Optimum by Altice Complaint
Submitted by: Anonymous | Post a complaint | Back to Complaints Forum
On August 7th, 2009 – our next to next door neighbor’s house got struck by lightning, and at the same time mine and my next door neighbor’s house lost all 3 (Cable/Internet/Phone) services. We thought it may be an outage in the neighborhood caused by the storm, and will be restored in few hours. We went out to attend some event and when returned home late night, the services were still out so I called the support number who after going through initial troubleshooting advised me to schedule an appointment for a tech to come out and look at it. He said that the earliest appointment he can give me was for Friday afternoon. I told him I work from home and need these services back ASAP in order to work. He advised me to replace cable modem and router by visiting near by Optimum store and swapping the current one with the new ones. I did that on Thursday morning but that didn’t help.
The tech showed up on Friday (8/9/2019) evening, checked things out and told me that there is no signal at the outside box which serves mine and my next door neighbor’s houses. He said he will report the issue and some other team will have to come look at it. I called again on Saturday to find out the status, and I was told that they will send technicians who will be able to resolve the issue. The technicians came and didn’t resolve the issue. They said they will have to refer the case to RCC group. Rest of the weekend just went by without any action. I had to call again on Monday 8/12/2019 to find the status, and they say they will be submitting a request for RCC team by 1 PM ET that day and I should hear back from them within 24 hours. I waited 24 hours and called back on 8/13/2019 and wat told that it is 24 business hours and I should hear back by 8/14/2019 by 1 PM. Guess what I didn’t hear from anybody and I had to call back. Every time I call back – I had to explain the whole thing over and over again!! Finally one of the support person said he will find out what is going on and call me back. I did get a call back where he said – he got an appointment for 8/21/2019 for them to come and fix the issue and he is working to get that appointment earlier. He did then come back with a better appointment date for 8/16/2019, but for all these days – as I am working from home – I had to take some time off from work as I was not able to work full 8 hours (I wasted time for calling the support and explain the issue over and over as well as I had to go to somebody else’s place to work! which was so much inconvenient for me and for them). We went through so much emotional distress due to in action and negligence of the cable operator. Finally, the outage got restored on 8/16/2019 around 10 PM ET.
I did call the billing service and asked to provide me a credit for 9 days outage. My monthly bill for the services are $77.49 before taxes, which will pro-rate to $2.58/day. If I multiply for 9 days that all my services were out, it should come to $23.25 credit. But the support agent told me that their system calculated credit of $8.85 and that the only thing they were able to credit. What about my emotional distress? Inconvenience and discomfort besides all the negligence in not restoring the services ASAP?
Is there any way to demand for actual pro-rated credit for 9 days outage + the compensation for the hours I have to take time off + all the inconvenience, emotional distress and discomfort?
Any help with this case will be highly appreciated.
Regards,
B