Joan on the Road...of Life

Several months ago we stopped using our satellite connection for internet and TV. We switched to modems provided by a company I'll cal Vee (they want to rule the air). Overall we've been happy with the modem service although we are in a "fringe" area where the speed is inconsistent. But Vee has very good customer service and has always been helpful.

Over the weekend, while looking at Vee's website, Jim found that the pricing for modems has dropped by $10 per month. Well, let's call them and get our billing reduced...that would be $20 per month, nothing to sneeze at. Yesterday Jim got on the phone to request what we thought was a simple billing correction. Not!

Our modems are now "old". The cheaper pricing is for new modems that can handle 4G. No, they can't lower the billing price. Our modems only have one plan, $60 per month and that's it. "But let's see what else we could offer you."

Half an hour later the upshot was, NO. No price adjustment. No other solution. We are not happy customers. "Let's have you talk to our technical people. Maybe they can come up with a solution." Thirty minutes later we are still unhappy customers. All we want is a price reduction that agrees with what the website says.

Later in the afternoon we got a recorded call asking us to explain our problem and telling us that a manager may call. This morning, sure enough, a "manager" calls. Jim goes through the whole scenario again. After 45 minutes of telling us why they could not reduce our monthly fee and offering technical and upgrade options....we still do not have a lower price and we are still unhappy customers.

I wonder if Vee realizes that with all the people we talked to, all the emails, data entry, phone transfers and recorded messages that we went through....they easily dropped $500 in trying to serve us. Let's see. $500 divided by 10 would be 50 months worth of $10 reduction OR 25 months of $20 off our bill (2 modems at $10 each)! 25 months!! That's 2 years worth of reduced price. AND we'd be really happy customers. AND that would probably take us to a point in time where upgrading might work.There's got to be logic somewhere in Vees thinking but I can't find it!