WTMA pisses on cellular!

"Rocky D", our favorite afternoon local drivetime talkshow host, noted for
his honesty and "call it like I sees it" attitude, came down like a ton of
bricks this afternoon on cellular carrier customer service, in general, and
Suncom in particular. Poor TMA may never see another cellphone spot...(c;

Someone made the mistake of telling him they couldn't fix his billing issue
over the phone and he'd have to come stand in the long line (probably with
NO CHAIRS, assholes) at the main office. He was NOT a happy camper and I
bet someone's job will be "re-evaluated" at Suncom. If you don't thing
Rocky makes a difference in Charleston, just ask the Crab Shack. If Rocky
tells 'em he loved XXXX at the Crab Shack, last night, it means they're
gonna be out of it by 6PM tonight...(c;

Service is pretty bad when a radio guy will mention his experiences on the
radio.....that depends on spot ads for income.....and usually says nothing.



--
http://www.epic.org/privacy/rfid/verichip.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeriChip
http://www.verichipcorp.com/
Tracked like a dog, every license/product/tax.
Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor,
free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their
foreheads:
17 and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the
name of the beast, or the number of his name...

---

› See More: WTMA pisses on cellular!

In article <[email protected]>, Larry wrote:

> Service is pretty bad when a radio guy will mention his experiences on the
> radio.....that depends on spot ads for income.....and usually says nothing.

If Suncom does a lot of advertising on his station, I wonder what is
going to happen to Rocky, whether or not he's right. Even if he's
right, slamming an advertiser is generally frowned on.

Looking at WTMA's homepage, I see that they're not owned by one of the
big guys - if it was a Clear Channel or CBS station they'd probably
boot him pretty quickly for pissing on an advertiser.

OTOH, a smaller broadcaster is going to be hurt more by the loss of
revenue and might be *more* likely to can the guy...

Either way, could you please post a followup? I'm also curious what
Suncom will have to say (if anything). I've never lived anywhere near
a Suncom service area, so I know nothing about them. I don't even have
any friends with opinions about them.

This oughtta be interesting.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

"Steven J. Sobol" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> Either way, could you please post a followup? I'm also curious what
> Suncom will have to say (if anything). I've never lived anywhere near
> a Suncom service area, so I know nothing about them. I don't even have
> any friends with opinions about them.
>
>

Being Numero Uno in this market, and downright famous all over town, I
doubt he'll be fired by Citadel Broadcasting, owner of several stations
here. His program rakes in the money for TMA. He's boisterous, loud,
brash, and a truly great guy anyone not on welfare just loves. He's the
"everyman" talk radio is looking for. Donna Darling (what he calls her,
her last name is different), is his bouncer and on-air other, who got
dragged into the show a while back. It's so fun to listen to, I even
overlook the CONTINUOUS station promos and incessant commercials, ad
nauseum, to listen.

I got 'em one afternoon. The question to the callers was:
"What would you never like to hear on WTMA, ever again." The idea was
reports of terrorism, hurricanes, murders, etc. But they were trying to
get in as many calls and didn't ask me what I wanted to say, first,
during the screening Donna does. It was my turn and it said, "News Talk
1250, WTMA! Everyone listening already knows what the station's call
letters are and what frequency we are listening to and have since the
station came on the air in 1939. We don't have to be constantly reminded
137 times an hour!". Dead silence....it was PRECIOUS! I'd never heard
him speechless, before...(c;

I'll post if I find out anything or hear an apology. He's never
apologized to anyone that I ever knew, when he was right. And he, as we
all know, is dead right on this issue....customer service sucks.

The Mount Pleasant (where the rich live) Cops busted some people playing
poker inside one of their own homes, which is forbidden in SC. Rocky got
on the case and hounded them to death. Then, he staged a HUGE Texas
Holdem' Poker Challenge where hundreds came to be champion and thousands
came to watch to see if the cops would show up. It was a peak in his
career. No politician would accept the challenge and the law is being
changed.

Rocky has become an icon in Charleston....Numero Uno.


--
http://www.epic.org/privacy/rfid/verichip.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeriChip
http://www.verichipcorp.com/
Tracked like a dog, every license/product/tax.
Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor,
free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their
foreheads:
17 and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the
name of the beast, or the number of his name...

Larry <[email protected]> spake thusly and wrote:

>Service is pretty bad when a radio guy will mention his experiences on the
>radio.....that depends on spot ads for income.....and usually says nothing.

I was truly astounded by the incompetence of Sprint cellular.
I was trying to find a way for someone to keep both of their
phone numbers as we are moving some of our land lines to cellular
using the Dock-n-talk and canceling some more land lines. We
were dummies paying for a land line just to forward it to a cell.

I was trying to find out if one can forward calls inside the
family plan for free. (they have a thing that they charge 20
cents a minute for forwarding, cute eh?). So after spending
forever on hold, and stuff like "Is there someone there who
speaks English?" etc.. I decided to try their web chat service
and explained the situation. The reply I got was "I don't
understand, what is forward?". I finally gave up.

In all fairness, also, in dealing with Alltel, I spoke to at
least 4 or 5 people who ALL gave me totally conflictory
information (I finally got a manager who got us set up).

Steve
--
www.sellcom.com for firewood splitters, ergonomic chairs,
office phone systems, "non-mov" surge protection, Exabyte,
CA, Minuteman, Brave Products, Fisch, TMC, Panasonic and more
http://www.phonelabs.biz cellphone docking now here!

[email protected] wrote in news:***vp2d95tacsfm3tsqlnlovq23lt61fhi@
4ax.com:

> In all fairness, also, in dealing with Alltel, I spoke to at
> least 4 or 5 people who ALL gave me totally conflictory
> information (I finally got a manager who got us set up).
>
>

I think all the carriers suffer from special treatment overload. They
all treat this customer different from that customer because this
customer has one phone and this other guy is CEO of IBM who buys
thousands of phones. There are so many plans and special, undocumented,
way to treat each customer, the TSRs have no idea what TODAY'S special
treatment plan for this tier of customer actually is, because they all
keep changing over and over. So, you get connected with Sally, a
clueless newbie that knows what the basic plan layout is, but doesn't
know about Plan X she, probably, could put you on if she, herself, only
knew about it. If you got Sue, when you called, who has been with the
company since it was called Mama's Cellular and Tire, Inc., she knows all
the plans and what she can do for you. Sue just codes in 29746, 49372,
29918, 58739, 27385B in the hidden special treatment codes page of the
hideously complex computer program and presses ENTER. There, now you
have 1200 minutes of nationwide service for $29/month with unlimited N/W,
M2M, 100 unlimited numbers to dial, including T1 speed cellular internet
ok for downloading. Sally doesn't even know where this program page is
because it's hidden from most of them....

Alltel kept eating my 100 minutes of free extra time at the beginning of
each month, even on M2M and N/W free time, I got in a promo. I tried 3
people to fix it, each month it returned just like it was. Person 4
collared a manager who just happened to be crossing the sales floor and
asked him, who'd been with Alltel from 3 companies ago, and he says, "Oh,
that's not right. Let me sit there for a second." She got up, he sat
down, clicked a few keys, entered a few codes into the billing system and
my problem was cured in less than 60 seconds flat! Sally was watching,
but I could see from her expression she was watching something NEW to
her...(c; Now my promo 100 minutes doesn't get eaten by free time at
all. It's all in the wrist action...at the keyboard. I'm convinced you
can get free unlimited cell/internet/video if you have the right billing
codes with any of these carriers.....and the person who knows how.

[email protected] wrote in news:***vp2d95tacsfm3tsqlnlovq23lt61fhi@
4ax.com:

> "non-mov" surge protection

By the way, we had this at a little country AM station I used to engineer
for. There were 2 trailer hitch balls, one on the hot tower antenna and
one on the ground system about 1" apart across the base insulator. One
direct hit did melt one of the trailer hitch balls, but I replaced that.
No MOVs were destroyed by any direct hit...(c;

In article <[email protected]>, Larry wrote:

> I think all the carriers suffer from special treatment overload. They
> all treat this customer different from that customer because this
> customer has one phone and this other guy is CEO of IBM who buys
> thousands of phones.

I don't think that's unfair. If you're paying me $5000 per month for
my services, and some other customer is paying me $75, you *should*
expect to get the red carpet treatment. and he probably should not.

I think, and perhaps you guys could comment on this, that there is a
*baseline* even for people spending $1.98 per month, and that this
baseline customer service standard often isn't met. For example, by
Sprint, towards me, after their merger with Nextel. Unlike an awful
lot of other people, I'd had good experiences with them, and then they
outsourced frontline customer service to a bunch of flaming idiots. I
left Sprint in '05 after having left Verizon exactly a year earlier.

I hear Sprint's improved greatly since then - but it's too little, too
late.

> There are so many plans and special, undocumented,
> way to treat each customer, the TSRs have no idea what TODAY'S special
> treatment plan for this tier of customer actually is, because they all
> keep changing over and over.

I think this is a huge problem. I encountered it a couple times with
Verizon, although only a couple times, because I didn't really have
anything special on my account and I was always on a plan that hadn't
been grandfathered.

> Alltel kept eating my 100 minutes of free extra time at the beginning of
> each month, even on M2M and N/W free time, I got in a promo. I tried 3
> people to fix it, each month it returned just like it was. Person 4
> collared a manager who just happened to be crossing the sales floor and
> asked him, who'd been with Alltel from 3 companies ago

Funny thing, that. Alltel is also suffering from mergeritis, or so it seems.
Starting with their original deal with Verizon, they'd been growing
slowly but steadily, and then they bought up one of the largest
non-nationwide carriers in the country -- Western Wireless. As a
result, they're now one of the five largest US carriers, and the third
or fourth owner of the CellularONE brand. I suspect that as they
continue to grow, you'll see some (more?) of the same problems the big
guys have.

--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.