My Life As a Ping Pong Ball

If you know me at all, you know that I love table tennis. Always have. Always will. Adore it actually.

I have discovered recently, however, that I like life as a ping pong ball a lot less than I like the game itself.

And make no mistake. Right now that’s exactly what I am – a ping pong ball.

Let me explain.

A few weeks ago we decided to consolidate our communication bills so instead of paying separately for Internet access, a land line and our mobile phones, we searched around for a better solution.

We thought we had found one when we saw an offer from one of the mobile telephone companies: Broadband Internet, our land line and three mobile lines for one monthly payment which worked out to be a significant savings over paying for everything separately. The deal was sealed when we were told that the mobile phone company and our current Internet provider had become one company, so we could keep our Internet service where it had been for the past 15 years of excellent service.

It all looked very promising and so we signed up.

And then the problems started. 🙁

First the new SIM cards we needed weren’t activated. Then they stopped service to one of our phones in the middle of an exceptionally stormy day when they had agreed to wait until the evening so that the owner of that phone could call if she got stuck in a flood.

Then the phone company couldn’t decide who was responsible for sending out the technician to move our land line to the Internet company. Then the Internet slowed down and the phone company said to call the Internet company but the Internet company said to call the phone company and then the Internet company finally agreed to talk to us but can’t find the problem and think it’s at our end and…

I won’t go into all the details of the sad and sorry tale.

Suffice it to say that we are less than thrilled with the customer service at both the Internet provider and the mobile phone company.

Each keeps telling us to call the other to solve our problems.

Neither is willing to talk to the other and work together to fix things.

So I’m going to call out names and see if either company is smart enough to care about reputation management and maybe follow mentions of their name online.

Here goes: Netvision and Cellcom (in Israel)…  I’m talking about you and the new Cellcom Total Package.

Get your act together and learn the marketing lessons. Customer service matters. A lot.

You have incurred the Wrath of Debbie.

Game. Set. And Match.