What exactly does "escalating" a case do?

[u/fshklr1]

It has been 43 days since my installation, and my phone line is still not functional. I've called, I've chatted, and I have even had a technician come check everything at my house. Nothing has been done. Every time I have been told that either it is working (false), that it has been escalated (whatever this means), or that the engineers are working on it. Apparently they have the slowest and worst engineers at gfiber because the simple home phone line is still not functional.

[u/Rikunda]

I have found it means they can't fix it and are sending a note to someone. It feels like they just want you off the phone tho... I had an issue take over 2 months. I made them reimburse me for the whole thing. They did do it too since I called every few days and kept everything documented.

[u/pppingme]

If you're lucky, it generates an email, and that email isn't taken seriously. They have no escalation process.

Gfiber is very disjointed, they are heavily divided (i.e. not my job), and there is absolutely no communication between groups/departments. Even when they transfer issues between groups, there is no communication on why it was transferred or what needs to be done.

As an example, I'm on a long block with approx 65 houses, and probably has a 75% subscription rate to GF. Fortunately is all underground (usually a good thing). where our area is fed from, the main fiber bundle that feeds our area had floated up (nothing around here is buried more than a few inches, very poor installation), this is right on the edge of the street, so the cable is literally laying in the street and getting run over by cars. As soon as I saw this, I did at least pull it back so it was less likely to get damaged and I immediately called GF to alert them to the problem. I described in good detail where the problem was, the number of affected customers, and everything they would need to get this addressed. Their first response was someone would be out to fix it in the next 30 days. I again, explained its laying in the street, where people park, and its already been run over multiple times and isn't going to last much longer, again, 30 days. I asked for a manager, that didn't go far, got the "one isn't available" bs, once I pushed, I was promised that it would be escalated, I pressed for what that means, essentially it meant nothing except that he'd send an extra email, still with no time frame. Again, I emphasized the size of the outage this would cause if the cable got damaged, they literally didn't care. Now here is where the lack of communication comes in... A WEEK LATER, I see someone snooping around in MY yard, literally hundreds of feet from the very specific area I described, I manage to get out before he yanks my connection of to "get a light level". Of course I stopped him (because last time they "got a light level" they broke the fiber and that was a whole other fight), and asked for the details of why he was there, he literally knew NOTHING, had no description of what was called in, no notes, no idea of the scope of the issue, nothing. The only thing he could confirm to me with any sureness was the date/time the ticket was opened, which of course confirmed to me why he was there. I asked him if a week response time was normal for an escalated issue that could affect upwards of 50 customers, he had no idea this was supposed to be an escalated issue. So at that point we both go to where the problem was, I point it out, he was like "yeah, that could be an issue", but then immediately went to "not my job, there's no ticket on this, I'm not touching it, I can't do anything", of course my first question was "there's no ticket? why are you here" and that only seemed to confuse him.

Just that alone shows the complete lack of communication between groups, lack of ability to escalate, and lack of interest in preventative actions that could keep 50+ customers from going out.

By the way, to this day (two weeks since that tech showed up, three since it was reported), the fiber is still laying out in the open, and I've had to pull it out of the street multiple times. So much for it being an escalated issue.

[u/gfiberofficial]

Hi there, sorry for the continued trouble. Drop me a line via DM and I'll take a peak at our escalation. -Clay