Open Letter to Earthlink Wireless

Dear Earthlink Wireless,

You suck! If you want to stay in this business, please get your shit together. You already lost me¹ as a customer, and I will make sure I tell all my friends and business contacts to stay away from your wireless services.

Let me give you a hint - when you send your customer a new blackberry using next day delivery, that said customer expects the device to work upon arrival. Not 3-5 days later. Not 2 weeks later. Not a month later. We really want to take the device out of the box, and stat using it.

Why is it so difficult to get a blackberry activated on your system? I went through this process 3 times in the last few months, and each time it's the same old story. After the mandatory 5 day wait, your customer service apologizes profusely, offers me downtime credit and escalates my case. I am told to wait another week. Another week goes by, and my device is still not working. I call you, threaten cancellation. Usually at this point one of your managers promises me to "personally" take care of the case.

This happens every single time!

Is it really that hard to get these thins squared away quickly? Why do you make your customers wait half a month, and make no less than 6 customer service calls just to get their mobile device registered on the network?

On more than one occasion I have been told by your reps, that the communication system you use is really bad and not all the requests go through. I don't care about that. This is your problem! This is not an excuse. All I need is a working blackberry - I really don't care how you guys do this. I don't care about the poor implementation of your systems, or the lack of communication between the departments. If it is so bad, then fix it! I really couldn't care less.

How can you call yourself a service provider, if you failt to provide me with any kind of timely adequate service. I do not need my blackberry to be activated in April - I need it working NOW! What is this so damn difficult?

I do understand that according to the blackberry warranty the replacement device will be a refurbished one. However, last time I checked "refurbished" in the dictionary it did not mean "broken piece of garbage". That is exactly what you have sent me 2 weeks ago. The blackberry refuses to sync up with the PC. The only thing your tech support is able to offer me is a new another refurbished blackberry.

I have waited 3 weeks to activate my replacement device. There is no way I'm waiting another 3 weeks again. I had enough of this. I'm switching to Verizon. You people suck.

¹ - when I say me, I actually mean my boss. It is his blackberry, but I figured that this letter would sound better if written in first person. Especially since I am the person doing all the footwork and making all the calls in this case. :)

Tags: earthlink, earthlink wireless, blackberry, customer service, earthlink sux, verizon, open letter