It's Difficult Getting Connected
While Naz and I lived in Chicago, RCN was our internet provider. We had virtually no issues with them for more than three years. Until recently. AFTER we moved out of their service area.
Naz contacted them regarding disconnection; a friend of ours dropped off the modem on our behalf; I paid our final bill—I thought all would be well. Then we received another bill from them regarding the modem charge. Say what? We had a receipt from the return of the modem. Why the charge?
Per this latest bill, if we had issues, we could call 1-877-RCN-BILL for billing questions. The problem? The phone number didn’t work. So then we tried the technical service number, 1-866-TECH-RCN. Nada. Even the 1-800-RING-RCN number on the website was useless. How could RCN publish these numbers if they weren’t functional?
The only way we could get in touch with them was through their impersonal online form. But naturally, Naz’s attempt was left unanswered.
I looked further at the bill after a couple days and realized our error. The final statement was actually a credit entitled to us for the return of the modem. Yay for us. But still that doesn’t explain why we couldn’t contact RCN directly to clear up any confusion.
After another attempt using their online form, I was fortunate to receive a response verifying the credit we were due in 6–8 weeks. The customer service rep also included a phone number that would be compatible with our 415 area code should we need to contact a live person.
It turns out, if your area code falls outside of their service area, you can’t use any of the published phone numbers. Now, what if we were moving to a service area but hadn’t yet changed our phone numbers and were looking to set up future service? Why don’t they publish that out-of-service-area number? Would a potential customer have to gamble with the reliability of RCN’s online form, requesting a workable phone number? It all seems to be a bit convoluted to deal with. Perhaps I’m blowing this situation out of proportion, but these types of interactions, or lack thereof, can turn off customers. Lucky for us RCN had been good to us prior to this ordeal.