Why is it so hard?!?

2 posts in one day ... I hope my boss doesn't mind :-)

After listening/ watching Randy Pausch's talk on Time Management I've decided that my mom was right. It is good to take the time to say thank-you. Even better it is great to write your thoughts down and send them to the person you are thinking. However, have you ever tired to send a thank-you note (or e-mail) to a specific person at a company?

Now that I'm starting to work from home with more frequency I decided I needed to upgrade my internet connection. My cable modem had been working very well for years, but I decided to try out the new 20 Mbps service from Qwest. The extra speed would come in handy when downloading files and doing internet video conferences, so I decided to spend the extra money and upgrade. Long story short the DSL line was horrible. The modem was resetting itself every 30 - 50 minutes and when that happened the VPN dropped and my system briefly hung. Way too frustrating. A call to the tech service resulted in an appointment for a serivce tech this morning.

Again to make the story readable (or to not tax more poor writing skills any further), the tech showed called before coming to the door and after a brief conversation he had a line on the problem. 20 minutes latter Steve showed up at my door and said he thought things might be better. After another 10 minutes he reconfigured the modem and I was now receiving the promised bandwidth with a good strong signal. During the time Steve was fixing things we chatted about how he apologized for not getting the configuration correct at the time of installation and gave me his number in case any other problems arose.

Now that the service has been working flawlessly for hours, I wanted to say thanks to Steve (and let his supervisor know of his great work). I searched the Qwest web site and there is no way to leave a compliment. Lots of ways to complain, but no way to say thanks. (Actually I left a message in the "Other Problems" section and I pray the message receives Steve.)

So why does it have to be so hard to say thanks? It has to be a direct reflection of our complaint driven society. Hopefully Qwest adds a "Say Thanks" button to their web site, and maybe I can help my company do the same.

So a big THANKS to you Steve. You provided great service, I just thought you should know.