definitely not good.
I asked BigDog to give me the under the hood data for Goldeagle's report. I do the math and everything adds up to the same crappy numbers Goldeagle was wondering about. And I notice a pattern in the data: the calculation is based on the occurrence of T's out of the total of T's, U's, and R's.
And there are no R's at all.
Which is odd, because Arwafn is report that spans a year or more. In the course of a year, for this particular datapoint - there should be at least an R here and there.
I check again. None.
As all the data I'm looking at is in the Guardian database, I wonder if we're screwing things up somewhere upstream: in Dragon, maybe.
But Dragon doesn't hold data, they take incoming values and slot them into our Guardian db. True, Dragon would be the place where we are truncating TURN codes, but truncating still passes something and I was seeing no Rs at all. Was there a process that was eating the Rs?
And why was it only for this one record? Arwafn has dozens of record lines, each crossing columns with other values. And only this one combination was showing this total lack of Rs.
What the hell?
At this point, I trot over to the other side of the building and visit HockeyOne. They are a code slinger, an expert on incoming client data, and they're one of the folks that are always asking me painful questions when I'm showcasing new features.
HockeyOne lives and breathes in another system that is upstream of Dragon. It's called Lizard. And Lizard is very low level stuff, grabbing up massive volumes of text files sent by our clients and flinging them into the jaws of Dragon.
HockeyOne is a guru of all things Lizard and I start asking them if they have any idea what could be happening to my missing Rs. HockeyOne looks at me with a sort of amused smile and says "have you looked at the KIM fields?"
No. KIM fields are not TURN fields, why the hell would I look there?
"Because if the TURN is too long to go into Dragon, we'll append it to the end of a KIM field and pass a blank TURN value."
Shut
the
front
door.
HockeyOne goes on to explain the problem. Lizard wants to pass all TURN values to Dragon, but it will get an error if it tries to pass a TURN that is longer than 1 character, since Dragon will only take a 1 char TURN code.
Rather than give up, Lizard will look for a neighboring field, KIM, and append the TURN value to it so the data has somewhere to go in Dragon. Lizard doesn't truncate the TURN, it puts it elswhere and passes nothing at all to the TURN code in Dragon.
I start to sweat. "Can you run a query to show me what kinds of extra noise is getting tacked on to Goldeagle's KIM field?"
HockeyOne says "sure!" and writes up byzantine query in a few minutes. They show me a list of values that are in the KIM field, but supposedly came in as values in TURN:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I've never heard of these values coming across in TURN. I ask HockeyOne to make sure - absolutely sure - these values exist in the client's messages to our system. HockeyOne goes deep into the weeds to show me - that these are real values Goldeagle is sending to us AND that they are sending to as as TURN codes.
I ask for samples that prove this, so I can show them to others. HockeyOne has just demonstrated that we are NOT truncating TURN codes, we are moving them elsewhere. Which to downstream features like Arwafn, is essentially the same thing as deleting them, since Arwafn is looking at the TURN field, which ends up blank every time one of these multicharacter values bounces off Dragon's front door.
HockeyOne is excited. They've always hated the fact that Lizard was shoving data in weird places, and they've asked repeatedly for Dragon to take longer values and store them. They give me all kinds of examples of what is going on in Goldeagle's incoming messages - and I find front end examples of this data mangling so I can sell this as a real issue.
Then I get back with Goldeagle, and ask them what is going on with these other codes. What do they mean? and why are they being sent in a field that should only have 6 discrete values?
Goldeagle tells me that their system uses those other values to track TURN as well as an entirely different dimension called BLES. In their system, the code BLES = R and also has some additional meaning as well. UB is also the equivalent of R.
Which means I've found my missing R values, they are being sent as multichar values in TURN, which means Lizard isn't putting them into our db as TURN values, because Dragon won't let them.
Which means Arwafn is pretty much screwed at this point, because Arwafn only sees TURN values in the Guardian database. If multichar TURN values aren't landing in Guardian's TURN field, they might as well not exist - because to Arwafn - they don't.
I ask HockeyOne how often Lizard would move TURN values into KIM and send a blank value in TURN to Dragon. I mean, I'd always been told we truncate.
HockeyOne is pretty sure that we do this for a majority of our sites. Which means that Goldeagle has a lot of company. And a lot of our Arwafn customers are going to be missing data.
I flip out and go to Data and Heater and declare that the sky is falling. Data tells me that what I am saying is inaccurate. "We truncate."
I show them the messages. "No, we don't. At least not for this site."
My equivocation doesn't help my case. I may have just found an outlier. I email a wider group and provoke an exasperated response from Ajax, who is the sheriff of these kinds of data issues. Ajax is a supremely competent person and they tell me that I'm describing the situation wrong. That any moving of data into different fields would require changes that they would be aware of. And they have seen no such changes.
I take this as "murph, you are full of sh!t" and as I have only one site as a datapoint, I can't press much further. I get more data by hitting up OneTwentyEight to run HockeyOne's byzantine query against all of my beta sites.
More long TURN values show up, noisier ones like "NEG" and "POS" and a slew of things that look like equations. I run this past Data and Sprint and start to get some traction.
Sprint (who is awesome) runs ahead and sorts out a list of what chunks of work would need to be done to get these longer values into our system correctly.
We get Dragonman into the fold and a reasonable solution is proposed. Dragon will create a path for longer values to make it into Guardian. We draft up a list of work to present to Product.
We're on the verge of pitching this plan when all hell breaks lose on Arwafn.
I'm in West Virginia getting an alarmed email message from Product asking what the hell is going on with Arwafn. I'm wrung out from a long day of client visits yet completely unable to sleep - and so I lie in bed and type an epic mea culpa with my thumbs. We didn't go under the hood enough when we were in beta. This is over and above the TURN problem, but this starts the crazy train rolling.
I fly back home and drive straight to the office from the airport and see Gumby and Atlas clearly having a strategy meeting. I make myself available and soon we are in stage one of responding to an epic managerial sh!tshow.
The executives have heard that Arwafn isn't all it was cracked up to be and they are demanding answers.
The execs are flipping out about filters on the report not working - and they are pissed.
And at this point, they have no idea about the issues with TURN.
Its about to get a whole lot worse.
Arwafn is coming undone. And for a reason I first started hearing about a month after I came to Nerdhaven.
One of the base data elements of Arwafn is something I'll call TURN. TURN is a series of codes that factor into the key datapoint of the Arwafn report. Calling it the lynchpin of the report would not be overstating it. The customer sends Nerdhaven TURN codes and we group them, count them, and make them look beautiful.
Classically, a TURN code is a single character value. Like T, or U, or R, or N. And Nerdhaven's process is built on this standard.
Single character come in, single character go into database. Arwafn is happy.
But what if TURN comes in as multiple characters?
Instead of T, let's say it comes in as T<*
Then what?
This question had been posed and answered for me by Noddy. Noddy had raised an issue about multichar TURN codes in their usual manner: Airily, arrogantly "raising a concern" via email to a slew of senior staff. Runner and I were cc'ed so we would be aware of his brilliance.
Look at me!
That's Noddy, and the truth is - its hurts their message, since the resulting eyeroll drowns out the content. But the issue sounded serious.
According to Noddy, when a multi-character TURN code came in to a system I'll call Dragon, it would get truncated. Dragon would take just the first character and bin everything else.
T<* would become simply, T.
And that didn't sound so bad, and really wasn't bad, until new values were added to the TURN code like NO and TDD. These were values that were distinct from T, U, R, and N.
But if Noddy was right, Dragon would take an incoming code like TDD and convert it to T. NO would become N.
And that really would be a problem. Because now our system would be adulterating client data - and that is not cool. Arwafn would be inaccurate, and other features in our product would be wrong as well. TURN is deep, deep in the works. And Noddy wants us to know he's found this problem.
I remember Heater responding to Noddy's initial email. Heater had a few stories written up to deal with this issue - they'd never been given priority before, but maybe now the time was ri-
Dragonman kills that noise almost immediately. Dragonman is lead dev on the Dragon system, and his response took the wind out of Noddy & Heater.
Here's a count of all the incoming TURNs we've received in the past two months: out of millions of messages, we're only gettting a few hundred N values. Even if all of them were really 'NO' values, its a negligible amount of data.
In other words, Dragonman was saying this is not a problem.
Heater lives in fear of Dragonman, and Noddy never follows up on anything. So that was enough to make them drop the issue.
I'd remember talking with UXDir and they were frustrated that we weren't fixing this issue. "We shouldn't treat this like a tech support call! Who cares if there isn't a lot of volume now? We should make this right, so we future proof the system!"
I also remember talking to Product & suggesting that supporting longer TURN values might be a selling point for our product. Product said we didn't have any data to support that it would be worth it. Between that and the technical pushback, the idea was buried.
Yeah, we truncated the TURN codes, but it didn't matter enough to warrant allocating dev resources to fix it.
* * *
That answer became the party line: We truncate, but so what?
Months later, even I used that line to shoot down Suit when they tried to grandstand on the discovery that OMG, we're truncating TURN values!
Suit was engaging in that same chicken little exercise where "lookee everybody! I found a problem (and gosh, aren't I smart?)" and I was in no mood. I forwarded Dragonman's original response on TURN to Suit and cc'ed about everyone. This is a crap issue, leave it alone.
I felt proud of myself, too. I knew what was going on under the hood with TURN. It's no big deal.
* * *
Rewind to about five months ago. I'm on the phone with Goldeagle, one of our beta testers, and they are looking at their version of Arwafn and they are confused.
The numbers for this item just look wrong. It's way too high, and I think the count is off.
I'd seen this before, but it had always been a setting problem. The user had misconfigured things and broke the output. But a quick check showed that Goldeagle had the settings right. The numbers were just wrong. I told them I would figure out what the problem was.
This was weeks after Arwafn went live to over 100 customers. And this was definitely not good.
I asked BigDog to give me the under the hood data for Goldeagle's report. I do the math and everything adds up to the same crappy numbers Goldeagle was wondering about. And I notice a pattern in the data: the calculation is based on the occurrence of T's out of the total of T's, U's, and R's.
And there are no R's at all.
Which is odd, because Arwafn is report that spans a year or more. In the course of a year, for this particular datapoint - there should be at least an R here and there.
I check again. None.
As all the data I'm looking at is in the Guardian database, I wonder if we're screwing things up somewhere upstream: in Dragon, maybe.
But Dragon doesn't hold data, they take incoming values and slot them into our Guardian db. True, Dragon would be the place where we are truncating TURN codes, but truncating still passes something and I was seeing no Rs at all. Was there a process that was eating the Rs?
And why was it only for this one record? Arwafn has dozens of record lines, each crossing columns with other values. And only this one combination was showing this total lack of Rs.
What the hell?
At this point, I trot over to the other side of the building and visit HockeyOne. They are a code slinger, an expert on incoming client data, and they're one of the folks that are always asking me painful questions when I'm showcasing new features.
HockeyOne lives and breathes in another system that is upstream of Dragon. It's called Lizard. And Lizard is very low level stuff, grabbing up massive volumes of text files sent by our clients and flinging them into the jaws of Dragon.
HockeyOne is a guru of all things Lizard and I start asking them if they have any idea what could be happening to my missing Rs. HockeyOne looks at me with a sort of amused smile and says "have you looked at the KIM fields?"
No. KIM fields are not TURN fields, why the hell would I look there?
"Because if the TURN is too long to go into Dragon, we'll append it to the end of a KIM field and pass a blank TURN value."
Shut
the
front
door.
HockeyOne goes on to explain the problem. Lizard wants to pass all TURN values to Dragon, but it will get an error if it tries to pass a TURN that is longer than 1 character, since Dragon will only take a 1 char TURN code.
Rather than give up, Lizard will look for a neighboring field, KIM, and append the TURN value to it so the data has somewhere to go in Dragon. Lizard doesn't truncate the TURN, it puts it elswhere and passes nothing at all to the TURN code in Dragon.
I start to sweat. "Can you run a query to show me what kinds of extra noise is getting tacked on to Goldeagle's KIM field?"
HockeyOne says "sure!" and writes up byzantine query in a few minutes. They show me a list of values that are in the KIM field, but supposedly came in as values in TURN:
- BLES
- UB
- CLAB
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I've never heard of these values coming across in TURN. I ask HockeyOne to make sure - absolutely sure - these values exist in the client's messages to our system. HockeyOne goes deep into the weeds to show me - that these are real values Goldeagle is sending to us AND that they are sending to as as TURN codes.
I ask for samples that prove this, so I can show them to others. HockeyOne has just demonstrated that we are NOT truncating TURN codes, we are moving them elsewhere. Which to downstream features like Arwafn, is essentially the same thing as deleting them, since Arwafn is looking at the TURN field, which ends up blank every time one of these multicharacter values bounces off Dragon's front door.
HockeyOne is excited. They've always hated the fact that Lizard was shoving data in weird places, and they've asked repeatedly for Dragon to take longer values and store them. They give me all kinds of examples of what is going on in Goldeagle's incoming messages - and I find front end examples of this data mangling so I can sell this as a real issue.
Then I get back with Goldeagle, and ask them what is going on with these other codes. What do they mean? and why are they being sent in a field that should only have 6 discrete values?
Goldeagle tells me that their system uses those other values to track TURN as well as an entirely different dimension called BLES. In their system, the code BLES = R and also has some additional meaning as well. UB is also the equivalent of R.
Which means I've found my missing R values, they are being sent as multichar values in TURN, which means Lizard isn't putting them into our db as TURN values, because Dragon won't let them.
Which means Arwafn is pretty much screwed at this point, because Arwafn only sees TURN values in the Guardian database. If multichar TURN values aren't landing in Guardian's TURN field, they might as well not exist - because to Arwafn - they don't.
I ask HockeyOne how often Lizard would move TURN values into KIM and send a blank value in TURN to Dragon. I mean, I'd always been told we truncate.
HockeyOne is pretty sure that we do this for a majority of our sites. Which means that Goldeagle has a lot of company. And a lot of our Arwafn customers are going to be missing data.
I flip out and go to Data and Heater and declare that the sky is falling. Data tells me that what I am saying is inaccurate. "We truncate."
I show them the messages. "No, we don't. At least not for this site."
My equivocation doesn't help my case. I may have just found an outlier. I email a wider group and provoke an exasperated response from Ajax, who is the sheriff of these kinds of data issues. Ajax is a supremely competent person and they tell me that I'm describing the situation wrong. That any moving of data into different fields would require changes that they would be aware of. And they have seen no such changes.
I take this as "murph, you are full of sh!t" and as I have only one site as a datapoint, I can't press much further. I get more data by hitting up OneTwentyEight to run HockeyOne's byzantine query against all of my beta sites.
More long TURN values show up, noisier ones like "NEG" and "POS" and a slew of things that look like equations. I run this past Data and Sprint and start to get some traction.
Sprint (who is awesome) runs ahead and sorts out a list of what chunks of work would need to be done to get these longer values into our system correctly.
We get Dragonman into the fold and a reasonable solution is proposed. Dragon will create a path for longer values to make it into Guardian. We draft up a list of work to present to Product.
We're on the verge of pitching this plan when all hell breaks lose on Arwafn.
I'm in West Virginia getting an alarmed email message from Product asking what the hell is going on with Arwafn. I'm wrung out from a long day of client visits yet completely unable to sleep - and so I lie in bed and type an epic mea culpa with my thumbs. We didn't go under the hood enough when we were in beta. This is over and above the TURN problem, but this starts the crazy train rolling.
I fly back home and drive straight to the office from the airport and see Gumby and Atlas clearly having a strategy meeting. I make myself available and soon we are in stage one of responding to an epic managerial sh!tshow.
The executives have heard that Arwafn isn't all it was cracked up to be and they are demanding answers.
The execs are flipping out about filters on the report not working - and they are pissed.
And at this point, they have no idea about the issues with TURN.
Its about to get a whole lot worse.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Derailment, part I
All at once, work is exhilarating and terrible.
Arwafn is rolling out to the world, and while the internal reviews are good - the only score that counts is the one you get from the end users.
The early reports are the worst. Not because they are bad, but because they usually represent incomplete opinions, initial reactions - delight in something new. They are passed along by hopeful co-workers who want to believe the same thing I do: that it has worked. That our customers are pleased with what we've done.
Somehow, I always manage to fall for this. I supposed to be dispassionate, but after a year of working on the project, I want success. I want happy customers.
And so I flatter myself to think that this time, we did it right.
And then the second round of reviews roll in.
Second round is usually polite, deferential even. "Hey, I'm wondering about this bit here..."
By the third round, you know you have problems, and you start looking for patterns. This is not a drill. You'll need to fix this.
Bin the ego and lean into this, because it's going to hurt.
There is no worse feeling in UX than watching a customer delight in seeing what they wanted to see - and then watch them realize their mistake.
Oh...I guess that isn't working.
* * *
The flaw in Arwafn that managed to make it all the way into production is the most maddening of all. Arwafn relies on customer supplied data - in the form of a data feed.
Data flows from a client's system and flows into Arwafn. Arwafn turns the tidal wave of data into an intelligible grid and allows the user to manipulate it in several ways. We've checked the design against the industry standards, we've verified that the added functionality was wanted by the customers - we've set up beta testers with their live data in Arwafn and let them play with it to get their responses.
And we've had QA try to beat it to death with everything short of a tire iron.
Arwafn came through all that. The board was green.
But we'd missed something - something that was admittedly pretty hard to quantify, but something that we could have noticed earlier.
The client data feeds are crap.
We were like engineers building a colossal aqueduct across miles of countryside and then aiming it at a dry lake.
Or, more accurately, a bog.
Some customers follow the agreed on specification for supplying the data and - for them - all is well. But for a still to be determined group of customers, they send us garbage - and for them, Arwafn is smelling pretty foul.
And it's no good pointing the finger back at our clients. We told them Arwafn was a new feature - we did not tell them it might work if your data isn't godawful.
Nor did we design the report to degrade gracefully. That principle I began learning with regards to crap browsers ages ago was noticeably absent when I baked out the stories to build this report.
It's a basic idea - and yet I'm re-learning it for the umpteenth time:
Okay, it works when A, B and C are present. What if I take away A?
Easy. It looks like it's still working - but isn't.
What if I take away B?
Same thing.
And so on. Any of those questions getting some real thought would have resulted in what NerdHaven is now rapidly deploying to the field. Switches to enable the functionality dependent on A.
Don't have A? We'll shut that off for you.
No B? We'll turn that off, too.
The rest will still work.
That's how it should have been designed from the get go, but in my naiveté thought "Of course, they'll all be sending us this information. How could they not?"
And they're not. Or rather, I wish they just weren't - that would have been easy to spot.
When we did beta sites, no data would have resulted in obvious failures. But that didn't happen. We had data flowing into our UI, and the dependent features worked as expected.
Did we ask users to go through our report line by line to ensure accuracy?
We did not.
Did we ask our internal experts to crawl around under the hood of our beta sites?
We did not.
All of this, every new expression of the problem, slams home into whatever professional pride I'd managed to save up. Three weeks ago, Runner and I were heroes. Now, I'm being forwarded emails from our SMEs where they are describing Arwafn's failings in scathing terms. I'd have hoped I would have been included in those messages when they were sent, but I get them secondhand. After they've been routed through management.
Atlas has been unfazed by this - they point out we've had data issues in the past, and the scope of the issue is being overblown. I feel genuinely ill. Atlas and Gumby finished up my performance reviews before this all blew up. I came out really well in their eyes. I was proud.
And now this. The folks who sang my praises are now being hauled in front of the executive leadership team.
And there is something else. Something that goes beyond a customer sending us crap data.
Something I'd heard about and went after.... just way too late.
Arwafn is rolling out to the world, and while the internal reviews are good - the only score that counts is the one you get from the end users.
The early reports are the worst. Not because they are bad, but because they usually represent incomplete opinions, initial reactions - delight in something new. They are passed along by hopeful co-workers who want to believe the same thing I do: that it has worked. That our customers are pleased with what we've done.
Somehow, I always manage to fall for this. I supposed to be dispassionate, but after a year of working on the project, I want success. I want happy customers.
And so I flatter myself to think that this time, we did it right.
And then the second round of reviews roll in.
Second round is usually polite, deferential even. "Hey, I'm wondering about this bit here..."
By the third round, you know you have problems, and you start looking for patterns. This is not a drill. You'll need to fix this.
Bin the ego and lean into this, because it's going to hurt.
"Customer has some questions about this filter. It doesn't seem to work"
"...numbers aren't adding up. They want to know why..."Third, round - the co-workers have stopped being nice. They want to know what the problem is. And how those problems managed to make it through QA and beta testing.
There is no worse feeling in UX than watching a customer delight in seeing what they wanted to see - and then watch them realize their mistake.
Oh...I guess that isn't working.
* * *
The flaw in Arwafn that managed to make it all the way into production is the most maddening of all. Arwafn relies on customer supplied data - in the form of a data feed.
Data flows from a client's system and flows into Arwafn. Arwafn turns the tidal wave of data into an intelligible grid and allows the user to manipulate it in several ways. We've checked the design against the industry standards, we've verified that the added functionality was wanted by the customers - we've set up beta testers with their live data in Arwafn and let them play with it to get their responses.
And we've had QA try to beat it to death with everything short of a tire iron.
Arwafn came through all that. The board was green.
But we'd missed something - something that was admittedly pretty hard to quantify, but something that we could have noticed earlier.
The client data feeds are crap.
We were like engineers building a colossal aqueduct across miles of countryside and then aiming it at a dry lake.
Or, more accurately, a bog.
Some customers follow the agreed on specification for supplying the data and - for them - all is well. But for a still to be determined group of customers, they send us garbage - and for them, Arwafn is smelling pretty foul.
And it's no good pointing the finger back at our clients. We told them Arwafn was a new feature - we did not tell them it might work if your data isn't godawful.
Nor did we design the report to degrade gracefully. That principle I began learning with regards to crap browsers ages ago was noticeably absent when I baked out the stories to build this report.
It's a basic idea - and yet I'm re-learning it for the umpteenth time:
Okay, it works when A, B and C are present. What if I take away A?
Easy. It looks like it's still working - but isn't.
What if I take away B?
Same thing.
And so on. Any of those questions getting some real thought would have resulted in what NerdHaven is now rapidly deploying to the field. Switches to enable the functionality dependent on A.
Don't have A? We'll shut that off for you.
No B? We'll turn that off, too.
The rest will still work.
That's how it should have been designed from the get go, but in my naiveté thought "Of course, they'll all be sending us this information. How could they not?"
And they're not. Or rather, I wish they just weren't - that would have been easy to spot.
When we did beta sites, no data would have resulted in obvious failures. But that didn't happen. We had data flowing into our UI, and the dependent features worked as expected.
Did we ask users to go through our report line by line to ensure accuracy?
We did not.
Did we ask our internal experts to crawl around under the hood of our beta sites?
We did not.
All of this, every new expression of the problem, slams home into whatever professional pride I'd managed to save up. Three weeks ago, Runner and I were heroes. Now, I'm being forwarded emails from our SMEs where they are describing Arwafn's failings in scathing terms. I'd have hoped I would have been included in those messages when they were sent, but I get them secondhand. After they've been routed through management.
Atlas has been unfazed by this - they point out we've had data issues in the past, and the scope of the issue is being overblown. I feel genuinely ill. Atlas and Gumby finished up my performance reviews before this all blew up. I came out really well in their eyes. I was proud.
And now this. The folks who sang my praises are now being hauled in front of the executive leadership team.
And there is something else. Something that goes beyond a customer sending us crap data.
Something I'd heard about and went after.... just way too late.
Monday, October 07, 2013
AT&T: Pay Us the Money We Owe You
I got a paper bill from AT&T on Friday.
I don't get paper bills from AT&T. It's part of my account preferences.
The paper bill tells me that AT&T owes me $35.12. I'm happy to take their money, but my understanding of things was that I paid my wireless bill and my Uverse bill - and that a small percentage of my landline and old DSL bill would be prorated for Aug 29 - Sept 4. They were going to contact me with the amount that I owed for this small bit of service time.
Instead, I get a paper bill telling me they owe me money.
This makes me think they've misapplied some funds again. Previously, their math said that I was past due and was owed a credit at the same time.
According to AT&T math, this meant I supposedly owed them $183.09.
Let's see what my online account shows now, shall we?
Now, where the heck is my credit that I'm owed...? It should be under the last service in that list - the old landline / DSL account.
Annnnnnd....?
Yes, this account has been cancelled (although I would call it "replaced" or "upgraded").
And somehow we have arrived at a place where:
Pathetic.
I don't get paper bills from AT&T. It's part of my account preferences.
The paper bill tells me that AT&T owes me $35.12. I'm happy to take their money, but my understanding of things was that I paid my wireless bill and my Uverse bill - and that a small percentage of my landline and old DSL bill would be prorated for Aug 29 - Sept 4. They were going to contact me with the amount that I owed for this small bit of service time.
Instead, I get a paper bill telling me they owe me money.
This makes me think they've misapplied some funds again. Previously, their math said that I was past due and was owed a credit at the same time.
According to AT&T math, this meant I supposedly owed them $183.09.
Let's see what my online account shows now, shall we?
Yes, I still owe $183.09 - but now it's in ORANGE! Progress!
Now, where the heck is my credit that I'm owed...? It should be under the last service in that list - the old landline / DSL account.
Annnnnnd....?
Yes, this account has been cancelled (although I would call it "replaced" or "upgraded").
And somehow we have arrived at a place where:
AT&T owing me $35.12 = I owe AT&T $183.09I'm just hoping they make this make sense before my next bill is due.
Pathetic.
Monday, September 30, 2013
AT&T: You Gotta Admire the Consistency
I realize this is getting tiresome, but it's just amazing how terrible AT&T is at the whole "Let's sign you up as a new Uverse customer" thing.
A few weeks ago, I was sent a flyer offering me $550 worth of gift cards if I signed up for Uverse. As I was only getting $150 worth of gift cards (which have yet to arrive) - I figured I'd call and see if this was a deal I qualified for.
I didn't think the odds were good, but if there was a new deal that could get me more goodies - I figured I'd ask.
I know - Never, never call AT&T if you have anything productive planned for your day.
I know this. Also, I know that if anything good is going to come out of AT&T, you are generally going to have to wade through a river of crap in order to get it.
So I call the number on the flyer for more information.
Short version:
Internet and phone for the same phone number. I am not getting two internets and two phone services on the same phone line.
But in AT&T logic - this could be possible and so I have a double bill for internet and phone. I called (*sigh*) to sort this out and was told to pay my Uverse bill and wait for an updated bill for the old phone and internet.
Naturally, my payment for Uverse was applied to my old service bill.
Also - Naturally - my Uverse bill was listed as past due.
* * *
Now before any wisenheimers out there point out what is going on - I want to say YES, I KNOW WHY THIS IS HAPPENING.
My old service had an account number. My payments are being sent to that account number.
My new service has a new account number. Payments without this new number will not be applied to the Uverse account.
YES. I GET THAT.
But letting that stand as an excuse or explanation is allowing the stupid to hold the field of battle.
Here's the mental model of a customer
You will note - it contains no mention of account numbers. I am still a customer of AT&T - with a single address.
AT&T has created two accounts to track my services - which is two more than I want and 1 more than I need.
There should be a parent account record for my household that can hold as many child accounts as AT&T's Byzantine system requires. But I should only have one balance, and payments should update that balance as they are applied. A credit and a balance due should never co-exist on my statement.
Yes, if I drill down into the detail of my balance, I should be able to determine what services cost what. But really, all a user wants to know is - do they owe money or not?
AT&T has created a web interface that (finally!) allows the user to manage all their services under one login - and they keep falling into the habit of keeping everything separate.
Arrgh!
And when you fire up their chat (because calling them is beyond annoying) you are greeted with this:
I mean, seriously. Yes, I get that a logged in user could be using their spouse's log in, so they might want to ask if this is Susan or Bill - but c'mon! When you are logged in and hit chat - you should go directly to chat. Do not pass 'Go.' And sure as hell, you shouldn't be asked IF you are a customer.
Double ARRRGH!
Here's the chat-drone's response to the situation:
A few weeks ago, I was sent a flyer offering me $550 worth of gift cards if I signed up for Uverse. As I was only getting $150 worth of gift cards (which have yet to arrive) - I figured I'd call and see if this was a deal I qualified for.
I didn't think the odds were good, but if there was a new deal that could get me more goodies - I figured I'd ask.
I know - Never, never call AT&T if you have anything productive planned for your day.
I know this. Also, I know that if anything good is going to come out of AT&T, you are generally going to have to wade through a river of crap in order to get it.
So I call the number on the flyer for more information.
Short version:
- The phone tree has no option for my "Do I qualify for this?" question
- I'm transferred three times, so in AT&T land that means:
- I repeat my question three times; and
- Establish my identity three times
- Then I'm told that this deal applies to people who aren't getting the deal I have. Were I to forfeit my discount, I could get $550 worth of discounts - but this would mean I would end up paying more for this "gift."
Which means - as expected - this was a waste of time. The capstone on this pile of fail was the attitude I was getting from the rep - who repeatedly said "we send these flyers out to everyone in your area."
Yes, I said, I expect that's why I got one. It has my name on it and offers me a deal that (based on the minimal supporting detail supplied) sounds better than the one I have. It tells me to call. So I have.
Seriously, giving me attitude because I foolishly did why your flyer asked: "Call for Details?"
The rep's position basically amounted to "We send marketing crap to everyone - don't you know not to believe anything we say?"
Ugh.
* * *
AT&T Marketing materials are full of crap. So what else is new?
This:
This is my account status according to AT&T. As I pointed out in the prior post - AT&T is capable of adding a new bill instantly - but has trouble canceling out a bill that has already been issued. Even if - as in my case - the new bill is for services that totally replace the services listed in the first bill. As in, these two bills CANNOT both be valid.AT&T Marketing materials are full of crap. So what else is new?
This:
AT&T Math: -$183.09 + $109.76 = -$183.09
Apparently.
Apparently.
Internet and phone for the same phone number. I am not getting two internets and two phone services on the same phone line.
But in AT&T logic - this could be possible and so I have a double bill for internet and phone. I called (*sigh*) to sort this out and was told to pay my Uverse bill and wait for an updated bill for the old phone and internet.
Naturally, my payment for Uverse was applied to my old service bill.
Also - Naturally - my Uverse bill was listed as past due.
* * *
Now before any wisenheimers out there point out what is going on - I want to say YES, I KNOW WHY THIS IS HAPPENING.
My old service had an account number. My payments are being sent to that account number.
My new service has a new account number. Payments without this new number will not be applied to the Uverse account.
YES. I GET THAT.
But letting that stand as an excuse or explanation is allowing the stupid to hold the field of battle.
Here's the mental model of a customer
- I am an AT&T customer
- I have one balance for AT&T services
- I log into the AT&T website and it tells me what this balance is
- Each month, I pay this balance.
- One day, I change AT&T service A to AT&T service B
- The End
You will note - it contains no mention of account numbers. I am still a customer of AT&T - with a single address.
AT&T has created two accounts to track my services - which is two more than I want and 1 more than I need.
There should be a parent account record for my household that can hold as many child accounts as AT&T's Byzantine system requires. But I should only have one balance, and payments should update that balance as they are applied. A credit and a balance due should never co-exist on my statement.
Yes, if I drill down into the detail of my balance, I should be able to determine what services cost what. But really, all a user wants to know is - do they owe money or not?
AT&T has created a web interface that (finally!) allows the user to manage all their services under one login - and they keep falling into the habit of keeping everything separate.
Arrgh!
And when you fire up their chat (because calling them is beyond annoying) you are greeted with this:
Hello, logged in user. Who are you?
And what is your contact info?
I mean, seriously. Yes, I get that a logged in user could be using their spouse's log in, so they might want to ask if this is Susan or Bill - but c'mon! When you are logged in and hit chat - you should go directly to chat. Do not pass 'Go.' And sure as hell, you shouldn't be asked IF you are a customer.
Double ARRRGH!
Here's the chat-drone's response to the situation:
You made the payment towards your old account instead of the new account by mistake. I can get this fixed. I will transfer the payment from the old account to the new account. please give me couple minutes to take care of that for you.No, I didn't sent the money to the wrong account. I paid AT&T the same way I have for years, and you moved my goalpost.
"Thank you for upgrading your services and being such a valued customer for all these years. Now, who are you? And what should I do with this money you just sent me?"ARRGH! and ARRRGH! again....
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Ryan vs. Bryan
All I Do is B!tch About Telcos
...but only because they so totally suck.
I've tried to take the larger view and say that - yes, in fairness to AT&T - the number of outages I've experienced while paying for their service has been very close to zero.
I'm sure the legion of engineers who work tirelessly at all hours of the night would like to be acknowledged. And they should be. Modern data networks are a hell of a thing. And the one I've been paying for has been there for me with (so far as I remember) total uptime.
And they somehow even find time to route all my data to the DEA. Impressive.
But the squeaky wheel principle applies here. I pay for a utility, I expect it to work. If it doesn't work - why am I paying for it?
24/7 uptime is Par.
So those noble and nameless AT&T engineers need to understand something:
* * *
I'll illustrate this with two personal contacts with AT&T.
And then I'll supplement it with web and phone follow ups.
First, the people. I'll call them Ryan and Bryan.
Bryan arrived on my doorstop unannounced. Bryan was in sales, so if I had known he was coming, I wouldn't have answered the door. But he sung the praises of AT&T uverse with the passion of a new convert to the faith. He smiled. He was funny. And though I believed he was totally full of it - I let him talk, took his materials, and then did my own research on prices and packages.
Ryan on the other hand, was expected.
Ryan's first contact with me was over the phone. He was calling me to let me know he'd be late for the appointment with me.
To appreciate how bad a first impression this is, you'd need to understand some things:
Awesome. I could have been working and getting paid until just before lunchtime, but hey, I'm at your service, Ryan. Whatever makes your day easier.
Back to Bryan. Weeks ago, Bryan promised to return after our initial meeting and did (although I was out) so he came back a few days later and I signed up. Bryan assured me that my free installation would cover multiple TVs (even though I only needed one) and that the installer would run Cat-5 anywhere it needed to go in my house. "Plus, your DVR will be wireless, so you can move it around your house if you decide to add a TV or rearrange your house."
Fan-tastic!
When I reacted badly to the $50 activation fee, Bryan whipped out some rebate forms to offset the charges. "Just fill these out and give them to your installer and you'll be set."
See? That's a guy trying right there. Exeunt Bryan.
*Cheers*
Let's return to Ryan.
*Boo!*
Yes, Ryan has royally screwed up first impressions. He does arrive an hour after his phone call, a full 45 minutes after my install window was supposed to end. He's in a truck, wearing a baseball cap and looks irritated.
I point him to all the particulars in my house. The TV case (which I'd helpfully cleared out) the phone setup and where the lines hit my wireless router.
I asked him about running wire to the finished side of the basement. Ryan looked at me like I was talking Greek. "Just the one TV, right?"
Uh, I was told you could run wire to other rooms in my house.
"I'll run it anywhere you need it to connect to the one TV."
Now, I know sales guys are full of it - and sales guys from AT&T doubly so. So this wasn't much of a shock. I'd asked because it would be nice, but once I confirmed that wiring for uverse TV was just running Cat-5, I knew I could do it (with help). I ask Ryan about the gateway they'll be installing and if I'll be able to keep my current router (which I love). He says he'll try, but that he typically doesn't install a device inside the house and hasn't had much luck when he tried in the past.
*Sigh*
I point out what I currently have for Ethernet and DSL. Ryan scratches his head figuring out where the wires needed to go and I get out of his way. In about an hour he's drilling a hole in the side of my house and telling me he's going to run a new wire from the pole to my house.
"Don't worry, though. In seven to ten days, some guys will come by and bury the cable. I'll leave plenty of slack in case you need to mow."
*Sigh*
So, now there's a black cable snaking around my back yard - with "caution" flags tied to it every few feet so it's extra visible and unsightly.
And then Ryan shows up with the hardware and starts hooking up the TV. He unpacks an impressively compact device that I think might be the wireless DVR.
Is that the wireless DVR?
"It's the DVR, yeah."
This is AT&T, so I ask again to make sure I heard that omission correctly.
It's a wireless DVR?
"No. It's wired to Ethernet."
I was told I'd get a wireless DVR.
"We do wireless DVRs only if we have major issues running the wires in the house. I don't have one in my truck."
*Sigh*
Honestly, at this point - I'm not sure a wireless DVR is truly a plus. The signal could be worse for all I know. All I do know is that Bryan told me I would get one, and now I won't.
At 1:30pm (that would be five an a half hours of missed work, for those of you keeping track) Ryan calls me in to show me that the TV is connected. I channel surf and managed to screw up the input settings and Ryan has to show me how to change inputs using a button combination I wouldn't have thought of (for the standard remote: Hit "TV" then quickly hit "TV/Video" to move between inputs).
By the time I've managed to realize that I'm subscribing to over 300 channels, but my TV is connected to 678 channels (meaning half my channels connect to a "You are not subscribed to this channel" message), Ryan is back with paperwork.
Ah, yes! I need to give him my rebate paperwork!
I quickly dig out the rebate forms Bryan gave me and give them to Ryan.
Ryan looked at them like they were written in Greek.
"I've never taken paperwork from a customer. I have no idea what to do with those."
*Sigh*
Ryan gives me paperwork, though. Owners manuals, legal stuff, channel guides and an info sheet about my AT&T Gateway device. Turns out he was able to get it connected just fine. My old router is still up and running (meaning none of my devices have to have their network settings changed - SCORE! I'm looking at YOU, Canon wireless printer...).
Better still, Ryan has copied down the Byzantine collection of codes, IPs and other network voodoo that I can use to configure my AT&T gateway like it was my 2nd router. SCORE!
I check my network download and upload speeds, they're where they're supposed to be. SCORE!
Ryan apologizes again for being late and about the rebates. He writes down two numbers to call about them and suggests trying one of them first "I've had better luck with them."
And then he shakes my hand and is off to his next install.
It's 1:50.
I've missed most of a workday (unpaid) and I have a single TV connected and high speed internet.
Let's review. Who was the bigger fail here, Bryan or Ryan?
No contest really. Bryan.
Bryan promised a bunch of things that were never going to happen. Running wire all through my house (hah!), the wireless DVR, and the rebates being handled by the installer.
The rates and channels came through, but I'd confirmed them with AT&T over the phone, so I knew those were going to happen. All the other stuff Bryan promised turned out to be hot air.
Ryan, on the other hand, was late. But he gets jobs from the AT&T mothership that (for some reason) decided to give my install to a guy 50 miles away 15 minutes before the install window was up.
That's not on Ryan. Ryan's just the guy holding the bag when AT&T (per usual) does something stupid. Further, Ryan listened to my request to keep my old router running and made it happen. Then he followed up with all the admin information I needed, made sure I understood what I was looking at and even gave me a 2nd remote.
He made good out of a bad situation. Yes, I missed a half day of work, but Ryan's not the guy to scream at for that. AT&T's mothership screwed that up royally.
* * *
I called Bryan the following day to check on my rebates. The installer guy didn't take them. What do I do?
Bryan was unhelpful. "Oh, yeah. They changed how those work right before your install, so now you have to send them in."
Except Bryan forgets that I can read. One form is from Starz, the other is from Showtime. Both forms say that they should be mailed in along with three months worth of bills showing you are a paid subscriber.
There is no possibility that I was going to get my installer to take these forms, because my installer would not have had three months of bills to send in with them.
Bryan is not good at customer service, because he does not have to be. But he has clearly mastered what he needs to sell subscriptions: Bryan is good at lying.
Allright. Rant over.
....
...
..
.
Well, not really.
I'm trying to get ahead of the family finances and I'm trying to schedule my bill payments for the next month. I log in to att.com and (I will spare you the story of how annoying it was to set up my 2nd AT&T email account AND connect my uverse account to my existing att.com account - the nicest thing I can say is that it ultimately did work.)
I logged in and initially, I couldn't see my bill amount. Which made some sense, since I'd only just connected my uverse account to my other services on the att.com website.
But I came back a few days later and saw that my bill had been updated to $201.29. I scheduled the payment and went on my way.
But it later occurred to me that might not be correct. I mean, I'm supposed to be getting billed $110 for my cable/phone/internet WITH a $49 activation (but NOT installation!) fee. So, I should be getting $160 or so just from cable/phone/internet and there's no way my wireless bill is just $40.
I log back in to see if my bill has been adjusted.
It has. It's now $384.38.
Ah, that's better...
Wait, what the screaming hell?
Now anyone who is currently an AT&T customer knows what is going on here, and I had a reasonable suspicion. But until I actually confirmed it, somehow I refused to think it was actually happening.
I got my uverse install on September 4.
Looking at that portion of my bill I'm seeing stuff that makes sense:
That's my uverse bill that starts on 9/5.
Here's the portion for my phone line:
I'm being billed $31.39 for my uverse phone line.
Looking elsewhere in my att.com account, I find I'm still being billed for my old phone service, which was supposed to end and be replaced by the new bill on 9/4. But it hasn't...
Being AT&T, they've done this for my internet service as well. So I'm being billed $38.16 for uverse internet and $37.98 for my old DSL internet.
Way to go, AT&T!!
Again, the hard-working install guys and AT&T engineers need to gang up and beat the crap out of the billing, scheduling, sales and web folks in their company. Because those folks are seriously ruining any chance they have of working for a respected company.
(Well, that and the whole collusion with the NSA thing, but y'know - one thing at a time...).
I called AT&T to get this sorted out and - get this - their suggestion was to pay the bills and they would credit my account after the fact.
The "Pay us more than you owe, and we'll get back to you" plan.
Screw that.
Then the AT&T rep suggested that an adjusted bill would be coming the next month, but that I might see late charges if I waited until then.
I suggested - politely - that that was utter bullsh!t.
I believe I said "if you can tell me what the bill should be, I could pay now."
Naturally, they couldn't. So they logged a dispute on my bill so there wouldn't be a late fee (they said) and now I will pay just my wireless bill and wait for the real bill to show up.
Incredible.
A system that is perfectly capable of adding a pro-rated bill to an account cannot adjust an existing bill when that account has services discontinued.
Because - Stupid. That's why.
If it doesn't involve maintaining wires - AT&T stinks at it. Technical proficiency with ZERO people skills.
Wait, they're just like...
-like an engineer!
...
..
.
You don't suppose...
Nah, couldn't be.
It would make too much sense.
...but only because they so totally suck.
I've tried to take the larger view and say that - yes, in fairness to AT&T - the number of outages I've experienced while paying for their service has been very close to zero.
I'm sure the legion of engineers who work tirelessly at all hours of the night would like to be acknowledged. And they should be. Modern data networks are a hell of a thing. And the one I've been paying for has been there for me with (so far as I remember) total uptime.
And they somehow even find time to route all my data to the DEA. Impressive.
But the squeaky wheel principle applies here. I pay for a utility, I expect it to work. If it doesn't work - why am I paying for it?
24/7 uptime is Par.
So those noble and nameless AT&T engineers need to understand something:
Every other customer touchpoint with AT&T is gutting your company's reputation.Ask me what I think of AT&T and you're going to get both barrels of pent up resentment.
* * *
I'll illustrate this with two personal contacts with AT&T.
And then I'll supplement it with web and phone follow ups.
First, the people. I'll call them Ryan and Bryan.
Bryan arrived on my doorstop unannounced. Bryan was in sales, so if I had known he was coming, I wouldn't have answered the door. But he sung the praises of AT&T uverse with the passion of a new convert to the faith. He smiled. He was funny. And though I believed he was totally full of it - I let him talk, took his materials, and then did my own research on prices and packages.
Ryan on the other hand, was expected.
Ryan's first contact with me was over the phone. He was calling me to let me know he'd be late for the appointment with me.
To appreciate how bad a first impression this is, you'd need to understand some things:
- This would be the appointment Bryan had scheduled for me two weeks earlier
- This would also be the appointment I'd been asked to confirm via text the previous day. And I had.
- This would also be the appointment I'd been asked to confirm via phone the previous day (after I'd confirmed by text). And I had.
- This would ALSO be the appointment I'd been asked to confirm via email the previous day (after I'd confirmed by text and phone).
- This would ALSO be the appointment my wife had been asked to confirm via text and email and Godknows what else.
- And... this would be the appointment I had elected to stay home all morning (unpaid) because my attendance was required.
- FINALLY - it needs to be understood that when I say "appointment" I mean a two-hour block of time. Meaning Ryan could arrive anywhere between 9am and 11am and still be considered "on time."
Awesome. I could have been working and getting paid until just before lunchtime, but hey, I'm at your service, Ryan. Whatever makes your day easier.
Back to Bryan. Weeks ago, Bryan promised to return after our initial meeting and did (although I was out) so he came back a few days later and I signed up. Bryan assured me that my free installation would cover multiple TVs (even though I only needed one) and that the installer would run Cat-5 anywhere it needed to go in my house. "Plus, your DVR will be wireless, so you can move it around your house if you decide to add a TV or rearrange your house."
Fan-tastic!
When I reacted badly to the $50 activation fee, Bryan whipped out some rebate forms to offset the charges. "Just fill these out and give them to your installer and you'll be set."
See? That's a guy trying right there. Exeunt Bryan.
*Cheers*
Let's return to Ryan.
*Boo!*
Yes, Ryan has royally screwed up first impressions. He does arrive an hour after his phone call, a full 45 minutes after my install window was supposed to end. He's in a truck, wearing a baseball cap and looks irritated.
I point him to all the particulars in my house. The TV case (which I'd helpfully cleared out) the phone setup and where the lines hit my wireless router.
I asked him about running wire to the finished side of the basement. Ryan looked at me like I was talking Greek. "Just the one TV, right?"
Uh, I was told you could run wire to other rooms in my house.
"I'll run it anywhere you need it to connect to the one TV."
Now, I know sales guys are full of it - and sales guys from AT&T doubly so. So this wasn't much of a shock. I'd asked because it would be nice, but once I confirmed that wiring for uverse TV was just running Cat-5, I knew I could do it (with help). I ask Ryan about the gateway they'll be installing and if I'll be able to keep my current router (which I love). He says he'll try, but that he typically doesn't install a device inside the house and hasn't had much luck when he tried in the past.
*Sigh*
I point out what I currently have for Ethernet and DSL. Ryan scratches his head figuring out where the wires needed to go and I get out of his way. In about an hour he's drilling a hole in the side of my house and telling me he's going to run a new wire from the pole to my house.
"Don't worry, though. In seven to ten days, some guys will come by and bury the cable. I'll leave plenty of slack in case you need to mow."
*Sigh*
So, now there's a black cable snaking around my back yard - with "caution" flags tied to it every few feet so it's extra visible and unsightly.
And then Ryan shows up with the hardware and starts hooking up the TV. He unpacks an impressively compact device that I think might be the wireless DVR.
Is that the wireless DVR?
"It's the DVR, yeah."
This is AT&T, so I ask again to make sure I heard that omission correctly.
It's a wireless DVR?
"No. It's wired to Ethernet."
I was told I'd get a wireless DVR.
"We do wireless DVRs only if we have major issues running the wires in the house. I don't have one in my truck."
*Sigh*
Honestly, at this point - I'm not sure a wireless DVR is truly a plus. The signal could be worse for all I know. All I do know is that Bryan told me I would get one, and now I won't.
At 1:30pm (that would be five an a half hours of missed work, for those of you keeping track) Ryan calls me in to show me that the TV is connected. I channel surf and managed to screw up the input settings and Ryan has to show me how to change inputs using a button combination I wouldn't have thought of (for the standard remote: Hit "TV" then quickly hit "TV/Video" to move between inputs).
By the time I've managed to realize that I'm subscribing to over 300 channels, but my TV is connected to 678 channels (meaning half my channels connect to a "You are not subscribed to this channel" message), Ryan is back with paperwork.
Ah, yes! I need to give him my rebate paperwork!
I quickly dig out the rebate forms Bryan gave me and give them to Ryan.
Ryan looked at them like they were written in Greek.
"I've never taken paperwork from a customer. I have no idea what to do with those."
*Sigh*
Ryan gives me paperwork, though. Owners manuals, legal stuff, channel guides and an info sheet about my AT&T Gateway device. Turns out he was able to get it connected just fine. My old router is still up and running (meaning none of my devices have to have their network settings changed - SCORE! I'm looking at YOU, Canon wireless printer...).
Better still, Ryan has copied down the Byzantine collection of codes, IPs and other network voodoo that I can use to configure my AT&T gateway like it was my 2nd router. SCORE!
I check my network download and upload speeds, they're where they're supposed to be. SCORE!
Ryan apologizes again for being late and about the rebates. He writes down two numbers to call about them and suggests trying one of them first "I've had better luck with them."
And then he shakes my hand and is off to his next install.
It's 1:50.
I've missed most of a workday (unpaid) and I have a single TV connected and high speed internet.
Let's review. Who was the bigger fail here, Bryan or Ryan?
No contest really. Bryan.
Bryan promised a bunch of things that were never going to happen. Running wire all through my house (hah!), the wireless DVR, and the rebates being handled by the installer.
The rates and channels came through, but I'd confirmed them with AT&T over the phone, so I knew those were going to happen. All the other stuff Bryan promised turned out to be hot air.
Ryan, on the other hand, was late. But he gets jobs from the AT&T mothership that (for some reason) decided to give my install to a guy 50 miles away 15 minutes before the install window was up.
That's not on Ryan. Ryan's just the guy holding the bag when AT&T (per usual) does something stupid. Further, Ryan listened to my request to keep my old router running and made it happen. Then he followed up with all the admin information I needed, made sure I understood what I was looking at and even gave me a 2nd remote.
He made good out of a bad situation. Yes, I missed a half day of work, but Ryan's not the guy to scream at for that. AT&T's mothership screwed that up royally.
* * *
I called Bryan the following day to check on my rebates. The installer guy didn't take them. What do I do?
Bryan was unhelpful. "Oh, yeah. They changed how those work right before your install, so now you have to send them in."
Except Bryan forgets that I can read. One form is from Starz, the other is from Showtime. Both forms say that they should be mailed in along with three months worth of bills showing you are a paid subscriber.
There is no possibility that I was going to get my installer to take these forms, because my installer would not have had three months of bills to send in with them.
Bryan is not good at customer service, because he does not have to be. But he has clearly mastered what he needs to sell subscriptions: Bryan is good at lying.
I hung up on Bryan, because there was no way to fix that. Sure, I'll complain to AT&T about this, but they'll echo Ryan's dismissal of the problem "The sales guys are contractors, they don't even work for AT&T."
No, but they show up to your house wearing shirts that say "AT&T." And their voicemail says "This is Bryan with AT&T," so I can't see why people would blame AT&T for their crappy service...
* * *
A few days after my install, I was robo-called out of the blue by AT&T to ask how my install went. It was a tedious IVR menu and took way too long, but I believe in feedback.
I graded my installation taking care to point out that my installer was fine as a person, but that I was dissatisfied with my install because it began 45 minutes later than it was supposed to. I asked to be called personally to offer follow up details.
Naturally, this being AT&T - I was called by Ryan's supervisor who wanted to know the details of why I thought Ryan was a terrible installer.
I explained that Ryan was a total pro - and that my problem was with the overall scheduling process and with the sales person promising me stuff that didn't materialize.
I could tell this was not what this guy was calling me for. I was only supposed to be grading Ryan and this call was all about the performance of him as an individual.
And this is where I lost it (because, with AT&T, you always get to this point eventually). I'm not sure of my exact words, but I tried to hit three main points:
- When you only ask for feedback on a SMALL part of a user experience, you make your customers feel like you don't care about their problems.
- When you discard negative user feedback because it falls outside of your intended question - you are allowing problems to persist.
- Repeatedly reminding customers to be on time when your employees arrive late tells customers they need to care about your time more than you need to care about theirs.
The man was nice, sympathetic even... but I doubt those comments will filter out of a channel that is only designed to provide the mothership with Ryan=Good or Ryan=Bad.
Ryan? If you get hosed, I'm sorry. I tried to make it clear to your boss.
Ryan? If you get hosed, I'm sorry. I tried to make it clear to your boss.
* * *
But it's done. Right? I spend about 20 minutes manually hiding the 300+ channels that I don't subscribe to, yet still appear as selectable options on my receiver.
Then I spend another half an hour hiding BS channels like Home Shopping Network and anything that starts with "uverse"
And finally, I dial in the parental controls for the phalanx of age inappropriate material that my set now has access to.
Sidebar: I miss TiVO's KidZone. KidZone created two pools of access. One for kids, one for adults. When you started using the TV, TiVO assumed you were a kid and filtered accordingly. If you wanted to see all content, you entered a code - once - and weren't bothered again until you turned the machine off or manually re-entered KidZone.
Uverse does the exact opposite: You lock categories of content (TV MA, PPV, R rated movies) and anytime you try to access them, you are prompted for a password. Which means adults browsing their channels soon wish they are dead - as each new movie channel demands a password just to display a title. Never mind the fact you just entered the same password 15 seconds ago for ENC, oh no, ENC-WEST won't show you its stuff until it knows who you are...
Being AT&T, though they cannot leave awful alone. They have to go for maximum user pain.
Here's the unlock sequence for AT&T uverse:
Yes, Having selected a channel repeatedly and having entered in a 4 digit passcode correctly AND hitting ENTER, it's a good assumption that I DON'T WANT TO UNLOCK THIS CHANNEL
- Select Channel
- See message saying "This Content is Locked"
- Hit "OK"
- See passcode prompt "Enter Passcode"
- Enter 4 digit passcode
- Hit "Enter"
-that should be it, right? But no.
- See prompt "Unlock this content?" Don't Unlock / Unlock
and here's the kicker....
- "Don't Unlock" is the default selection!!
WHOEVER CODED THAT NEEDS TO BE PUT IN SOLITARY WITH AT&T UVERSE WHERE EVERY CHANNEL MUST BE UNLOCKED.
Seriously.
Oh but there's more!!! If you unlock a channel and leave it, it will re-lock in 30 minutes, meaning there's a good chance if you're bopping back and forth to check on the box score, you'll have to unlock the same channel repeatedly.JEEZUS.
WAY TO FAIL, UVERSE!!!
Allright. Rant over.
....
...
..
.
Well, not really.
I'm trying to get ahead of the family finances and I'm trying to schedule my bill payments for the next month. I log in to att.com and (I will spare you the story of how annoying it was to set up my 2nd AT&T email account AND connect my uverse account to my existing att.com account - the nicest thing I can say is that it ultimately did work.)
I logged in and initially, I couldn't see my bill amount. Which made some sense, since I'd only just connected my uverse account to my other services on the att.com website.
But I came back a few days later and saw that my bill had been updated to $201.29. I scheduled the payment and went on my way.
But it later occurred to me that might not be correct. I mean, I'm supposed to be getting billed $110 for my cable/phone/internet WITH a $49 activation (but NOT installation!) fee. So, I should be getting $160 or so just from cable/phone/internet and there's no way my wireless bill is just $40.
I log back in to see if my bill has been adjusted.
It has. It's now $384.38.
Ah, that's better...
Wait, what the screaming hell?
Now anyone who is currently an AT&T customer knows what is going on here, and I had a reasonable suspicion. But until I actually confirmed it, somehow I refused to think it was actually happening.
I got my uverse install on September 4.
Looking at that portion of my bill I'm seeing stuff that makes sense:
Here's the portion for my phone line:
I'm being billed $31.39 for my uverse phone line.
Looking elsewhere in my att.com account, I find I'm still being billed for my old phone service, which was supposed to end and be replaced by the new bill on 9/4. But it hasn't...
Being AT&T, they've done this for my internet service as well. So I'm being billed $38.16 for uverse internet and $37.98 for my old DSL internet.
Way to go, AT&T!!
Again, the hard-working install guys and AT&T engineers need to gang up and beat the crap out of the billing, scheduling, sales and web folks in their company. Because those folks are seriously ruining any chance they have of working for a respected company.
(Well, that and the whole collusion with the NSA thing, but y'know - one thing at a time...).
I called AT&T to get this sorted out and - get this - their suggestion was to pay the bills and they would credit my account after the fact.
The "Pay us more than you owe, and we'll get back to you" plan.
Screw that.
Then the AT&T rep suggested that an adjusted bill would be coming the next month, but that I might see late charges if I waited until then.
I suggested - politely - that that was utter bullsh!t.
I believe I said "if you can tell me what the bill should be, I could pay now."
Naturally, they couldn't. So they logged a dispute on my bill so there wouldn't be a late fee (they said) and now I will pay just my wireless bill and wait for the real bill to show up.
Incredible.
A system that is perfectly capable of adding a pro-rated bill to an account cannot adjust an existing bill when that account has services discontinued.
Because - Stupid. That's why.
If it doesn't involve maintaining wires - AT&T stinks at it. Technical proficiency with ZERO people skills.
Wait, they're just like...
-like an engineer!
...
..
.
You don't suppose...
Nah, couldn't be.
It would make too much sense.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Cutting the Cord
One more follow up to my previous post:
I'd called my cable company and TiVO to discontinue service - because I've taken leave of my senses and have signed yet another contract with AT&T. (Shoot me now)
Both of these companies (understandably) have scripts for these kinds of calls. They're about to lose a customer - they want to try and win you back.
I thought the contrast between TiVO and my cable company was pretty striking.
The cable guy ignored what I was saying and kept to his script "Who are you going with?" "Have you seen our latest offerings?"
Over and over. I'm saying. "I'm done. I've already made this decision." And Cable Rep is still all up in my face. "We have some great deals..."
TiVO Rep started a similar script, but as soon as I said I'd already signed a contract - he just said okay. I respect that.
And I felt respected. Even as a departing customer. Points for TiVO.
* * *
Yesterday I found there was one other distinction between these two companies.
I'd asked for my service to be ended on September 4th, the day I was going to get Uverse installed.
TiVO Rep had a problem with that - My billing cycle started on the 1st of the month, and rather than bill me for another month they'd end my service at the end of August.
Not seamless, but I could deal.
Cable Rep was different. I explained I wanted the service stopped on the 4th and he never missed a beat. "Okay."
I was irritated with him over the sales pitch crap, and having to listen to him type my cancellation in - but once I explained what I wanted he got to work.
Boom, done.
* * *
But there's a catch. With data utilities - there is always a catch.
The catch arrived yesterday. I'm working on fettuccine alla boscaiola and E's looking out the window.
"I think the cable guy was just in our back yard."
Now - I'm ashamed that this did not immediately provoke me into a full on sprint into the backyard to demand what in the hell this man was doing on our property. But I didn't. I continued with dinner - under the (laughably naive) assumption that there was some prep work the cable company needed to do on site before they stopped my service.
I know, I know... but there was a lot going on at the time.
By the time I get stuff sorted - the cable guy is gone. I don't give it another thought until E and I sit down to watch our stories and-
Yeah. The cable's been disconnected.
That was yesterday. A quick look at my calendar shows yesterday is TWO WEEKS earlier than the September 4 cutoff I asked for.
Set aside the irritation at not having cable. Set aside the irritation that they've not done what I asked them to do.
What genuinely p!sses me off is the fact that they never said a word about it to me.
TiVO Rep said right up front "We can't cut you off on the 4th, we need to do the 1st."
That's respecting your customer, right there. Telling them what is going to happen before it does.
Cable Rep hears my request for a specific date and says nothing. Cable Guy coming to cut off my service never even rings my doorbell. He just shows up, cuts the cord, and drives off in a cloud of smoke.
So now I'm in a stupid position. What to do? Call them and ask them to re-install it for two weeks? They'd probably charge me installation.
But since I want to confirm my rebate status (we pay a month ahead, naturally) I call them anyway.
Today's Cable Rep tells me that my service was discontinued as of yesterday (really? I wondered why I was calling you). When I point out the early disconnect was not what I wanted - TCR tells me that once they put the disconnect order in the system, it gets scheduled for the next available technician in the area (whenever that might be).
Before making it clear that I'm not personally angry with TCR, I vent my spleen at this idea.
If you can't do something the customer asks - TELL THEM.
If you're going to do the opposite of what the customer wants - TELL THEM.
I get that handholding customers who are on the way out doesn't have a lot of ROI, but here's a thought: the first Cable Rep I spoke to could have said "Sir, if you don't want your service disconnected before the 4th, I'd suggest calling back on the 4th and we'll take care of you then."
Boom, done. No additional expense for them and the customer gets what they want.
Instead, the rep acted like they were listening to me - and then did the same thing they did in all other situations -
-what cable companies and telcos have been doing since they realized their customers were at their mercy...
-they did whatever the hell was easiest for them.
I'd called my cable company and TiVO to discontinue service - because I've taken leave of my senses and have signed yet another contract with AT&T. (Shoot me now)
Both of these companies (understandably) have scripts for these kinds of calls. They're about to lose a customer - they want to try and win you back.
I thought the contrast between TiVO and my cable company was pretty striking.
The cable guy ignored what I was saying and kept to his script "Who are you going with?" "Have you seen our latest offerings?"
Over and over. I'm saying. "I'm done. I've already made this decision." And Cable Rep is still all up in my face. "We have some great deals..."
TiVO Rep started a similar script, but as soon as I said I'd already signed a contract - he just said okay. I respect that.
And I felt respected. Even as a departing customer. Points for TiVO.
* * *
Yesterday I found there was one other distinction between these two companies.
I'd asked for my service to be ended on September 4th, the day I was going to get Uverse installed.
TiVO Rep had a problem with that - My billing cycle started on the 1st of the month, and rather than bill me for another month they'd end my service at the end of August.
Not seamless, but I could deal.
Cable Rep was different. I explained I wanted the service stopped on the 4th and he never missed a beat. "Okay."
I was irritated with him over the sales pitch crap, and having to listen to him type my cancellation in - but once I explained what I wanted he got to work.
Boom, done.
* * *
But there's a catch. With data utilities - there is always a catch.
The catch arrived yesterday. I'm working on fettuccine alla boscaiola and E's looking out the window.
"I think the cable guy was just in our back yard."
Now - I'm ashamed that this did not immediately provoke me into a full on sprint into the backyard to demand what in the hell this man was doing on our property. But I didn't. I continued with dinner - under the (laughably naive) assumption that there was some prep work the cable company needed to do on site before they stopped my service.
I know, I know... but there was a lot going on at the time.
By the time I get stuff sorted - the cable guy is gone. I don't give it another thought until E and I sit down to watch our stories and-
Yeah. The cable's been disconnected.
That was yesterday. A quick look at my calendar shows yesterday is TWO WEEKS earlier than the September 4 cutoff I asked for.
Set aside the irritation at not having cable. Set aside the irritation that they've not done what I asked them to do.
What genuinely p!sses me off is the fact that they never said a word about it to me.
TiVO Rep said right up front "We can't cut you off on the 4th, we need to do the 1st."
That's respecting your customer, right there. Telling them what is going to happen before it does.
Cable Rep hears my request for a specific date and says nothing. Cable Guy coming to cut off my service never even rings my doorbell. He just shows up, cuts the cord, and drives off in a cloud of smoke.
So now I'm in a stupid position. What to do? Call them and ask them to re-install it for two weeks? They'd probably charge me installation.
But since I want to confirm my rebate status (we pay a month ahead, naturally) I call them anyway.
Today's Cable Rep tells me that my service was discontinued as of yesterday (really? I wondered why I was calling you). When I point out the early disconnect was not what I wanted - TCR tells me that once they put the disconnect order in the system, it gets scheduled for the next available technician in the area (whenever that might be).
Before making it clear that I'm not personally angry with TCR, I vent my spleen at this idea.
If you can't do something the customer asks - TELL THEM.
If you're going to do the opposite of what the customer wants - TELL THEM.
I get that handholding customers who are on the way out doesn't have a lot of ROI, but here's a thought: the first Cable Rep I spoke to could have said "Sir, if you don't want your service disconnected before the 4th, I'd suggest calling back on the 4th and we'll take care of you then."
Boom, done. No additional expense for them and the customer gets what they want.
Instead, the rep acted like they were listening to me - and then did the same thing they did in all other situations -
-what cable companies and telcos have been doing since they realized their customers were at their mercy...
-they did whatever the hell was easiest for them.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Pair Bonded
I like to throw my mail away before I get to the house. Saves me time.
Mail goes into three categories:
I have no friends at AT&T.
In my head, I was spending about $26 a month for my landline and about $30 a month on DSL.
Mail goes into three categories:
- Crap - 80% (Bin it)
- Bill - 19% (Groan and bring inside)
- Actual communication from a human being I want to hear from - 1% (Dance around while choirs of angels part the clouds with song)
This crap-to-content ratio is one of the many reasons I've been ignoring my cable, Internet and phone service options. I just don't want to read it.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR...
*Binned*
FOR OUR VALUED CUSTOMER-
*Binned*
YOU MAY BE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR-
*Binned*
This is where communication has sunk to - at least where it comes to cable & telecom.
I don't believe them. At all.
So, they - like the quintessential American abroad - just talk louder.
I've gotten full color 8x11 envelopes chock full of glossy pictures of happy people posing in front of electronic devices. Yea! We love our faceless utility provider of choice! They are far superior to all others!
I've gotten envelopes disguised as hand-written notes. "From a Friend at AT&T."
I have no friends at AT&T.
I get phony credit cards promising me savings. Postcards, fold out brochures.
*Binned*
Because every time I think about changing cable and phone service I just want to hit someone. It's a can of freaking worms and getting the truth out of a piece of telco marketing material is only slightly more impossible than reaching an intelligent and informed human being at said telco.
No, it bloody well isn't. Neither is providing accurate pricing information in written form. Thirty full-color pages of fluff, but not a jot about what additional fees come standard with your order.
With EVERY order.
"Well, that would change by region."
Yes, I'm sure it would. And when it changed, you could print it out and include it in your materials, no? Whassa matter? Printer no workey when it's not printing out craptacular, fact-free brochures?
You may have noticed, I'm a little irritated. But then, AT&T and I have a long history of pain together.
The other day, AT&T did something that caught me off guard: they sent a human being to my door.
Which is ten times more annoying than sending me mail or calling my house.
But you can't bin a human being - and it's ever so much harder to hang up on them.
AT&T person was a big, young man - chock full of pat lines and zingers to establish a rapport with me.
I opted for the direct route. "What does it cost? Choice of services is all about money."
Which is true. I've been on DSL for an embarrassingly long time - so there is no level of Internet that isn't superior to mine.
He rattles off a combined rate for cable/Internet/phone (the unholy trinity) for $115 dollars a month. And you just have to swear to pay that for two years.
Free Installation!
But you have to use our gateway device (and rent it forever - the fee's included)
And you get a DVR (free!)
And we'll give you a $150 gift card!
And...!
*Sigh*
I take the man's name and info and send him on his way. Because there is no way to have this conversation without doing battle with the beast. There are too many ways for a telco/cableco to screw their customer. Teaser rates, varying speeds, expanded basic, 200 channels, 300 channels. You almost never end up with apples to apples.
Sidebar: I went to their channel listing to see about the difference between the 200 channel package and the 300 channel package.
The U200 has 275 channels
- 3 are described as applications (Apps on TV, not really a channel)
- 16 Childrens channels
- 10 International channels
- 58 Music channels
- 24 Operating System (by this, I mean things like messages and "how to use your DVR")
- 10 Religious channels
- 2 Scenery channels
- 8 Schedule channels (what is playing on your 'actual' channels)
- 34 Shopping channels
This adds up to- 165 CRAP Channels
in other words,- 60% of the U200 package is CRAP
The U300 has 339 channels:
Now, don't get me wrong - I've got nothing against religion, but the one thing you can say that holds true across all religions: they don't make good TV.
- 3 Application 'channels'
- 19 Childrens channels
- 14 International channels
- 67 Music channels
- 24 Operating System channels
- 10 Religious channels
- 2 Scenery channels
- 8 Schedule channels
- 34 Shopping channels
This adds up to
- 181 CRAP channels
in other words,- 53% of the U300 package is CRAP
Likewise children's channels. Most are some cartoon re-run death spiral, or Disney farm league. I won't watch them & I won't let them melt my kids brains.
And while 'international' would seem unfairly classified as crap, a channel broadcast entirely in Spanish is not really a channel I'm going to get a lot of value out of. Sure, if there's a good soccer match on Univision - I'd watch it - but most of the games I'd watch will be on other channels in English.
Hundreds of channels! Quothe the brochure... But really - 34 freaking shopping channels? 8 channels that just tell you what's on? 67 channels devoted to music?
The U300 has movie channels - that and 7% less crap as a percentage is the selling point. Although that's before you factor in that the U300 contains utter throwaway channels like CNBC World.
I want you to picture the person who ups their cable package to get CNBC World.
<Barf sound>.I digress...
In my head, I was spending about $26 a month for my landline and about $30 a month on DSL.
I knew cable was around $70 a month and on top of that - we were paying for TiVO at $12.95 a month.
So. $26 + $30 + $70 + $12.95 = $138.95
However. I've been tracking my household bills using Google Drive for awhile now and had just re-itemized things, so I could get an accurate comparison without having to dig out bills by month. Everything was already in my spreadsheets.
Turns out I was actually paying $34 for my landline per month.
My Internet was actually $38 a month.
My cable was $74.59 a month.
TiVo was correct at $12.95 a month.
So, I'm paying about $160 a month for phone / Internet / cable.
Out of sight, out of mind. They hook you up to their services with a bang, and then slowly ratchet up the rate. Over time, you only remember what it used to cost.
A few other things jumped out at me from this quick check:
My landline costs $28 a month, but the fees and taxes bump it up to $34. That's almost a 20% increase. They can say my base rate stayed the same, but I end up paying more because some "fees" increased over time.
*sigh*
My cable company charged 15% over the base rates for their taxes and "fees" and only TiVO charged me the listed price and nothing else.
Assuming a similar fee spread on this new rate, I'd end up with a monthly bill of about $128 a month. I'd get more channels, and way faster Internet.
*sigh*
This should be happy news, but these things are never seamless.
I'll lose my recorded DVR content from TiVO.
I'm not convinced my rotary phone will continue to work (despite the assurances from the AT&T guy).
I love my wireless router - can I keep it? AT&T guy didn't know.
And there's a history of last minute surprises when it comes to installs. My last cable guy showed up with a cable converter (that they would rent to me) despite my being promised I didn't need one and wouldn't get one.
Pay less for more, and all I can think is "How is this going to go south?"
This is the state of the modern broadband consumer. Unswerving fatalism.
AT&T guy returns later on and offers me an even better deal (oooh! tell us, do!) He'll offer me $110 a month and throw in an additional $25 gift card.
The gift card is meh, but lowering a monthly rate is actual money. I've wanted to fire my cable company for awhile and - yes - I actually agree to this foolishness.
The sign up procedure (with a rep in my house) involves forms in triplicate and calling the AT&T mothership because - HEAVEN FORBID - you have an interaction with AT&T that isn't "recorded for quality purposes."
I get some guy with a lisp who asks if he wants him to repeat my agreed on rate or do I want the guy in my kitchen to do it.
Memo to AT&T: this is an inhuman question, completely severed from any norms of communication. Any thinking person is going to respond with "What the hell are you talking about?"
As a UX guy, I just have to ask: Why is this step necessary? Surely someone will tell me the price, and it will be the same as before, right?
But trust is absent from this process. I'm being recorded, lest I sue and claim fraud later - and so I ask the guy on the phone to repeat the price, reasoning that it will be recorded (on their tape, to which I will have no access - ever) and then they mention the activation fee.
It's $49.
This is the first time anyone has ever mentioned the existence of such a fee. I repeatedly grilled the AT&T guy in my kitchen about installation fees and what would and would not be covered by my free installation. I was repeatedly assured that there would be no charge for my installation.
At no time did this person mention that there would be an activation fee.
Because, why would you, really? I mean there must be dozens of people who asked for equipment to be installed but not activated, right?
Why are we even talking about this?
AT&T guy gets my whatTheF*#@AreYouTalkingAbout vibe pretty quick and he swiftly tacks into "but since I said your installation would be free, here's a rebate form that you can give the installer that will totally offset the activation fee."
Yes, because a future handoff of paperwork to a man I've not met, for the promise of a six week delivery of a $50 rebate is almost the same thing as an up front payment of $49.95 to AT&T on my next bill.
AT&T? This is one of the many reasons people hate you so much. Because nothing feels above board with you. Of course you could have mentioned this earlier, but you chose not to.
Of course you could have made "free installation" be exactly what it sounded like, but you chose not to.
At some undetermined time in the future, I'm going to get a postcard, or similarly innocuous piece of "please-throw-me-away" mail that will actually contain my $150 gift card. If I (or another member of my family) throw it away by accident - well, TOO BAD.
The additional $25 gift card "sweetener" will arrive (or not) the same way.
And the $50 rebate will do the same.
Assuming the installer takes my paperwork and doesn't lose it.
Is there a way to check on the status of these things? Who the hell knows?
Multiple chances to NOT get what I've been promised by AT&T guy. Even if everything goes well, I get to be on tenterhooks (make sure I have copies, checking the mail daily) so I get something you could have simply credited to my account.
YES - I know these rebates are from other companies, but roll it up and make it happen for the customer, already. Why does the customer have to be part of this process?
-because that way less people actually get what we promise them.
Yes, I know that - but how is that advancing your brand?
AT&T: Watch us like hawks, and things just might work out.
It's always like this with you guys. ALWAYS.
When all is said and done, I'm going to be hooked up to AT&T for another two years and I will actually be saving money from what I used to pay. But you've managed to turn that into a total annoyance fest anyway.
Arrgh!
Postscript:
What actually prompted this post was my calling my current cable company to tell them to end my service.
Because I hate calling them, I'd tried to use their website to end service - but (naturally) their site doesn't support that.
Calling them put me into the hold queue and they asked me to key in my account number. Which I don't know. Not to worry, I could key in the phone number on the account. I have 4 phone numbers and have no idea which they have on my account. There is no menu item for this.
I stay on the line until they route me to a human being (after a five minute wait). I'm asked my name and my account number. I give them my name and tell them I don't have my account number.
For some reason, this stymies them and so (I wish I was kidding) I return to their website while they wait and I log in to get my account number. Then I read it out to them and they say - thanks - I'll transfer you to services.
Before I can yell at them, I'm on hold again.
The next human I get asks for my name.
PRO TIP: Once a customer has authenticated, they shouldn't have to again.
So I give them my name and they (wonder of wonders!) look up my account with just that info.
When I tell them that I'm discontinuing service - the questions begin. "Why are you leaving?" "Who are you going with?" "Have you seen our latest offerings?"
Okay, cable guys: By the time the customer has called you to cut off service - THE INK IS DRY on a contract making them financially obligated to some other firm. There is no saving this account.
But no, cable guy tries to win me back until I finally lose my temper and tell him that the decision is made. End of story.
I repeat myself "I need my service to end as of this date. Are we done?"
Cable guy seems miffed, "I just need you to hang on while I..."
Once again, this is another pet peeve of mine: I've authenticated and told the rep what I want. Why do I need to "hang on" while this drone types my request into their system?
End my service. Email me (using the address you have on file) when it's done. *click*
Cable guy tells me that if I hang up, he'll just get another call and won't be able to process my request.
Because that makes sense. To him. And no one else.
I tell him I'll wait but that I don't need to hear any sales talk. He puts me on hold until he's done.
There. Unpleasant for everyone. Success.
A few minutes of hold later. I'm done with cable.
TiVO's website also doesn't have a cancel service option (no surprise). What is surprising is that calling them puts me on hold for ten minutes.
When I finally get through, I get the same "Why are you leaving?" pleas, but Mr. TiVO is decent enough to let it go when I say that I've signed a contract with another company.
Boom. Done.
And I'm on rails with AT&T for the next two years.
And if I bail out early, they can charge me $180.
Do you see this, world??? This is me winning.
(Now why don't people re-evaluate their cable / phone / internet providers more often? I wonder...)
Monday, July 22, 2013
Courtesy Notice
Just another day at the new gig. Toiling away the the lair of the Morlocks. Winding down the day until-
*Email bong*
Hmmm...
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678731926@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:12 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Nearing Plan Limit: Data Usage = 270 MB
To: "me" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that [my wife's phone number] has used 270 MBs and is nearing the data plan limit. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
This is a pretty regular message from AT&T. My wife's plan is pretty close to a monthly dose of data, and AT&T is only to happy to ramp up the data fear that we aren't spending enough on wireless.
I look for the essential pieces of data.
Used 270MB
out of... Well, it doesn't actually say this anywhere in the message, but I recall her limit was around 300 and that is reinforced by the message context "additional 300."
Billing period ends on the 19th.
So... 4pm on a Friday - billing ends in two days. On a weekend we'll be home on wireless, so we're probably-
*Email bong*
Wha-?
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678731926@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:13 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Exceeding Plan Limit: Data Usage = 300 MB
To: "ME" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that you have reached your data plan limit. [my wife's phone number] has used 300 MBs. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements
and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
Okay, this message arrived exactly one minute after the first message. I was on it instantly and had barely divined its meaning before getting a follow up message telling me it's too late to do anything. I've already been billed.
Thanks, AT&T!
Everything I've come to expect from we-couldn't-care-less-customer-relations software.
MOOT.
CHA-CHING, BABY!
Alright. It's twenty bucks and now that we're over into another 300MB bucket - there's not a lot of point in contacting my wife. 'cos - y'know, two days for 300MB and this is pretty unusual for us.
We went over, we got billed - and AT&T customer care stinks. What else is-
*nine minutes later*
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678756034@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:22 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Nearing Plan Limit: Data Usage = 525 MB
To: "ME" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that [my wife's phone number] has used 525 MBs and is nearing the data plan limit. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
Okay, seriously. What the hell? In the span of ten minutes - I've gone from:
I finish what I'm doing and sent a text to my wife:
Are you downloading podcasts on your phone?
*four minutes later*
---------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:26 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Exceeding Plan Limit: Data Usage = 600 MB
To: "ME" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that you have reached your data plan limit. [my wife's phone number] has used 600 MBs. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements
and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
Alright, seriously irritated. I call E and ask what the heck is going on.
The boy has been watching videos on her phone during his Dr. Appointment. They were supposedly on WiFi, but there's no way to establish that definitively. We're out another $40, and I have no way of knowing if these messages ("In general...reflected within 24 hours") are lagging so bad that there are more messages coming.
Awesome.
This serves the basic need of AT&T: tell the customer they are buying more data - but does exactly ZERO for the end user.
Know what would do something for the end user?
Something like this:
This is a message that the user can do something with.
The "Whoa! Stop! Stop!" command (or something like it) would slam the door on all cellular data transfer and (if there were consequences from these interruptions) route the user to a follow up screen:
If you're getting really fancy - it could route the user to a preferences page that asks them if they just want to shut every cellular data transfer down or if they want to customize a response.
They could just cut off streaming media, for example.
Stop> Set Bandwith preferences to: Streaming media-wireless only>
Save until next billing period begins.
Boom. Done.
'Kay?
iOS 7 is giving users app level control over bandwidth, and that's great - but users can still be ambushed by data charges from the odd scenario. There's no reason why they shouldn't expect their smartphone to notify them when their data use is about to cost them more money.
This should be baked in functionality.
Yeah, we can get Onavo and dial in throttles app by app, but the decision point should be communicated to the user when it happens.
You are about to buy a movie. Okay?
You are about to buy this song. Okay?
From the customer perspective, these are the same thing.
So is this:
THAT's a courtesy notice. Because it asks you up front - and respects your decision.
Why don't we have that?
*Email bong*
Hmmm...
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678731926@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:12 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Nearing Plan Limit: Data Usage = 270 MB
To: "me" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that [my wife's phone number] has used 270 MBs and is nearing the data plan limit. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
This is a pretty regular message from AT&T. My wife's plan is pretty close to a monthly dose of data, and AT&T is only to happy to ramp up the data fear that we aren't spending enough on wireless.
I look for the essential pieces of data.
Used 270MB
out of... Well, it doesn't actually say this anywhere in the message, but I recall her limit was around 300 and that is reinforced by the message context "additional 300."
Billing period ends on the 19th.
So... 4pm on a Friday - billing ends in two days. On a weekend we'll be home on wireless, so we're probably-
*Email bong*
Wha-?
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678731926@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:13 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Exceeding Plan Limit: Data Usage = 300 MB
To: "ME" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that you have reached your data plan limit. [my wife's phone number] has used 300 MBs. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements
and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
Okay, this message arrived exactly one minute after the first message. I was on it instantly and had barely divined its meaning before getting a follow up message telling me it's too late to do anything. I've already been billed.
Thanks, AT&T!
Everything I've come to expect from we-couldn't-care-less-customer-relations software.
- This is my wife's data usage, but the email alert was sent to me.
- Despite being sent to me, the greeting uses my wife's name.
- "In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours" Does this mean this data notice could be up to a day old? Because that would increase the likelihood that-
- This warning is too late to do any good whatsoever
MOOT.
CHA-CHING, BABY!
Alright. It's twenty bucks and now that we're over into another 300MB bucket - there's not a lot of point in contacting my wife. 'cos - y'know, two days for 300MB and this is pretty unusual for us.
We went over, we got billed - and AT&T customer care stinks. What else is-
*nine minutes later*
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678756034@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:22 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Nearing Plan Limit: Data Usage = 525 MB
To: "ME" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that [my wife's phone number] has used 525 MBs and is nearing the data plan limit. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
- In danger of being billed an additional twenty dollars; to
- Being billed an additional twenty dollars; to
- In danger of being billed yet ANOTHER twenty dollars
I finish what I'm doing and sent a text to my wife:
Are you downloading podcasts on your phone?
*four minutes later*
---------------------------------------------------
From: AT&T Customer Care for Wireless <ATT.Wireless.1678766693@emaildl.att-mail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:26 PM
Subject: Data Usage Alert - Exceeding Plan Limit: Data Usage = 600 MB
To: "ME" <myemail@address.com>
Dear MY WIFE'S NAME,
This is a courtesy notice that you have reached your data plan limit. [my wife's phone number] has used 600 MBs. Data usage which exceeds your plan allowance will be billed at $20 per additional 300MB.
To check your data usage online or make changes to your data plan, please visit www.att.com or download the free myAT&T app to your smartphone. You may also dial *DATA# and receive a free text message with your current data usage. Your next billing cycle date is 07/19/2013.
As always, Wi-Fi usage does not count against your data plan and is a good way to help manage your data consumption. For additional information about data plan requirements
and tips on managing your data usage visit https://www.att.com/dataplans.
*Important: In general, domestic data usage will be reflected within 24 hours.
Thank you,
AT&T
---------------------------------------------------
Alright, seriously irritated. I call E and ask what the heck is going on.
The boy has been watching videos on her phone during his Dr. Appointment. They were supposedly on WiFi, but there's no way to establish that definitively. We're out another $40, and I have no way of knowing if these messages ("In general...reflected within 24 hours") are lagging so bad that there are more messages coming.
Awesome.
This serves the basic need of AT&T: tell the customer they are buying more data - but does exactly ZERO for the end user.
Know what would do something for the end user?
Something like this:
This is a message that the user can do something with.
The "Whoa! Stop! Stop!" command (or something like it) would slam the door on all cellular data transfer and (if there were consequences from these interruptions) route the user to a follow up screen:
If you're getting really fancy - it could route the user to a preferences page that asks them if they just want to shut every cellular data transfer down or if they want to customize a response.
They could just cut off streaming media, for example.
Stop> Set Bandwith preferences to: Streaming media-wireless only>
Save until next billing period begins.
Boom. Done.
'Kay?
iOS 7 is giving users app level control over bandwidth, and that's great - but users can still be ambushed by data charges from the odd scenario. There's no reason why they shouldn't expect their smartphone to notify them when their data use is about to cost them more money.
This should be baked in functionality.
Yeah, we can get Onavo and dial in throttles app by app, but the decision point should be communicated to the user when it happens.
You are about to buy a movie. Okay?
You are about to buy this song. Okay?
From the customer perspective, these are the same thing.
So is this:
THAT's a courtesy notice. Because it asks you up front - and respects your decision.
Why don't we have that?
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