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Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2020 9:37 pm
by tscheinok
Dane, Sonic, Im generally a huge fan. Ive been a residential customer as soon as you resold ATT service in Oakland, now with Fiber and also Im your customer at Fluid (Co-founder). I sing your praises to others loudly.

In Oct 2019 I helped my Yoga studio (The Iyengar Institute of SF) try and switch to Sonic. I met the Sonic Installer on install day and was disappointed that the incoming lines were on the opposite side of the whole block building - there was no way to serve the studio until fiber arrives. We chatted for a bit with your excellent tech and then parted ways, disappointed.

I just learned this evening that Sonic is trying to charge for months despite the fact that we were never connected. Im told that we needed to "call to cancel" our service. Something is really wrong that the Institute could be asked to pay for a service that was never connected for one millisecond.

Will you please have someone on your team look into this and make it right?

Appreciatively, Tamir

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:33 am
by amayfield
Hi Tamir,

We did delay billing for nearly two months and were in contact a number of times with the admin of the account you are referencing in an effort to schedule an installation. Every time the admin requested we postpone the installation (rather than canceling the account) to a later date and we accommodated that request for as long as we reasonably could. Eventually we let the admin know that we could no longer delay billing and requested they call within the week to get installed because we were about to start billing the account. Unfortunately the next we heard from them was last month.

While I understand where the frustrating is coming from, Sonic made a fair effort to try to get the service installed.

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 11:38 am
by tscheinok
Hi Andrew, Thanks for the reply. Im getting a little concerned about corporate speak here. Let me restate the basics:

I personally met your installer on-site on the installation date. After a short conversation with him, it was clear that the installation would be impossible - the landlord would never agree to the required cable run.

The Sonic Installer and I agreed that we would not proceed with Sonic service and that we would talk again when Fiber made it to our location (which would be at the correct side of the building).

So, in short, this was a failed install, no service was provided or used. In light of this, on what basis do you believe you can charge the Institute?

Tamir

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:11 pm
by amayfield
Hi Tamir,

You were not an administrator for the account so you could not initiate a service cancelation. When we reached out to the administrator of the account and asked them how they wanted to proceed they requested to postpone the installation, not to cancel.

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:32 pm
by tscheinok
Hi Andrew, Karen Woods (who is the authorized rep of the Institute) and I called into support and we were told by Tim (your support rep) that your billing team refused to discuss this with us.

So absent a call my questions are:

+ How is it reasonable to assert charges for service that was never installed or provided?
+ How is it acceptable that your billing team refuses to discuss this matter?

Tamir

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:47 pm
by amayfield
Hi Tamir,

Charges began because we incur overhead to have the lines active and present at the premises (we lease the infrastructure), regardless whether or not there is continuity to the phone jack. We absorbed those costs for two months waiting for our customer to arrange for internal wiring to be installed at the premises - which they assured us they would do - so we could then complete the installation. The point at which we could no longer reasonably justify delaying billing we reached out once again to inform our customer that charges would begin within a week, and asked them to reach out to us and let us know how they'd like to proceed.

Regarding the billing interaction, I'm sorry that happened. Thank you for reporting it, I'll get it on the radar of the manager of that team for review.

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:06 pm
by tscheinok
Hi Andrew, Thanks for the reply.

We need to arrange a call with Karen, myself, and a representative of Sonic. I hope you agree. How do you recommend we do this given our prior experience?

Thanks, Tamir

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:16 pm
by amayfield
Hi Tamir,

I'll arrange for someone to call Karen to re-iterate what's been discussed here. Thanks again for reaching out and for the feedback

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2020 1:13 am
by crubarth
Andrew did you really have to say “to re-iterate what’s been discussed here”. That comment is frankly condescending and not good customer service. Why don’t you say something like I’ll arrange a call so we can come up with a solution to fix your problem. Sorry about the inconvenience. We’ll get this sorted out. Thanks again for reaching out. That will go a lot further than acting passive aggressively. @dane please address this behavior.


amayfield wrote:Hi Tamir,

I'll arrange for someone to call Karen to re-iterate what's been discussed here. Thanks again for reaching out and for the feedback

Re: Months of Charges Despite Never Being Connected

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:57 am
by amayfield
Thanks for chiming in. My intention with using that verbiage was to relay that we would be attempting to provide clarity by continuing the discussion with our customer. Which we did, and we were able to identify the point of failure and come to a resolution that I hope works for all parties involved.