This is officially a hate blog. A hate blog about Qwest.

About five months ago my father’s Internet stopped working. I tried to get it working but was unsuccessful. I called Qwest and they recommended a new modem. We purchased one and waited like 10 days for it to arrive. During this time, my father had to go to the library to read his email each day.

After the modem arrived we still couldn’t get it running. Finally Qwest ran some diagnostics and said the problem was on their side and that it couldn’t be repaired. Well, as you can imagine we decided to cancel and go to Comcast.

First, the charged him a $200 exit fee. They also didn’t cancel the service when we transferred. They continued to charge us for several months.

Because I dealt with Qwest the year before and had a horrible time switching, I decided to handle it for my Dad. I called many times and received assurances each time that the service was shut off. Each time they gave me adjustment numbers stating that the charges were removed.

I took down the names of each representative each time I called. Of course it was just the first names because they won’t give their last names, email addresses or extensions. They don’t give incident numbers but what good would they be since the “adjustment” numbers turned out to be bogus.

I’ve talked to managers in three different departments. I’ve done the chat support. I’ve got pages of notes from these calls. Now, after many months of dealing with this, they are sending my father to collections and they say we owe hundreds of dollars. My Dad can’t sleep at night because he’s scared they are going to trash his credit rating. I frankly don’t know what to do now. Qwest is so insulated that you can’t get penetrate the system.

Can  you imagine how frustrating it is after all this time to have them tell me they have no record of my calls, the modem being returned or that the problem was on their side? A month ago I decided to just pay them off but sure enough we got another bill immediately followed by being sent to collections.

I could go on and on about getting cut off after waiting on hold MANY TIMES. Or about the billing department opening at 8am but the phone not allowing you in until 8:15.

I’ve looked all over the Internet but haven’t been able to find an office to visit. We’ve sent an email to the consumer affairs reporter at the local news station but I’m not overly optimistic. I don’t know what we will do.

I did happen to find one local office. As you can see, there is no door knob. Clearly they are not looking for walk-in’s.

My recommendation is that no one should ever use Qwest again.