UPDATE ON THE BELOW!!…read more
The very morning I received a phone call from a Cablevision Corporate Executive for Public relations. We discussed the below issues and I was led to believe that they read the message, felt it important to talk to me, and began taking measures to correct the problems.
I was pleased with the response and am changing their ranking from one to three stars. They are aware they have a big process gap here, and will work to change it over time. The only negative is that they don't know how long this will take. But they listened, understood, and said they would take steps to investigate and rectify each problem..
--------
My name is James Meirose and I have been a loyal and satisfied Cablevision customer for many years. This is the text of a message sent to their CEO:
Up until yesterday I was extremely pleased with your level of customer service and the professionalism of your support staff.
I am writing to make you aware of two things:
1. The lack of training and/or the bad attutude of your support staff as they responded to a problem I first chatted in and then called in about yesterday.
2. The fact that you have a gaping hole in your online support process that I am simply astounded exists in this day and age of technology.
Details of item number 1:
I was away from home yesterday and wanted to use the computer at the location where I was to access my Optimum e-mail. When I went online, my valid password was not accepted by the system, after several tries, and the website seemed to be telling me I was logged in, but had to enter my ID and password, which I did, and was repeatedly rejected. I went into a chat session with one of your customer support representatives. I explained that my valid password was being rejected. The rep immediately told me, without any other investigation into why a valid password was being rejected, that I would have to reset my password. He asked me to go to my cable box and get the necessary information about my account that he would need to help me reset my password. I indicated to him I was not home and had no access to my cable box. He immediately told me I was out of luck, and the password could not be reset until I got home. I told him this was a problem as I was not intending to be home until the following day and had urgent e-mails waiting that I needed to get to. After much discussion with him, his supervisor, and finally an actual manager, I was told that unless I got them the information I needed from my cable box at home, they could not help me log in. I repeatedly told them the password I was entering was my valid password and pointed out there seemed to be a problem with the website not accepting it. This fell on deaf ears and they kept on reading from their prepared scripts that I needed a password reset, and this could not be done as long as I did not have access to my cable box. I told then this was urgent and asked them to escalate my problem as high as necessary to get to a level where someone would fix this for me. The Manager said, no matter how high you go, no one will help you with this problem as long as you are away from your cable box. I got off the phone extremely upset, but--after a few more tries on my part, the website finally accepted my valid password and I got into my mail. There had indeed been a problem in the website; not with my password. I should have been happy at this point, but was and am not, and this leads us into item number 2.
Details of item number 2:
I find it distressing in the extreme, that your staff insists that unless you are physically able to access your cable box and obtain information, they cannot help you reset your password. Also that they make no attempt to investigate why the website is not accepting a valid password.
This is 2015. They tell me that it is impossible to reset a password, no matter how high you escalate in support, unless you are physically present at the same location as your cable box.
I shudder to think what would happen if, I had gone away on vacation for two weeks, and once out of the area tried to login from a remote computer, had a problem logging and called your support staff, who would tell me "Well, I guess you're locked out for two weeks then. .No one at any level in Cablevision will help you. It's our policy. You must be at your cable box. You're not, so you're out of luck for two weeks. Have a nice day!".
This is archaic both in terms of your support process and in terms of your staff's attitude. Thank God in my case it turned out to be a web site problem, and I was finally been able to get in using my valid password. But what about if it had not? And worst yet, what if it had not when I was not going to return home to my cable box for days, maybe even for weeks.
In extreme cases, I could see you losing customers because of this.