Wired internet prior to the hurricane is reliable enough that I have not had to interact with customer service on any meaningful matter before. My post Maria experience with this MiFi hotspot, however has truly been bewildering. I walked in to the Viya office in St Croix and was promptly turned away, almost eagerly, so that I could go home and make an appointment online, no one could or would do it in person as I stood there in Viya's main office. Mind you, there were no other customers in the greeting area at all when I was there, very slow time of day it seemed. A week later I come in for my appointment. Other than calling my name to come up, no other words were uttered, nor eye contact made from the counter agent as I filled out my form and received the MiFi unit. Had I not asked for a brief rundown of the device it would have been one of those fun, completely silent transactions you always hear about but never get to experience yourself. Fine, all business, no big deal.
The thing works well compared to tethering my phone on the same 4G network and while I was expecting the 5GB cap per day I somehow missed the part in the form/contract where I was spending $60 for only 30GB for the entire month. After maybe a week, my multi user, internet starved household was able to eat up that cap without breaking a sweat. Up until this point, I get it, this data isn't cheap, its desperate times desperate measures and all that. After buying generator gas for 4 months I was ready to quickly accept this strangely low monthly cap and simply purchase more data in the name of "normalcy tax." What really struck me as bizarre during this entire series of events was that when I asked if there was any way to purchase more data, I was told there absolutely is no option, zero, completely impossible, will not budge. Viya, being a for profit business that primarily acts as an internet service provider has only accounted for 30GB for your entire month at a rate of $2/GB and will not at all allow you to purchase more once you hit the cap. What?
The customer service rep, rather than choosing any kind of empathy, decided to immediately go with the "if you don't like it, you can return the unit" bit and treat me like a nuisance. Quite obviously, Viya, or at least one of the customer service reps, really doesn't care if they have my business or not. Does one person working for this company enjoy their job? It's hard to tell based on my interactions but it certainly doesn't seem so. read more