Suddenlink

I woke up this morning to discover that I had no Internet service. At first, I thought it was simply a local outage, but then I phoned my provider -- Suddenlink -- and learned that I had been terminated for not paying my bill.

The kicker? To the best of my recollection, I never received a recent bill. I had signed up to go paperless and, before, had been getting it regularly via email. But, not this time. Maybe it went into my spam folder or something, but I haven’t seen it there as yet. 

Also, I had not received any notice from Suddenlink that my service was going to be shut down--even though the company has my phone number and text info on file.  If they had texted me a “friendly reminder” I’d have paid up quickly enough. But...they didn’t.

I then paid my bill via the phone and set up automatic payments so that this won’t happen in future. But I had to pay a late fee along with my regular bill, and I really felt that was a bit unfair. How could I be charged a late fee on a bill I never actually got?

So, I called up Suddenlink’s help line...and got put into a lengthy queue. I put my name and number for a call back, and then attempted to use the company’s chat function on its webpage. That, too, required a wait, but I hung in there until I got a company rep on the line, someone named “Michael.” I had just started explaining my problem to Michael when the chat function froze. It didn’t work then, and it is still not working as of the moment (10:45 am).

I then got a phone call back from the customer service help desk. I explained my problem as best I could and said I would like to remove the late fees. A rather hostile individual informed me that I had had plenty of time to check my bill before the due date and so it was all my fault, and there was no way the fees were coming off.

At this point, I was genuinely angry. The late fee had been annoying, but to be basically dismissed by customer service in this fashion was quite a bit worse. Indeed, it is inexcusable.

I suppose I will never see my late fee again, but I do think I’m owed an apology. I wonder if I will ever get it. If I ever do, I will let you know. But, it is rather unlikely, I suppose. Which is sad, because up to then I had been quite satisfied with my Suddenlink service. Now, I discover that it wasn’t nearly the company I thought it was.

Ah, the joys of life in the post-industrial economy.