Disgruntled VOOM Employee

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KyInstaller said:
So the people in the office have a bad day every so often, HEY, try installing, it pays more & YOU can deal with the people who were told they can get the locals, (even thou they live in rural America & can't). Voom has got a long way to go as far as customer service goes I AGREE, but saying installers are part of the problem is wrong. My how many times I have wanted to deal with customers over the phone & not face to face. You have no idea how lucky You are just talking on the phone instead of being at the customers location, crawling under the house, or working in a attic with fiberglass insulation, & I won't even tell You about some of the stuff We find behind the bedroom furniture, (not to mention the smells). Think You have it rough? Quit the job & stop crying! :eek:

i totally agree with you on this one.
 
johnalan said:
I also work in a business where non-management types are paid $8 an hour. That's just the way it is. That also doesn't mean that someone making $8 doesn't care.
Doesnt mean I dont care. I actually think VOOM may be a great company someday, however for the work that is being done and the negative reinforcement (never positive) to keep your job I do not think VOOM knows or understands why customers get dis-service when it comes to "customer service." They are a fairly new company and Cablevision has never delt with West before.
johnalan said:
VOOMCSA, look at the world around you. What you describe is the way business is run most everywhere these days. Sorry, that's just the economics of today's world.
That is not always true I have worked with a few better repitable companies before West. A lot of problems reside in the program managers running the VOOM product. Because of certain circumstances I am stuck here till my freedom day. (Spokane has no real jobs. Currently in the process of moving) But blowing off steam is good.

By the way I am the only me in this forum. Any other VOOM employee posters are not me, but feel free to post. Please refrain from repeating what I have written please.

The original title of this thread was "gruntled" I knew what I was talking about when I wrote it.

Escallation

Some VOOM CSA's will escallate everything they don't know or don't care about. Don't get me wrong a good percentage of the time it is system issues or something legitamate like VOOM not telling us why or how the box does what it does. You guys knew about Caller ID long before we did. They still have not told us how it works. Originally they told us Firmware 726 did not do anything to the receiver that the customer would not notice. Out of cleanliness of this forum "Bull cakes"

If something is escallated it goes under a new program (no longer paper) on our already slow Compaq, Windows 98 server computers. Then is handed to an escallation team. who actualy has more power than a Team Leader does. Never expect to talk to one of these individuals, in other words don't request to talk to one of them. They will call you. Once your issue has been delt with or monkey scratched on the head they will attempt to contact you three times before emailing you. Normally they do this while you may not be home. They then pass your concern to the email team who pretty much tell you to call back. A VOOM CSA most of the time won't read what the escallator wrote on your account get confused and escallate you again.

By the way lately, The escallation team has been taking normal call so your concerns are being taken care of slower than normal. (not enough people on the floor for the holidays) However they are hard workers and do have concerns for taking care of customers. What VOOM used to stand for at West.

Even though this is a VOOM sponsered Web Site.

Even though VOOM sponsors this website If you call in, Email, etc VOOM will deny everything unless it is on it's own website. VOOM knows its installation problems that is true. I bet there is a lot of horror stories on here. VOOM will not say anything is true if you read about receivers not working, new channels coming soon (I had to look like a rear-end fighting with a customer that Food Network was not being broadcast on VOOM starting December because it was not in our web site or in any information given to us, pretty much I was told to say so. A week later look what happened), New hardware-software updates. Try calling or emailing any of the information on this thread and you will get the same canned answer. I almost dare you to.

I have more to come.... Heh-call VOOM with any updates (not this thread this time) and help customer service by telling them new channels that are coming up or the release dates of new hardware. You'll be more help than the Program managers.

No I've done my research with West. It is voted one of the lowest rated call centers in the US, because of the way it treats its employees and employee turnover and recycling. If you get Fired from west almost, and I do mean almost for anything wait a little while then come back. Sometimes they forget how long they fired you and hire you right back for another program. Unions will not touch West for the same reasons, cant help an employee if they don't stay.

I will do more research tonight had notes on what to write but forgot to bring them. Although I shouldn't say this because if this leaks out most likely we will lose pen or pencil privelages....
 
KyInstaller said:
So the people in the office have a bad day every so often, HEY, try installing, it pays more & YOU can deal with the people who were told they can get the locals, (even thou they live in rural America & can't). Voom has got a long way to go as far as customer service goes I AGREE, but saying installers are part of the problem is wrong. My how many times I have wanted to deal with customers over the phone & not face to face. You have no idea how lucky You are just talking on the phone instead of being at the customers location, crawling under the house, or working in a attic with fiberglass insulation, & I won't even tell You about some of the stuff We find behind the bedroom furniture, (not to mention the smells). Think You have it rough? Quit the job & stop crying!

I semi agree with you on this one, I have delt with installs inc., and I agree not all installers are bad and I do not think you guys get all the VOOM training you are supposed to. Doesnt make all installers bad people. But there are a handful of good ones (like you) in a cesspool of poopy ones. Like I said out of respect of the Customers I will not tell Any of the horror stories I've heard.

But remember The phone line is not just for pay per view and is required. no if ands or butts. the customer will call in later and wonder why their service was shut off.

Locals are not gauranteed and this is where you guys get the short end of the stick. For that blame sales.... :no
 
DeskJocky said:
From what ive seen, supervisors can break company policy all they want, and nothing happens to them, but if a CSA does it, even for the smallest thing, they are fired.
It's called Corporate America, I am in the same boat and am persuing sueing the company that let me go, they had no justification for doing so, I just didn't get along with my boss and he didn't want me around any longer, never mind that I was there 3 years before his fat ass showed up and had done an outstanding job.

He felt threatened and intimidated by me because I stood up for myself and he could not handle it. :mad: The fat ass bastard. :no I'm not kidding either, he reminds of Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, he is so fat, his arms stick out to the side when he walks. :shocked
 
Voom problems could easily be solved

VOOMCSA said:
I semi agree with you on this one, I have delt with installs inc., and I agree not all installers are bad and I do not think you guys get all the VOOM training you are supposed to. Doesnt make all installers bad people. But there are a handful of good ones (like you) in a cesspool of poopy ones. Like I said out of respect of the Customers I will not tell Any of the horror stories I've heard.

But remember The phone line is not just for pay per view and is required. no if ands or butts. the customer will call in later and wonder why their service was shut off.

Locals are not gauranteed and this is where you guys get the short end of the stick. For that blame sales.... :no
My suggestion to Voom is to force all install companies to have a trained Head Area Tech in which they will keep updated on all issues & to be sure all installers have be made aware of all updates. D* uses this policy for installs & service, (HSP's), with a very good amount of success. I have been on installs and did not find out about issues untill I either work with the system for about an hour, or tech support told Me about it. Customers & installers both want a good clean install. Just My opinion & I'm not trying to down anybody, We all have our good & bad days.
 
Although what was said about the call center in San Antonio is about 90-95% true, things are changing. For instance we now have in house voom trainers, these are NOT west trainers, they are MRA's who have been working on voom for a very long time. The reason we are doing our own inhouse training is because of what VOOMCSA said, all the people we got from the west trainers sucked, my friend went through the voom training with a west trainer and the trainer was there maybe and I mean maybe 1 hour a day out of the 6 hour training class. Needless to say once he made it on the phones he was canned 3 days later because he didnt know what he was doing. And the people that do make it past the first 3 days on the phone? Well lets just say they are some of the worst people I have ever worked with at west, they lie to customers to keep up conversion so they dont get fired, they ask some of the dumbest questions I have ever heard about the service which they should have learned in training, and dont care about the customers what so ever. But we cant fire them, why? because we are waiting for our first in house training class to go through training before we can, thats gonna be about another week. And the only reason they have been here this long is because we quit letting west train our employes. Things are changing at the San Antonio sales center, slowly, but they are changing. Our guy that talks with the client is being replaced in janurary by someone who hopfully actually gives a care about us. The clients have been comming in alot more lately and I actually had the chance to give them my 2 cents which may have fell on deaf ears but I felt like she actually cared about my oppinion, since then she has came to me on other occasions asking about what I think should be changed and so forth.

There was a time when on the sales project we were required to maintain a 15% conversion, the conversion was calculated by sales to possible sales. This has since changed to a 10% raw conversion. EVERY call counts towards us, if the person has no credit card, if they call and instantly hang up and so forth, what that means is 1 in every 10 calls needs to be a sale. While that seems easy alot of the people must be turned away because of lack of a home phone or major credit card. If 2 weeks go by and you havent met your conversion, no matter how good you are on the phones or how well you know your product knowledge they can you.

Well this is my little rant from the sales center in San Antonio, just wanted you guys to hear our side as well. It isnt easy for any of us, each department has their own ups and downs, just seems with west the majority of the time its downs, but one thing I can say from my months of working on the voom project, those few customers that call in just to tell us the service is great and they are really happy they have it, yea that makes our day, it breaks up the repetition of dealing with people that like to make our lives hell and puts a smile on our faces, even if it only lasts till the next call.

Oh yea, on a side note, dont sign up on the website, while signing up the website might seem like the best bet, unless you actually change the link to HTTPS your credit card is transmitted using an un-secure connection and anyone who might be looking can grab your information. I have personally tested this and it is true, if you dont think so go ahead an goto the site and run through the signup process but stop at the credit card page. NONE of it is through a secure connection to the server...
 
Like I said when I cancelled my service and had billing trouble. The CSA's were the nicest bunch of useless people I have ever met. And it wasn't there fault, they weren't allowed to solve anything.
 
Thanks for posting Kormic911, its nice to hear the woodway side of things. I have recently quit my job at West, so I dont have any issues explaining to you the job I once had. I worked on email/online chat support, I actually rather liked the agents I spoke with from SA through Online chat. Overall... I have more respect for woodway agents than I do for our own corporate office in spokane!!! I've seen SA get much better, and yes... I agree... west trainers SUCK. It feels so nice to be outa there, now please excuse me, I have to go pick up my check before those money hungry inbreds steal it from me, lol.
 
kormic911 said:
Oh yea, on a side note, dont sign up on the website, while signing up the website might seem like the best bet, unless you actually change the link to HTTPS your credit card is transmitted using an un-secure connection and anyone who might be looking can grab your information. I have personally tested this and it is true, if you dont think so go ahead an goto the site and run through the signup process but stop at the credit card page. NONE of it is through a secure connection to the server...

If this is true, this is a MAJOR MAJOR Problem.... I will try to find out from the webmaster(s).
 
When you say "West" do you mean US West? They have a facility here in Erie, PA too.
 
DarrellP said:
At least we don't have to talk to Ravi in India who only knows 25 English words.

LMFAO I had a person from Las Vegas (VIA India) try to tell me I had won a grant from the government for like $8,000 I think heck if I know couldn't understand them much and I said so after 3 weeks of telling them I couldn't understand them OF COURSE I DRIVE A WATER TRUCK (WITH STRAIGHT PIPES) for a construction company and they call during work hours so hearing anything is a luxury. LOL For 2 weeks after my B******* them out for not speakin' ENGLISH I got 7 to 10 ANONYMOUS ph calls a day for 9 days straight but then thank god the romance ended. LOL
 
More like BS West

gutter said:
When you say "West" do you mean US West? They have a facility here in Erie, PA too.

No, he does not mean US West, he was referring to West Corp, recently merged with Dakotah Direct, which is a sweat shop style call center that places more emphasis on call volumn than it does customer service.
 
Corporate america

Welcome to corporate america. The top managers just care about the beans and how to maximize their bonus. Most of the time they have no idea about the product or service they sell and support. You no longer have managers that worked their way up the ladder, a person like this would actually be worth their salary. It is cheaper to hire a person with a business management degree even if he has no idea of what lines of resolution are or what bit rate is. It is time we go back to old business practices. Build a quality product and superior service and the customers will purchase your product. You can even build a fair product but maintain a quality service and still retain the customers. Sounds like the sooner Voom gets away from cablevision the better of they will be.
 
Hello,
I am new to this board, and hopefully be a new Voom customer. I actually have had a good experience with customer support so far, as they have been very helpful. Being from San Antonio, I was somewhat suprised when the online chat person said Go Spurs Go when I asked about whether they carry FoxSports SW because of Spurs games, and how the person I called at Voom new the San Antonio Medical Center really well. Well guess this thread answered that, since West telemarketing is handling it.

Anyways, I was wondering since alot, if not all, the call support center is located in San Antonio, how many of the call support people actually have Voom? Just out of curiousity, cause if the people that work for Voom dont even like there service they are trying to sell, then it may say something about there service. I'd also appreciate any information from those SA call center associates or any Voom users in the San Antonio Medical Center area to give me there input as to signal strength and OTA channel reception.

I am especially concerned because I live in an apartment, and through antennaweb.com, it shows that most of the channels are SE of my location, but two of them are located NW of my location. Since my balcony faces SE, and is on the second floor with no big obstacles in the way, I was assured that I had a good chance of getting good satellite reception and good OTA reception for those channels facing SE of me, but most likely i will not get those channels facing NW of my loaction. As I can only mount my antenna in my balcony, which only faces one direction, and I am not allowed to hook up anything on the roof of the apartment, is there any work around to losing those two channels?

Anyways, so far I have been pleased with Customer Support so far, even though I'm not a customer yet. I hope i will be Vooming soon.
Steve
 
uthscsa19 said:
I am especially concerned because I live in an apartment, and through antennaweb.com, it shows that most of the channels are SE of my location, but two of them are located NW of my location. Since my balcony faces SE, and is on the second floor with no big obstacles in the way, I was assured that I had a good chance of getting good satellite reception and good OTA reception for those channels facing SE of me, but most likely i will not get those channels facing NW of my loaction. As I can only mount my antenna in my balcony, which only faces one direction, and I am not allowed to hook up anything on the roof of the apartment, is there any work around to losing those two channels?

Anyways, so far I have been pleased with Customer Support so far, even though I'm not a customer yet. I hope i will be Vooming soon.
Steve
Steve, are the towers relatively close to you? There are many brands of indoor antennas that you could use where you may not even have to reorient them to receive all channels. If you don't mind tweaking to change channels, the Silver Sensor is an excellent indoor antenna and is very small.
 
* yellow - uhf KABB-DT 29.1 FOX SAN ANTONIO TX 124° 22.3 30
* yellow - vhf KLRN-DT 9.1 PBS SAN ANTONIO TX 129° 16.9 8
* yellow - uhf KVDA-DT 38.1 TEL SAN ANTONIO TX 123° 22.7 38
* yellow - uhf KWEX-DT 41.1 UNI SAN ANTONIO TX 123° 22.7 39
* yellow - uhf KRRT-DT 35.1 WB KERRVILLE TX 284° 21.8 32
* yellow - uhf KSAT-DT 12.1 ABC SAN ANTONIO TX 126° 23.8 48
* green - uhf WOAI-DT 4.1 NBC SAN ANTONIO TX 127° 23.5 58
* red - uhf KENS-DT 5.1 CBS SAN ANTONIO TX 127° 23.5 55
* red - uhf KHCE-DT 16 TBN SAN ANTONIO TX Testing 123° 23.1 16
* blue - uhf KPXL-DT 26 PAX UVALDE TX Awaiting FCC Permit 279° 30.9 26

Hopefully that comes out well. I have put the distances in miles. This is a copy/paste from antennaweb.com. The furthest one from me is PAX which is 30.9miles away. As you can see, most are in the 123-129 degree area, while PAX and WB are 279/284. I hopefully will be getting Voom in late Febuary, and would like to know the chances of getting all these channels. For those who live in the San Antonio are, I live very close to the 410/I10 interchange. Most of the shows I watch are on CBS/ABC/NBC, but I would love to get the WB channel for some of the spurs games. Anyone know which of these are broadcasted in HDTV over the air? Thanks in advance for those who answer.
Steve.
 
Steve, I am a San Antonio Voomer, for about 6 weeks now. I couldn't be happier. They did have to exchange out two STB's at first but since then I have had absolutely no problemos with anything. We just moved into this house and the installer discovered I had a big antenna in the attic I didn't even know was there. It picks up everything local but WB in Kerrville but I haven't worried about that too much. Yeah, I miss a couple of Spurs games but there is so much HD to watch that's about all I watch now anyway. The OTA Sunday NFL games in HD on Channels 5 and 29 are phenomenal! I live near Callaghan and Vance Jackson. Picture is crystal clear on all channels.

Despite all the bad press, Installs Inc. was great to me. The installer's name was Joby and he was on time every time, very good service, hope you can get him for the install.

I have had Dish, Direct, and Time-Warner (horrible!) and V* is the bomb if you want HD programming. :up
 
Well, I'll try and ask for Joby when i get my confirmation from Voom. I currently have TimeWarner, but there prices just keep going up. Currently paying around $70 for there basic 2-76 channels, music channels, and hdtv channels(which are limited). So I really want to move over to Voom, for $55 dollars i can get more for my money. How does the dish/OTA antenna do under bad weather? What local channels are offered in HD OTA? Currently through TWC I get ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS in HD I believe. Do you get Fox in HD? Do they have any HD programs other than the football games?
Steve.
 
eddiscus said:
Welcome to corporate america. The top managers just care about the beans and how to maximize their bonus. Most of the time they have no idea about the product or service they sell and support. You no longer have managers that worked their way up the ladder, a person like this would actually be worth their salary. It is cheaper to hire a person with a business management degree even if he has no idea of what lines of resolution are or what bit rate is. It is time we go back to old business practices. Build a quality product and superior service and the customers will purchase your product. You can even build a fair product but maintain a quality service and still retain the customers. Sounds like the sooner Voom gets away from cablevision the better of they will be.

Your avatar is a CAT isnt it?
 
Steve, all of the locals, including 29-Fox broadcast in HD OTA. Most of the major network primetime programs are in HD.

There is a link Sean put on the left side of the main page under VOOM Programming (VOOM HDTV Daily Listing Alerts). Just be aware that the local PBS Channel 9 does not always broadcast every program listed on the PBS website, they sometimes insert some local shows and show the national ones at a later time.

And, no, I have experienced no loss of picture due to weather at all so far.
 

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