Goats have big green balls? I'll take your word for it. I don't want to look.

It is indeed regrettable that you were made to do the Brahman-shuffle. I personally think a company would do very well for itself if they actually advertised that they hired Americans...I'd even pay more for the service.

Can't you just imagine a commercial for a phone/satellite TV/internet service saying, "Our call center employs only legal U.S. residents, who have been thoroughly trained to assist you! We do NOT outsource jobs!"

I'd drop my service in an instant and join it.

http://www.fox.com/house/full-episodes/

The ads are kind of annoying but at least the episode you're talking about is up. You can skip to the end to see the part you missed.

Dealing with customer service via the phone, especially utility companies, is by far one of my least favorite household chores. I'd much rather clean the toilet.

After he said he would leave her to think it over he got up, as he reached the door she invited him over for dinner, he said he'd love to and pulled a new toothbrush out of his inside jacket pocket

By the way I was having simmilar problems a while back but it wasnt my reciver, it was the wire between the satalite and the reciver. How old are the cables? You might want to have them replaced a well

Thanks, Sarah, but actually, the show won't be up there for another week. They post them a week later. (I saw the one last week where he saved Cuddy's mother.)

Thank you, thank you, luj! Amazing that I pay for DISH every month and have to get my television show endings from my blog commenters!

How many of you want to bet I don't get any sort of discount or anything for spending an hour on the phone being hung up on and not helped?

And I can't even tell you what a relief it was to get William in Colorado on the line. The others were just clueless about what I was talking about. I told two of them -- the second guy insisted he could help me, that I wouldn't need a supervisor, and dim me, wanting to believe him/give him a chance, I wasted my time telling him about the problem.

I just had that situation at work recently. "Maverick Jones," yes that was the name he gave me, kept calling me about an invoice that was overdue. (In construction defect cases, invoices don't get paid for at least 90 days, and the vendors know that.) I finally hung up on him the last time, called my local rep. She's pissed that the company has done this and she's keeping a log of customer complaints. If I didn't have to use this particular vendor for one of the developers we represent, they would be history!

Otherwise, in my personal life, when I call customer service and I know I've been transferred to a foreign country, I immediately ask them to transfer me to a call center in the US. Unfortunately, like you Amy, it takes a few attempts for them to actually connect the call. But I find it keeps my blood pressure in normal ranges in the long run.

We dumped Dish when their equipment all of a sudden stopped working (channels pixelating in and out constantly). They wanted to charge a minimum of $15 to come look at it with the possibility of it being a LOT more money. We punted and went with the antenna. Then we started getting phone calls and letter asking how they could get us back as customers.... Our answer was--you had your chance to KEEP us as customers and you didn't think it was important then.

As a side note, I had to call them to get my pro-rated monthly fee returned to me since they do not automatically process it when their equipment is returned to them. Very tricky.

Oooh, can't wait til you start on your new book. I've been in customer service since 1987 and have watched helplessly and with anger as customers have become more and more abusive. And companies started kowtowing to these people who they would formerly kick out of stores. End result is that customers and customer service reps percieve each other as the enemy.

A story that I relate on an alarmingly regular basis--My first retail job was at Waldenbooks in 1987. It was probably 6 months before somebody was truly awful to me, and my asisstant manager yelled at the wench and kicked her out in front of a crowd of people for making a 16 year old girl cry. Fast forward nearly 25 years and I have someone throw some sort of shit fit nearly every day. It's awful to the point that I'm launching my own online biz in the next month to six weeks or so, because even if I'm living at subsistence level, at least nobody can march into my house and take their bad day out on me at random.

I just had an annoying experience w/ the company that manages my Visa's warranty-extension member benefit service.

The problems began when my 1.5 year old Alienware piece of shit laptop died. It's, at the very best, the motherboard (so, with repair fees, parts and shipping about $500). I was past the warranty and Alienware customer support actually said "I can't help you, I'm going to disconnect the call". A computer shouldn't die that quickly and you shouldn't threaten people that you're going to hang up on them!

So, I put in a claim via the Visa member benefits program. Sent in all my paperwork last week. Called today to confirm they got it. SURPRISE. They didn't get the signed claim form. Of course I flipping sent it - I stapled the entire packet together and that was on the front page!!!!!!!!!

Not only am I frustrated that my computer is a worthless piece of shit, but now I can only imagine the time and frustration I am about to put into my case through the member benefits people.

I am buying a damned Macbook Pro.

Unless someone here has a better suggestion.

I need at least:
15 inch screen
core i5 processor
4 gig ram
pimpin' graphics card
it needs to reliably work for at least 2 years (really setting hte bar high...)

I use my laptop to play games.

Here's good customer service: Apple reps always asking, "Give me your number in case we're disconnected."

Amy- you can see House for free on hulu.com any time you want...

http://www.hulu.com/watch/217830/house-two-stories#s-p1-so-i0

oops- sorry- I guess you have to subscribe...

In the workplace I deal with the outsourced folks in the kindest and most business like manner possible. At home, using my best Southern dialect and drawl, I ask for someone who can be English.

Tivo is your friend Amy. Sure the cable/satellite DVR's are cheaper up front, but they have a horrible user interface, countless problems like the one you experienced, and end up costing more over the long run. I've had various flavors of Tivo for nearly 10 years and they have all been bullet proof, not to mention that they have excellent customer service. In fact, I'll be watching this House episode on my HD Tivo tonight (and it will record OTA HD broadcasts, so no cable or satellite provider is needed.)

Or you could get a $100 Roku box and watch Hulu, CBS.com, FOX.com, TV.com, Netflix, etc. on your TV. No subscription or TV service is required, only an internet connection. Yes, you might have to delay your episode watching by a week, but many people are ditching their cable/satellite subscriptions and using strictly the web. A good way to save $$$.

One big problem with many customer service operations is that they are simultaneously overmanaged and undermanaged.

I have Dish, and the same thing happened to me.

When I have the energy (A lot more than now), I have a similar story about my efforts to talk to a person at Verizon Wireless. It would be funny if not so horribly poor- customer-relations. They've gone down the sewer.

After placing several calls over several months to tell Dish that our contract was nearly up, we were looking at their competition, and asking what they could about our price-point & package (nothing!), we switched to DirecTV. Happy so far (two months). Equipment is higher-tech, reception is better, and customer service beats Dish by miles. No regrets. Of course, we were then beseiged by calls and letters from Dish trying desperately to woo us back; way too little, too late. Apparently they cut Business 101 class the day they were supposed to learn it's much easier and more cost-effective to keep an existing customer than to recruit a new one.

Amy, I thought of you recently when I opened a "free checking" account at Capitol One.

First batch of checks had my name wrong (?) - I went back to the bank and spent 45 minutes there straightening it out.

Second batch of checks had my name right - and my address wrong. I have no idea how they could have done that.

Third batch of checks I ordered online myself. They cost $40. My time was worth at least that.

Two weeks later, I get a call from a Cap One customer service person thanking me for opening an account and asking if she can help further. I tell her what's happened. She's sympathetic and suggests I call "customer service" to see if I can get the bank to pay for the checks.

"Can't you do it?" I said. "You called me to see if I'm satisfied with the account."

She couldn't. Her job was just to call people and ask them if they were satisfied with their new accounts.

Now I'm afraid to close the account right away without sending red flags to a credit bureau. I'll wait six months and then transfer the whole shebang over to a credit union.

Oh, and for anyone who might be searching for this term: "Capitol One Sucks."

Second Carol on DirecTV. Dish is notorious for their customer service, so four years ago when we moved to an area where we couldn't get cable, we chose DirecTV even though Dish was cheaper.

We don't have a recorder because I'm too cheap to pay for one, but I assume the option is available.

I also have DirecTV, have had it almost two years.. and it's decent. The customer service is pretty quick, you can just call and repeat "representative" and get a person on the line within five minutes, usually, and I've never had someone outside the US. They do sucker you in on some things, like insurance.. which we ended up getting because it's around $5 a month and we didn't want to spend $90 on a service call when we did have problems. The downside is that weather can cause problems, but I think in L.A. you should be safe from the type of Wisconsin weather that causes us problems (and they're not that frequent). We have the DVR too, so I never watch commercials, and I love it. It holds a lot of shows too. From the sound of things, you would probably be better off with DirecTV.

D'oh! just flushed my nightmare story by accident. In short, went through hell to get cell provider to give me a new phone after 2 warrhty replacements each failed within 2 weeks of receipt. Indie affiliate phone store wanted me to buy a new one, basically told me they'd sold me a piece o'crap 9 months earlier. Really??? And you took my $$ w/o telling me this? Took 4 hours on phone calls & a letter to the President, plus some concessions, but I got a new phone 'free' ... oy.

Gretchen -

For Windows laptops, there are two choices: ThinkPads and HP Probook/Elitebooks.

My ThinkPad X31 is 7 years old and still kicking.

I feel your pain. My Comcast dvr cut off the last 20 minutes of NCIS. It also randomly loses its scheduled recording memory.

The upside to Comcast in the northwest is the customer service is local. The downside is they schedule the techs to come to your house when it is least convenient. I usually have to take a day off so they can come out for one hour.

DirectTv had weather related problems for me and they kept raising rates despite the terms of the contract forbidding that-- a situation they refused to resolve. And then they charged me for the dvr after I returned it.

I'm looking forward to your next book. Keep up the good work.

Meh, if it angers one enough you can get most shows off the net within hours to a day or two of its airing. Though I'd only recommend that route if you're locked down security wise (or just use that machine to download stuff-no personal/financial stuff).

Gretchen:
"I need at least:
15 inch screen
core i5 processor
4 gig ram
pimpin' graphics card
it needs to reliably work for at least 2 years (really setting hte bar high...)

I use my laptop to play games. "

What type of games? You said pimpin graphics so... you want a discrete vid card. So $800-1000+. Asus is cheaper and decent quality usually. HP makes a few for a decent price (HP Envy model IIRC is their pimpin laptop). Alienware is usually as you said, overpriced hype now owned by Dell. Dell's XPS laptops would be better for the cost. Just pay for a 2-3 year warranty. Laptops can be a pain to repair and costly so with high end machines its worth the warranty usually.

I don't consider IBM (Now Lenovo) gaming machines.

Good forum for laptop info:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/

When I have more time, I'll have to relate my story about dealing with Ashley Furniture's customer service - which is located in the US - and their inability to handle a simple phone call to customer service. I did manage to not only get my table replaced by them, but the cost of the table refunded for all the headaches I had to go through. I was less then pleased with their customer service from my initial phone call to the missed deliveries and even dealing with the regional manager. I'm taking that check to the bank today...I'll let you know if it clears.

On the other end of the spectrum:

I just got a goddamned thank you note from my new stylist. Handwritten, referencing the conversation we had about wedding planning. She reminded me I could get a bang trim for free and included a coupon for $$ off hair colouring. It cost less than a buck, took less than five minutes, and I can guarantee you I'm going to go back to that salon for as long as I live in Orlando. And I'll tell everyone who mentions looking for a stylist about the kickass experience I had. (Of course the haircut is fantastic too).

****Or you could get a $100 Roku box and watch Hulu, CBS.com, FOX.com, TV.com, Netflix, etc. on your TV. No subscription or TV service is required, only an internet connection. Yes, you might have to delay your episode watching by a week, but many people are ditching their cable/satellite subscriptions and using strictly the web. A good way to save $$$.*****

AllenS, how the heck are you getting FOX and CBS on your Roku? I have one and didn't know I could do that. Details!

I bought a TiVo and an OTA antenna and got rid of my cable. I can still get about 20 channels and now that Cheyenne has been setting up local affiliates for the major networks I'm getting an even better signal. The TiVo paid for itself in six months and with the Roku in the bedroom and a Netflix account, I have way more TV than I can ever watch.

Amy, I had the same issue last night - the recording of House cutting out the last few seconds.
I am on Direct TV, not dish, and have an old Replay DVR. So, I do not think Dish is to blame for your particular problem last night.
I think the problem is Fox, like many networks, messing with its schedule just to mess with DVR viewers.
And hey - -wasn't it a cool and fun episode? I stopped watching the series this season, but tuned in after reading advance word on this one, and I'm glad I caught it.

I looked in to switching from Dish to DirectTV.

From what I could gather from the tech specs on their tuners - their DVR doenst have the same memory capacity and it can only record one show at a time.

Dish at least has a dual record feature.

If Tivo would ever implement my ideas for swapable data chips and a usr interface that allows you to dircet which dadta chip slot you want a particular show to be stored on. Also they need to make one that can record more than two shows at once, needs to be able to handle five at a minimum

The interesting thing is that a lot of companies are starting to realize that offshore outsourcing is not a panacea. We could have told them that 20 years ago, but... Boeing is starting to realize that outsourcing airplane parts manufacturing to places where they don't know the first thing about airplanes maybe wasn't such a good idea. Not only did they have to train those companies pretty much from scratch, but now they find that they've created new competitors.

While you can definitely blame Dish for the service and remote issue, can't (usually, assuming it wasn't an actual glitch on the box) blame them for chopping off a show on either end. They're running off the timing data given to them from the networks/content providers. I've had a Tivo since 2001 and once DVRs started to become more prevalent, it became relatively obvious that some networks were slightly shifting a few shows a few seconds earlier or later so that time-shifted recording would chop off either the start or the end. I would blame it on some clock drift here and there, but in this day and age, that's no excuse. We have far too many ways to keep clocks in sync anymore.

I've had shows I hate losing pieces of set to start and/or end a minute or more early/late but that ends up making it harder to record more programs since you can cause more overlap. Then there's the fact that they're now flagging more and more shows (and often entire networks) as copy protected so that the feature to stream between rooms (or copy to PC, which I like to use from time to time) doesn't even work most of the time anymore.

I also think that was why things like NBC's "super-sized" show stuff happened for awhile there a few years ago: Make hit shows cross over into the time slots of other networks just enough that you can't record both shows fully without multiple recorders.

I've reached the point where I'm going to just dump all the cable I have sans the local channels and hang onto the tivos just for that. With the extra $50-60/month I'll save, I can easily buy the shows I care to keep up with off iTunes for now. Other things I can stream later or buy the DVD, or there are other options that might not even exist today. If cable was more a la carte I would buy a few more channels like Science, Maybe Syfy, History, etc.. but you have to get several bundles with dozens and dozens of channels I don't care for and never use.. and I've had enough of it. I can live with locals and streaming. I've probably done at least 90% of my viewing off my AppleTV 2 in the last few months.

Cable (and satellite really) companies are losing their business model, they know it, and they're only hastening their demise with a lot of these tactics and lack of service.

I love DirecTV! We have 6 boxes, 2 of them with dual tuners to record/watch 2 shows at the same time. We've always had great customer service over the phone. The techs they send out the house, however, have been ridiculously incompetent. It's supposed to be so simple to have them switch service to a new address when you move, but it took 6 visits over 2 weeks from their various contracted local technicians to get everything working properly.

A couple of the guys refused to climb ladders. One tried to install the dish in front of a bedroom window on the short section of roof over the garage - working through the bedroom window. Another took it upon himself to attach the dish low on the side of the house. The guys who finally managed to get the dish on the roof ran the cables in a haphazard, messy fashion across the back of the house. And of course nothing was hooked up correctly. DirecTV finally sent one of their own guys (not a contractor) out to get things working. Thank you, Efren!

It was a miserable experience, and I was tempted to dump DirecTV. But I figured the techs from Dish or cable would likely be just as incompetent.

My DirecTV experiences with customer support issues have all been nightmares. I dread the thought of something happening, and having to call them.

As far as cutting off the ends of programs- when I set up my recordings, I have the box start recording 10 minutes before the show starts and run it for 10 minutes past the endtime. I'm going to delete the program as soon as I finish watching it, so it's not like I'm wasting VCR tape or anything.

The downside is that weather can cause problems, but I think in L.A. you should be safe from the type of Wisconsin weather that causes us problems (and they're not that frequent).

You may want to wax your dish with Nu-Finish or other detailing type waxes. As I understand it helps considerably.

I have never had satellite -- and that is my only choice other than broadcast. I have looked at it in the past. Of the few series that I want to see most of it is a wasteland. I just purchased Season 1 of Stargate: Universe for ~$27. I bought all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica for ~$80. That would be compared to a minimum of $40 a month? For how many years?

The rest I can get off the broadcast to stay in touch. BTW, I don't care if you are a Survivor,
Desperate Housewife, or a pregnant teen -- I wouldn't watch you anyway.

I have Dish because I used to have DirecTV. For me Dish is better. I had DirecTV because I used to have Charter cable. DirecTV was better over Charter. They left a cable drooped across my driveway for over a year of my constant complaints. It was so low that the UPS truck could not get up to the house.

http://twitter.com/#!/dishnetwork

@dishnetwork

Thanks - was angry and it was midnight - probably got it wrong because of that.

Gretchen,

Get that MacBook Pro if you can afford it. Although I don't care for the fact that Foxconn in China builds Apple's products, the MacBook is an awesome product, OSX is a dream compared to Windows, and their phone support, IMHO, is legendarily good.

I have had problems. I bought a refurbished 17" Pro and saved about $800. The graphics card failed once or twice so I lost the use of it for about a week each time, but your local Apple Store will fix it for you. I wisely purchased Apple Care so the parts and labor were free. The other thing was my Time Machine software went kafluey and could not find backups older than a few weeks. They tried to fix it and had to finally admit failure, and they were not going to pay for the data recovery service I would have needed. Luckily, I discovered that I had most of my lost data on some CDs.

The above items were inconvenient, but my overall Apple experience has been so good that I happily endure these minor inconviences. And I can assure you that had they happened with any other brand it would have been hellish. Be very careful of Sony. When my earbuds failed they said I had to mail them to Texas and in 6 weeks they would let me know whether they would be buying me a new pair or not. Fuggedaboutit. I bought V-Modas at Radio Shack and, when they failed (you're not supposed to wind the cords around anything, like an iPod) I got JVCs at Walmart. Both excellent brands.