Designed To Fail - US West DSL Support
A Guide To Dealing With US West When Your DSL Fails

If you do not have the time and a tenacious personality US West support services could easily disrupt your DSL Internet service for a month.

Large numbers of small businesses and individuals now depend on US West to provide DSL, Digital Subscriber Line, Internet services. Most of these people will be shocked to discover that US West is ill equipped to support them when their DSL connection goes down. And it will.

The Problem
US West’s customer service problems are systemic. The very structure of their DSL support organization destines them to fail because:
1. All parties, US West support staff and customers, involved with DSL problem resolution, are faced with interminable waiting before any contact can be made with the Phoenix Operations Center.

2. No US West employee is held personally responsible for the successful resolution of a customer’s problem. Multiple sources for reporting and tracking trouble ticket issuance and status is inefficient and disorganized.

3. US West’s legacy as a monopoly still remains a strong element in its corporate culture. US West DSL emergency customer support closes at ten o’clock and all weekend. The unprofessionalism of such a policy by a major Internet communications company can only be attributed to the lack of competition. Every Internet Service Provider has technical staff on duty every day round the clock to deal with emergencies, which are, by definition, a circumstance when the customer no longer has service.

As long as there is no competition US West does not have to understand the marketplace. The consequences of this unenlightened attitude will be revealed as soon as there is competition. It is unclear whether AT&T or others will provide better customer service but DSL customers will certainly be more than willing to give them a chance.

4. There is no common database of information related to a trouble ticket that all parties, including the customer, can check for status reports. Tracking service delivery should be as easy as tracking a package at UPS or FedEx.

5. Divisions within US West have neither an incentive nor a strategy for cooperative communication. In spite of the fact that US West knows that certain DSL equipment will fail, the division which controls the modems will not let DSL techs, which are from another division, carry a replacement in their trucks or even stock one at their offices.

Attitude Adjustment
Now before you try to contact US West for help remember the following:
1. Unless you live in Phoenix, the people you are about to call live very far away. DSL support for Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming are centrally diagnosed and dispatched from the Phoenix Operations Center. It is extraordinarily difficult for anyone, inside or outside of US West to communicate with these people.

2. US West Support staff will get a regular paycheck whether they help you or not. Let me repeat that last yet most important element in your future relationship with US West DSL tech support. There is no penalty for failure to solve your problem. It is the basis for my next bit of advice, make sure you have an “attitude adjustment” before you make your first call for help.

Calling For Help
When your DSL line goes down you have no choice but to call US West. On the back of the MegaBit Services User Guide you will find a list of phone numbers to call for help: MegaBit Installation Technical Support, Home Office customers, Business Repair. Forget all of them. Go directly to the source of all power, the Phoenix Operations Center, (877) 663-6342.

When you call the Operations Center the first voice you hear will be an operator, not a US West employee, who will ask you a standard list of questions. Don’t try to give this person your whole story, just answer the questions. At the end of this interview you will be transferred to the Operations Center.

As soon as this operator says that you are about to be transferred, ask the operator to stay on the line with you. They are required to do this if you ask. Why should you do this? Two reasons. First, the Operations Center has a nasty habit of making you wait forever and then disconnecting you. If they are going to waste your time the least you can do is make the operator, and eventually US West, feel your pain. Secondly, you now have a captive audience for the next thirty to forty-five minutes to tell your story and complain. It doesn’t matter that the operator can’t help you, but you will feel a lot better. Should every operator log in only ten calls per day instead of a hundred and ten, maybe somebody at US West will notice. When you finally get to the Phoenix Operations Center you will be asked the same list of questions because none of the information you gave to the transfer operator was passed on to the Operations Center. Be calm, take a deep breath and do it again. Finally you can talk to someone who can actually fix your problem. Be nice.

Get A Work Order
No one will so much as pick up a screwdriver without a work order. The most important thing you can do now is make sure that you have written down the work order/trouble ticket number before you hang up. You can’t do any follow up without this number.

At the end of your conversation with Operations you will be told that a technician will call you within two to four hours to give you a status report. This will never happen. With luck, someone may call you two to four days later and ask you if the problem has been resolved.

Your next job is to call the Phoenix Operations Center every four hours to see if a technician has been assigned your trouble ticket. If no one has been assigned, politely, ask the person you are speaking with to make a note in your file that you are still out of business and are quite unhappy about US West support services. Repeat this procedure until your line is fixed or you get so frustrated that you feel the need to call the US West executive offices in Denver; your state Public Utilities Commission; your state and U.S. senator or representative. The last time my DSL went down it took four (4) days of constant calling before a US West tech arrived at my office. US West has failed to prepare for or adjust to the fact that most DSL customers are small businesses which have become critically dependent on the Internet and their DSL connection. The US West support apparatus for DSL customers is inefficient, disorganized and customer hostile.

Nobody Home
The Internet is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The Phoenix Operations Center, however, is only open from 6 AM to 10 PM Monday through Friday. The Operations Center is “open” on Saturdays but they do not accept calls. Every Internet Service Provider has tech staff available for a line down situation, which is considered an emergency, on a round the clock basis. No customer would tolerate an ISP that says “sorry, we’re closed after 10 PM and weekends. Got an emergency, sorry, wait till Monday.”

Yes We Have No Bananas Nor a Cisco
US West knows that there is about a two percent or more failure rate of the Cisco 675 modems. The corporate division that handles the modems will not let the on-site technicians, who work for a different division of US West, carry a spare Cisco in their vans or in the central dispatch office. This is both outrageous and stupid, but it gets worse. When the on-site tech certifies that your Cisco is dead, he calls the “Stream” to order you a replacement. (When my Cisco 675 died, it took my tech an hour before he could get the “Stream” folks to take his call. Once again, if US West service techs can’t get through what sort of a chance do mere customers have?) Several days later you will receive a shipping label to return the dead Cisco. The shipping label is for UPS Ground. It took my modem six days to get back to US West. Remember, your business is still without access to the Internet.

When your dead modem arrives at US West, it will be put in a queue for testing. If there was someone to call you might get the following message, “Thank you for sending US West your presumably broken equipment. It will be tested in the order it was received. If it fails, then there is some mechanism to send you a replacement. No one at US West will contact you about the status of your replacement. We know that you are still without DSL service, however, US West tech support closed your trouble ticket when the replacement modem was ordered to improve our repair statistics. Thank you for using US West MegaBit Services. Have a nice day.”

An Alternative Route - Thwarted Again
A nice day, are you kidding? You’re desperate to get your business back on line. You decide not to wait for US West and take matters into your own hands. You will simply buy a new Cisco 675. No, you can’t! US West has a deal with Cisco to be the sole supplier of Cisco 675 modems in US West territory. No Cisco reseller stocks Cisco 675s nor could they sell them to you if they had them. In addition, the Cisco 675 is the only modem that will currently work on US West DSL circuits. You have no choice but to use a Cisco modem supplied by US West.

How To Fix It
US West DSL support services should do the following:
1. Require a customer friendly support staff to reflect customer service instead of customer disservice.
2. Raise all DSL circuit failures to emergency status, to be fixed immediately, regardless of the day or time.
3. Hire additional DSL support staff so no customer has to wait more than ten minutes for any call to the Operations Center.
4. Dramatically improve the communications between the Phoenix Operations Center and local tech dispatch operations and decentralize DSL support services giving local techs more control.
5. Redesign DSL support services to include a publicly accessible Internet database that shows the details and the progress of DSL service requests. It should be as easy to track your DSL support service delivery as it is to track a package from UPS or FedEx.
6. Require all DSL repair techs to carry replacement DSL modems in their trucks for immediate installation.

US West must start taking their DSL customers seriously and upgrade the quality of DSL support services.

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Richard Ellmyer is president of MacSolutions Inc., a web hosting and computer consulting business. This article is the result of his direct experience with US West during a DSL crisis.

This article is copyrighted ©2000 by Richard Ellmyer. It may not be reproduced in any manner without written permission.