I just got off of a phone call with a nice-sounding sales lady from Qwest. The phone call ended with me saying something along the lines of “No, thank you.” Where did this start? It started over 10 years ago, in an apartment on 500 North in Provo, UT, when I was first starting my business. I needed high-speed Internet, and the only option at the time was Qwest DSL, so that’s what I signed up for. Now, here’s the thing–I don’t remember what happened after that. No, I don’t mean in an “alien abduction” kind of way, I mean I don’t remember specifically what it was like. All I know is that I had a bad experience, and swore I would never use Qwest again.
Now, I know a lot has changed in 10 years. For all I know Qwest may be an entirely different company. There may not even be a single employee there today who was there 10 years ago. They may be the best company in the world to deal with now. I might even be happier with their services than I am with my current services. Then again, they might be a worse company than they were before. I don’t know. But given my prior experience, even though it was a long time ago, I’m not willing to take the risk. I feel like I would be a fool to give Qwest another chance.
Over the years, I have talked anyone I could out of using Qwest. If someone asked me about phone or Internet service my response was “Anyone but Qwest.” I don’t know how much business I’ve steered away from them, but given my propensity to be a bit mouthy I think it’s safe to say it’s probably in the tens of thousands, at a minimum, and perhaps the indirect effects reach into the six-figure range. I’m just one guy. What about all the other mouthy people who have had similar experiences with Qwest? Just think, if Qwest were to have run a slightly better operation (and I don’t think it was anything huge they did wrong by me), they might have been able to boost their bottom line by tens of millions of dollars.
Under what type of situation would I be willing to give Qwest another chance? Maybe if they gave me everything I need for free, and then paid me another $20K on top of that. Or if everybody else went out of business and the only way to get high-speed Internet was through Qwest. Those are the only scenarios I can think of.
And just think, what started out as a sales call, designed to increase Qwest’s revenues, has now resulted in this blog post. Oh, the irony.
