Background information: About two weeks ago, I called Qwest and ordered phone service for our new house. At the same time, I ordered DSL. The guy took my information, and then completely ignored it and placed an order for MSN DSL. We moved in and discovered a dead phone jack, and Qwest saying they might not make my DSL due date (December 6). Then I got my first phone bill, which was for $72, which is shockingly high, since we don’t have long distance. So today I called up Qwest with the intention of addressing the following problems:
- Removing extra items from my phone bill.
- Getting the dead phone jack fixed.
- Checking up on my DSL order.
Qwest Rep #1 (male, somewhat helpful): Two of the extra services on your bill you can have removed no problem. The third one: “Toll Restriction Service, Individual & Key Lines,” you cannot. That is the $2 that we charge you every month for not having long distance service. We will only stop charging you that if you pay the $100 deposit to turn on long-distance service. Now I’ll transfer you to the service-removal department.
Qwest Rep #2 (female, helpful): I can remove Call Rejection and Call Waiting if you want, but you get them for free. The bill you got is an error. Since you have DSL service, you get Call Rejection, Call Waiting and Caller ID for free, which the first salesman you talked to failed to mention. Now I’ll transfer you to the bill-sending department… ask for an updated bill.
Qwest Rep #3 (female, irritated): No, I can’t send you a new bill. We only send bills at the end of the month. Your next bill will tell you how much you really owe, and if we overcharged you, your account will be credited. I don’t know why the last woman transferred you here because we don’t do what you want. I’ll transfer you back to her. What? Yeah, I can transfer you to the repair department instead.
Qwest Rep #4 (male, somewhat helpful): A repairman costs $85 for the first half-hour and $25 for every extra half-hour. We can have someone at your house in 20 minutes. You don’t have the money right now? Yeah, I can transfer you to the DSL service people.
Qwest Rep #5 (foreign female, not helpful): No, we haven’t made any progress on your account in the last week because MSN still hasn’t canceled your DSL order, and until that’s done, we can’t get anything going. Yes, I can transfer you to the MSN department.
Qwest Rep #6 (female, somewhat helpful): Yes, your order is marked for cancellation. That takes between 10 and 20 business days. The only thing I can do to speed that up is put a priority flag on your request, but there’s no guarantee that will help. MSN is sorry to be losing a customer, but I hope that I was helpful with your customer service needs. Have a nice day.
Final standing: I have one piece of good news (that the questionable items on my bill were just a billing mistake, and they’re really free), but I can’t get a new bill (or even a corrected balance), I can’t afford to get my dead phone jack fixed, and my DSL account may or may not be delivered on time depending on whether or not MSN gets around to canceling my order, which was a Qwest mistake to begin with. HATE
I'm a 30-year-old 
Do tell, who else can I sign up with for phone service? Qwest was screwing me around, too, and now I dread ordering DSL from them, which I’ll probably do in a little while…
November 29th, 2001 at 12:26 pm
Omg…dood, I’ve been dealing with Qwest/MSN DSL bullshit for the past month! I hear ya brother! 3 weeks before even moving into my place I requested my phone line and dsl. I was talked into getting the "Connected Home" package which provides dsl and phone line in one for a somewhat reasonable price. Being naive, I assumed a "package deal" would be smoother to get up and running. Ha! The rep didn’t bother to tell me that MSN would be my ISP. I found out a week later and, being ignorant of the evils of MSN, went ahead with it. My phone line came through without a hitch and was running when I moved in on the 7th of November. I waited that week for my DSL modem to arrive and it never came. I called MSN to find out its status and they said "Oh it was delivered on the 9th." Hmm…thats funny, I didn’t get it! >:( Sooo after 45 minutes of phone conversation with MSN reps and Airborne Experess, we determine that the modem was dumped at the door of my apartment complex without my signature (which was supposed to be required) and promptly disappeared. So the MSN rep says to me "we have to file a claim and I’ll ‘escilate’ your request to have a new modem sent. Call back in a week." Mind you, this was 4 weeks after I ordered my dsl package. So I called back in a week (last Thursday) to ensure that my new modem had been sent and the rep said that nothing had been done on my order. The only thing he could do was ‘re-escilate’ my order which would cancel out my previous ‘escilation’. Needless to say, 5 weeks after requesting dsl and having no dsl modem delivery in the forseeable future, I was pretty pissed. I told them to go ahead and ‘re-escilate’ my order, but an hour later I decided ‘F*ck MSN’ and I cancelled my order with them. Of course…they can’t process the cancellation until my next billing period, which is the 25th of December! I was fuming and all the guy said was ‘I can get this escilated for you so they’ll try to do it sooner’ but I’m not counting on it. Sooo….it may well be a month before I actually get dsl in my place. I’m pretty pissed off. MSN is operated by a bunch of morons and I wouldn’t wish their service on my worst enimies. Strangely, Qwest has been pretty cooperative and all the reps I’ve spoken too have been intelligent and sympathetic (apparently they get this scenario a lot). The rep I spoke to last was awesome. I wasn’t previously informed that the phone service in the "Connected Home Package" included all this extra useless stuff like callerid and was costing about $40/mo, so I was pretty angry when I found that out. The rep was kewl tho…she changed my service to the basic line and is re-crediting me the difference between the fancy service and the basic service that I wanted. Yay…qwest scores points.So in the end I am getting the "Starter Pack" which is Qwest 256k dsl and Qwest.net ISP..and runs about $43/month. I’ve used qwest.net for the last 2years and its been great. So, despite the warnings of some people I know, I’m going ahead with qwest.net…well, when MSN eventually cancells my order a month from now. >:-(So yeah…MSN scores an "F" for terrible infrastructure and poor customer support. Plus they are the devil.Qwest gets a "C" for selling their customers unnecessary packages and being stupid enough to sign a 5-year contract with MSN. They would get an "F" but their customer service has been excellent thus far and they gave me my money back….but I still have no dsl at my apartment for another month. :-( Well, at least I’ve been catching up on my reading. ;-p
November 29th, 2001 at 12:31 pm
you can use AT&T for your local calling now.. my dad has them exclusively- no more qwest for him.
November 29th, 2001 at 1:59 pm
just so you know, qwest.net is not an option for much longer if you’re using a windows pc:[ November 29th, 2001 at 2:05 pm
Thank you soooo much for letting me know this! U have no idea how much grief u have just saved me! MSN is a major pain and I would loathe having ot deal with this later. Thx again!
November 29th, 2001 at 4:20 pm
sure, np..another thing- if you switch to an independent ISP, they should be able to complete the switch in five business days (this is how long they’ve quoted and performed for me, on the couple of occasions i’ve had to do it.)it will cost you $35, though.i can’t imagine the MSN order cancellation nonsense would interfere with this process, although i’m honestly not surprised they make it as difficult as possible to use a service besides MSN (eg, scott’s being signed up for it against his request, your troubles..)
November 29th, 2001 at 4:56 pm
…on that note, can anyone recommend a good ISP?I’m talkin reputable & affordable. I’m considering going with saw.net.Any suggestions/input?
November 29th, 2001 at 4:56 pm
saw.net is wayyyyyy overpriced.i like easystreet. i’m really quite happy with their service. i’ve had minimal downtime, just one several-hours-long outage in the 8 months i’ve had it, and it could’ve been qwest’s fault. their tech support staff is pretty sharp.i can also fully recommend spiretech, because the people who work there and they’re the highest calibre of technical employee (also, friends of mine.) if you request spiretech and the qwest monkey says it’s not available, they may be listed under a four-letter acronym name starting with I (like IWBS or IDCS or .. something like that), because they lease their connectivity from that place in some parts of portland.
November 29th, 2001 at 5:53 pm
Hmm….well the two geek-inclined people who have offered me advice on this have both recommended Easystreet, so I’m inclined to check them out. Thanks again for the info and advice Steve. :)
November 29th, 2001 at 8:17 pm
sure, you’re welcome. best of luck!
November 30th, 2001 at 1:06 am
one other thing.. $72 hardly qualifies as a "shockingly high" telephone bill ;)
November 30th, 2001 at 1:08 am
I realize I’m in a small town that doesn’t have nearly the issues that Portland does, but I just wanted to say that I’m very happy with my cable modem. I know everyone gets down on the cable modems, but when I can snag a 50 meg file at over 180kbps, I don’t bitch much. I guess we just have a good location for that.
November 30th, 2001 at 9:13 am
It does if you don’t have long distance.
November 30th, 2001 at 1:08 pm
You can shop around on a lot of those plans. My current setup is with a Qwest/Qwest dsl line (640up/256down package), and Sprint for long distance, with just a phone line, no frills. Without a long distance call, my bill is $76 a month. It’s pretty crazy how much variation you can get on plans. ATT wanted $40 to even consider giving me long distance, whereas Sprint was no hassles. And I was apparently lucky that my whole installation went off without a hitch.I’ll be taking my money elsewhere though if they try and switch me to MSN next year. Ezstreet sounds like a good deal.Good luck :)–Alex
November 30th, 2001 at 2:50 pm
And just as an alternative (though I’ve heard nothing but good stuff about easystreet), I’m using DSL NorthWest, and they’ve always been ultra helpful and nice whenever I call them.
November 30th, 2001 at 5:14 pm
Any ISP/Telco is a pain in the ass. The only thing that is simple is dialup. I had Pacbell DSL charges for a year just for asking if it was available once. It was crazy. After a year and a move later we were able to get it removed. I had the same problems with Covad/XO. I have a local telco provider right now, and although I do not have problems I do have a $110 phone bill each month (384/128). I’m getting ready to move again, and this time I’m going with Frac. T1, and I’m expecting the same problems. Nobody can get it right.You just have to bare with it, and hope the server is good after you get it turned on.
November 30th, 2001 at 8:12 pm
I LEFT QUEST THREE DAY AFTER PAYING MY LAST PHONE BILL,THEY REFUNDED $2.42 TO ME,I SENT IT BACK.SAYING ROLL THIS UP REAL TIGHT,PUT UNSALTED BUTTER ON IT AND INSERT IN YOU FUNDEMENTAL ORFFICE
THEY THEN SENT ME A BILL FOR THREE CENTS,WHAT A
BUNCH OF DUMB SHITS
I WILL NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH QUEST AGAIN AND AM
URGING OTHERS TO QUIT THEM
July 30th, 2005 at 8:06 am
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