Competition Makes Us Better
I try not to use this microphone to air personal or petty grievances. Your time is more valuable than that, but I do want to share a story that I think suggests why competition is what makes our country stronger…now, and always.
I live in a rural area and there are not multiple choices for various service providers. The telephone company, for example. In many cities, even of rather modest size, there are multiple options for a traditional landline phone, whether through a legacy phone company or an internet or television provider. Where I live, the only option is one of the legacy companies…I won’t mention which one.
For whatever reason, early yesterday morning the phone line went dead, along with the internet. While the internet came back within an hour–at a far slower speed than usual–the landline phone did not.
I tried to report it to the company…but that’s hard when you don’t have a phone or internet. Once I could fire up a web page, the online outage finder said there was an outage and that it should be fixed by 11 p.m. … not 11 p.m. as in 16 hours from then, 11 p.m. as in two days plus 16 hours from then.
I tried calling a few hours later for a status update, but the recorded voice only pleasantly confirmed the outage and assured me if it went longer than 72 hours, I’d get a $22 credit on my bill. There was no way to talk to a real human being; just the mechanical voice that only responded to certain prompts.
Undeterred, I tried an online chat, which again was with a bot…ultimately, I did reach a human–maybe–who again recited the same party line about a cable being out and no repair promised for days, before somewhat abruptly ending the chat session.
Keep in mind, this is not an area affected by the derecho.
They then had the audacity to send me an email survey to see how they did regarding customer service. I clicked on the web link and told them what I thought of their so-called customer service. But when I tried to submit the survey…the page would not load. Apparently it knows when you’re going to talk bad about the company, so it rejects the submission.
Alright, probably not. And yes, I have internet at home and a cell phone, so it’s not a big deal. But I can’t help but think that if that vendor had competition, perhaps it would be more responsive. I’d love to tell them I’m taking my business elsewhere, but given the lack of options, it’s a hollow threat and they know it.
So in a time when one political party is talking about remaking American society with government controlling more of our lives as the sole source, I can’t help but think about what happens when there is a lack of competition.
