Wow! Thank’s for the commen’s guys! This really sucks. This is not really how custommer support should not be done…

I posted a new top level post, and quoted your comments here.

I too work at Earthlink. I work in a call center where people like you call to get results. We are “Saves” agents. When customers are bent over the table and given the KY by the overseas tech support and completely incompetent customer service that they have set up we get to try and convince people not to cancel if we can fix their problem. Most people take the easy out and just cancel while yelling things like, “I wouldn’t use your service if you gave it to me free!” Before this year I would have disagreed with you and said that in most cases Earthlink really is a good ISP but they have outsourced to the company I work for, Clientlogic, who cares only about the bottom line. They don’t care about the customer at all. They want us to fix the problem, stop the customer from canceling, maintain perfect quality scores by not deviating from the “Call Flow” and to not have to call other departments and do it all within the first 4 minutes of the call. Clientlogic only gets paid for the first few minutes of the call so if your problem is too complicated they pass you around from person to person. The truth of the matter is, if I can’t fix your problem myself I am REQUIRED to pass you on to “Mastertechs” who come in two variety, the recently exported overseas level 1 agents who are just slightly more useful in fixing a DSL connection than a empty brown box and the real Mastertechs who are in the US and who actually know what they are doing. However, these few good men and women have become so jaded because of the crappy treatment they are getting when you get them on the phone they sound like they are pissed off at the planet and I don’t blame them.

I would give you our direct phone number to help with your future problems but Earthlink has done everything in their power to discourage us from helping you unless you are canceling your service. They classify our calls as Saved, Canceled, Customer Service or Other. The save is when we get you not to cancel. The cancel call is self-explanatory. The Customer service call is when we do anything for any customer that doesn’t say the word cancel in the conversation or imply they are going to cancel. The Other calls are transfers and misrouted calls. Things we can’t help with like the wireless and Web-hosting that has their own departments. We get paid based on our gross saves rate. This is the number of people we convince to stay with the company compared to the other three categories. The customer service, Other and Cancel all count against our gross saves rate so if you call and you don’t say you want to cancel not only are people less motivated to help you Earthlink/Clientlogic tells it’s agents they are not allowed to use the offers we are given to help customers who are canceling unless you say the magic word “Cancel” we are limited to what we can do to help you. So they get to pay us less because people call in not quite pissed off enough yet to be canceling the service. We aren’t allowed to help them and most of the time have to pass them off to a Mastertech.

So the lesson boys and girls is that if you want a corporation to help you then you have to threaten to take money out of their pockets. Say the magic word cancel and you get results. If you don’t you’ll just get shoved into incompetent customer service hell. I think customer service should be customer service not servicing the pocketbook of Earthlink and Clientlogic. Sadly Earthlink won’t step in and do anything about what is happening.

I would apply for a job at Earthlink itself but they have moved most of the customer service overseas too. Those pretty commercials you see with the elves and fairy I’m pretty sure that was in Atlanta before the downsizing. Now Atlanta is just a corporate processing center. The spirit of Earthlink has left the building.

I work at the call center you were talking with, specifically in the wireless department.

The reason we suck so bad is because EarthLink outsources its Dial up and Wireless tech support and offers nearly zero training to agents on the phone.

And they lease other carries for the wireless service, so when there is any problem at all, it is genarlly a 2 week timeframe to get anything fixed becasue the agency that EarthLink outsources from sends it to EarthLink, who then sends it to the carrier.

And on top of that, EarthLink its self are the only ones who can really fix anything, so when you call your just talking to someone who cant do anything anyhow, they send it to Earthlink through a chat system that kicks down the requests most of the time.

Your right its a bullshit system and I hate having to lie to customers all day long about how our system works.

EarthLink Blows and its really becoming known for its inept ability to fix problems