General Electric sUxX0r!!!!!

General Electric is a humongous company. If it exists, they probably either 1) make it, 2) make a part that goes in it or 3) consult on the production of it. They do everything from light bulbs, to airplane engines, to wind turbines, to nuclear reactors, to movies (Universal is owned by GE) to television shows (NBC is owned by GE).

I used to work for them. I know what they are like. They are all about 'The Process'. The Process is what is all fired important. It is, in fact, THE most important thing at GE. Even in the customer service arena, the customer takes a back seat to The Process. A CSR can have 1000 customers angry with their performance, but as long as the CSR followed the process, they don't have to worry about a poor review, or losing their job. Meanwhile, a different CSR can have 1000 customers happy as snails, and ready to throw away all of their appliances today, and spend their hard-earned Benjies on brand spanking new GE appliances, but if that CSR didn't follow The Process, they are in danger of losing their job and will undoubtedly receive a poor review. In GE, The Process is everything...always.

About eight years ago we purchased a new washing machine. It was a GE brand. It world great for us for about six years, then started to show signs of wear and tear. We have three kids. We do laundry probably five days out of seven every week. The machine was used and abused for six straight years. Then about two years ago we had to have the service guy out to fix it for the first time. Over the past two years, the service guy has been out to fix our old GE washer maybe eight or ten times. Finally, we decided that it was time to get a new machine.

We had such a great experience with the previous GE machine, we naturally gravitated to a new GE machine. What we ended up with was basically an updated model of the one we had. We had it about a month before it started making some gawd awful noise. We called GE since it was still under warranty, and they came out and fixed it. Some kind of stabilizing arm had broken. That should have been the first clue that this machine was made with quality that was almost-but-not-quite exactly unlike the quality of our old machine.

We had the machine a mere month before it broke down and we had to call invoke our warranty to have it repaired. I seems that some dohickey responsible for the stabilazanitator that connects to the thingamabob broke. Ummmmmkaaay...sure. They fixed it it all up and everything went humming along splendidly for the next five months. Then one night, after putting a load in the wash, and settling down to see what questions weren't going to be answered on LOST that week, a noise came rumbling up from the basement. It was an ominous noise. Not unlike (I would imagine) two buffalo fighting. I don't mean just butting heads fighting - the way animals do in Wild Kingdom - I mean real honest to goodness, John Wayne style knock-down drag out fighting. It seems the entire house was shaking.

Long story short, the washer quit...again. So now we've had this thing six months, and it has broken down twice. Call up GE again, they say they'll send someone out on Monday. Monday comes and goes, no one show sup. call them back. They say someone will come out on Thursday. This time someone actually shows up (surprise!). Bad news is, he has to order parts. Worse news is, one of the parts is back-ordered. Back ordered. The machine is six months old. I would expect a part for...say...a ten year old machine to be back ordered. But six months? Either this part that broke is so freaking rare that they don't feel the need to keep any in stock...anywhere, or the parts breaks so fracking much they can't keep them in stock. I'm leaning towards believing the latter.

Fast forward a month - that is a month, mind you, where we were spending $60+ dollars a week at the darned laundromat - and they repairman finally comes back to the house. All ready to make the machine purr like a kitten again (not to mention actually wash clothes). And...OOPS...there is yet ANOTHER part the guy needs. And guess what? They don't have THAT part in stock either, and need to order it from GE. The guy says he'll be back next Friday to fix it (I think he is assuming the part is not on back order - a pretty big assumption if you ask me).

So, we get to look forward to yet another fun Saturday afternoon at the laundromat.

I seriously cannot see myself buying another GE product, period. These people have really ticked me off but good.

Service

What in the world ever happened to service? I remember when I was just about knee-high to a grasshopper, my dad got us our very first color television. We were, I think, the last family in the free world to have a color TV, and this was no gem. It was in a giant cabinet with a record player on one side, and a radio on the other. In the middle of this monstrosity was the little green screen of the television. Surrounded by that kind of dull goldish-yellow metal. The screen was more round that square, and much more fish bowl than flat.

I remember when the thing would quit working. Not too much worry for us kids, we were usually outside anyway. Heck the colors on that thing were so washed out you might have just as well been watching a light bulb. At any rate, when the thing would go out, papi would call up the television repair man, and he would come over to the house. He would show up in his TV repair man's van, with his gray coveralls and his little metal toolbox and fix the television.

There is a point to this trip down memory lane, I promise. Fast forward t the wonderful year of 2007. I refused to subject myself to the same horrific television viewing experience as papi 'enjoyed.' Nope, I did better. Some years ago my grandmother (rest her soul) was feeling generous and handed out some money to everyone. It was lucky for us, our 27 inch RCA television that we'd be watching and thoroughly enjoying for the past 14 years was starting to get that hourglass figure in the picture tube. It was excuse enough to use some of the money to purchase a new television. We went with a Sony projection TV from Circuit City (back when we still had a Circuit City). And it has served us well for about 5 years now.

Suddenly, it doesn't do so well with the showing of the picture. The reds and blues are off kilter from everything else - or everything else is off-kilter from the blue which is off-kilter from the red - or...well I don't know what is off-kilter, I just know that Saving Grace is not supposed to be a 3D television program, but it looks like one on my TV.

Doing some Googling I find that there is something called an IC something or other that has probably gone kaput and must be replaced, and the convergence re-aligned by a professional. The Sony website says the closest authorized Sony service center is Servi-Tronics over in Lawrence. Being fairly certain all these projection TVs are fairly standard, and probably any competent television repair man should be able to fix it, I start calling local.

Turns out, Topeka has only 2 television repair shops. And get this, neither of them will come to the house to look at, fix or even pick the television up. Oh, the folks from Lawrence will come to the house for an extra $40 but the folks in Topeka won't come to the house at all. I don't have a truck, and I don't have a trailer. Basically, I have zero methods for getting this television to a repair shop. Unless I want to rent a uhaul, which will probably cost more than the $40 I would pay to give my business to the Lawrencians.

It is just too bad that I have to have someone come from a nearby town...a town that is smaller than Topeka, to have my television fixed. That service is such a dirty word these days. That a guy who tries to make a living repairing televisions doesn't even have the sense to think "hey, if I'm going to work on projection televisions, maybe I should offer (for a fee) to at least pick up and drop off these things for the customer."

Maybe the shop in Lawrence has to make house calls to remain a Sony certified repair facility shop thing, and maybe they don't, I don't know. I only know that they will get money from me, and the local guys won't get squat. Except maybe I'll call them and explain that I went with the company from Lawrence because they offer a little thing called "service".

As The Dish Turns

Episode 1: Woes



We finally made the plunge a couple of months ago. We changed from Cox Communications to Dish Network (via AT&T). We had everything with Cox, phone, television and internet. We looked at the cost and service options, and decided that AT&T with DSL and Dish Network would cost less and we'd get more than with Cox. While the Cox internet started out wicked fast, I don't think they invested anything in their backbone infrastructure for the past several years because it has slowly but surely lost speed over the past two or three years. The slower speed, coupled with the near-crippling affect of their port restrictions (I couldn't hook up to my SQL database from outside my own network), was enough to make me seek an alternative.



I should have received an inkling of a clue on how all of this would proceed by the way it all started. I called AT&T to switch, and this all seemed to go very well on the phone. We setup a time for them to come out and setup the telephone and DSL on one day, and the satellite on a different day since the satellite is actually handled by the Dish Network contractors. Ok, that makes perfect sense, no problems.



We had it setup for, I believe a Tuesday, for them to come out and get the phone and DSL working. I received an email from AT&T stating that on Tuesday they would be out between 8 am and noon. The next day I received a phone call on my cell stating that the number had not yet been released by Cox, so they would not be out the following Tuesday. Then we received a telephone call at home stating that they would be out, just a reminder - it was a recorded message. They weren't out on Tuesday. It was postponed until the next Friday.



They managed to get enough ducks in a row to make it out on Friday and get the phones all hooked up. I got home, plugged in the DSL modem and tried to see what it would be like surfing on DSL over cable. No such luck. We had the phone line, but didn't have the DSL. The instructions said that it might take 10 hours or so for the DSL to be noticed. So I waited until the next day. Still nothing. So I called. And sure enough, the order had gone out the give us the DSL the previous Tuesday, but since we didn't have phone yet, they couldn't Now it would be another three or four days before the DSL is connected (thank goodness I had enough forsight to NOT cancel the cable internet already).



The DSL is up and running, and I have to say, I love it. Other than changing my main IP address every 8 to 10 days, I really do like it. With Cox I had an almost static IP address. It seems the only times it changed was if the model was powered down for more than 10 minutes. I loved it. I run the TeamSpeak server for our little gang of Raven Shield players (we play every Friday - holler at me if you want in, always room for more - lots of fun) anyway, I run the TeamSpeak server for that, and it is always good to have a static IP since everyone outside my network connects via the IP address. With the DSL it sometimes changes from week to week, so I am in the habit of sending out an email every week with the most current IP address for the TeamSpeak server. A minor inconvenience, and I am certain there is a [free] way around it, if I took enough time to locate one.



Once the satellite was installed, I was a happy camper. The installer said he wanted to put the dish on top of our porch if we had no objection. "Pfft, you're the expert man, if it will work there, then go ahead." So he did. Man, I wasn't expecting everything we got. 200 hours of record time. TWO HUNDRED HOURS. We didn't have to holler at the kids for recording 50 Pokemon and Digimon cartoons any longer. With Cox we only had about 20 hours of regular recording, and about 9 hours of HD recording. With Dish Network we have 200 hours of regular recording, and about 90 hours of HD recording. Man I was in hog heaven. Search for "John Wayne", click "record this", click "record this", click "record this" woo hoo! See a commercial for the 'romantic comedy by which all others are judged', cool, the 5/8 would like that, search "An Affair To Remember" - click "record this". Excellent! No worries about running out of space!



And everything was peachy. We didn't even lose signal during that horrendous storm where the basement flooded and Shunga Creek flooded. It was all Jake man. But (and there is always a 'but' isn't there?) but that came to an end this past weekend. This past weekend, things weren't peachy, and they weren't Jake, heck, they really were even Myron. They just plain stunk. Over the Memorial Day weekend, things got hinky. We had a little bit of rain on Saturday night, and the satellite went out. No big deal, but come Sunday, it was still out. Ok. Time to call the Dish Network folks to see what the heck is happening. I call and wait on hold for what seems like hours (it was probably closer to 30 minutes only) before a cheery guy finally answers. Being a mostly technology capable guy, I have already run through all the setup menus and what not, but this guy wanted to do it again. Alright. I'm a fairly easy-going guy, I'll humor him. It takes us about another 30 minutes to run through all of that. Still no signal (see, I could have told him that 30 minutes ago, but I was nice, and I humored him - see how nice I am?). So he switches me over to another lady after about 10 minutes on hold.



I explain that my fear is the Einstein who installed the dish in the first place two months ago didn't think about the near future. A near future in which trees will have leaves and bushes will be bushy. He put the disk on the roof of our back porch. This was all fine and dandy in the winter, when there were no bushy bushes and no leaves on the trees. Now though, there are copious amounts of leaves on the trees to interfere (at least it looks like they would by way of my eye-balling the dish trajectory). This nice lady (everyone I spoke with seemed very patient and pleasant, none of the CS people ticked me off - which isn't very difficult thing to do for CS people because when I call customer service, I always expect SERVICE).



At any rate, the nice lady (who, although while very nice, pretty much had an 'I could care less' tone in her voice) told me they could have someone come out on Tuesday the 29th to look at the dish. "You mean we have to go the whole weekend without television?" "Yes, I'm sorry, but Tuesday is the earliest we can have someone come out and look at your dish." She also politely informed that since it was installed less than 90 days ago, I would not be charged the $50 service fee for having someone come out to fix the dish. "What do you mean service fee?" "You won't be charged, since you are within your 90 day warranty." "You mean to tell me that if I had gotten this service a month earlier, and the installer put the dish in the wrong place, you would charge me $50 for you people to come out and fix your equipment that you installed improperly?" "Yes sir, that is the service agreement you have with AT&T." "I'll tell you what, if there ever comes a time where I have to pay you to fix your mistakes you made with your equipment, then you can come out and get the equipment for free because I'll never pay it." "Yes sir, but if there is any time left on your contra--" "I don't have a contract, I am contract free. I can quit you today and suffer zero penalties." I told her to make note in whatever files she wanted to about my objection to my paying them to fix their equipment. She assured me she did just that (yeah, right, I was born at night, but not last night). I also explained that which I would pay more for less with cable, having 200 channels with the satellite just doesn't matter because right now I have 200 channels of absolutely nothing.



Tuesday rolled around and they never showed up. My wife called them about 2 in the afternoon (they were supposed to be there between 8 am and noon). She was told on the phone that someone was scheduled for Tuesday the 5th of June. But they were sorry for the mix up and would send someone out on Thursday the 31st between 8 and noon. Currently it is going on 3 pm, and no one came to fix the dish. It has been mostly working since it came back on Monday afternoon. Only going on when it sprinkled (which, seriously, has been quite a bit lately). This whole thing has really left a bad taste in my mouth. The 5/8 wants to switch back to Cox for television, and I have 1/2 a mind to do just that. Not only because if we had a problem, they were responsive. But also because, even though we were told that we would receive the local channels in HD, I don't think we really do, they are just not near a crisp and clear as they were coming through the cable, and as the other HD channels are - so I think they were just out and out lying about that part. But that really isn't the issue here. The issue is with the total lack of customer service. By neglecting us - especially new customers like us - as they are, they are in essence telling us they don't want our business. It stinks.



So who knows what will happen next? I'm thinking I'll call the AT&T number, instead of the Dish Network number, and complain to them. And when the Dish Network people finally come out (if they ever do) tell the 5/8 to conveniently be on her way out the door and not let them do any work so they will have to make yet another appointment to come out. It would probably cost some outages in service between appointments, but it might be worth it. I'll let you know what happens in the ever continuing saga of "As The Dish Turns".



Thanks for visiting, and letting me vent!





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