 Hey guys, I am Ken Ross here, and I'm a business consultant that specializes in reducing costs for businesses by looking at their essential Expenses and today it's part two happy new year for those who've been following along and Thank you for coming back to my channel to see part two of this Excellent saga here for me I I can't say that it's more excellent because I get to tell you about all the details and help you Be informed on how to best tackle some of these issues So let's get into it if you haven't seen part one of this series part one was talking about this major outage That I experienced with AT&T fiber internet I'm gonna go ahead and post a link to it up here or up here on this side of the screen Go ahead and check that out Let me know in the comments section below if you've ever experienced an outage with AT&T or any other Internet service provider before and what it is that you've done if you remember part one or if you've checked it out I ended part one with a Drive-by of these two AT&T trucks and I I spent a lot of time explaining that I couldn't figure out What was going on? I actually checked with a few people early on as well as asked questions of people at the Starbucks I was at on the second day What was going on? Nobody knew and no one was offering me any information or even a solution to my issue I was just kind of left in the dark when I spotted these two trucks I immediately thought there has to be some correlation between these two AT&T trucks and What is going on with my internet and I don't believe I was wrong I've checked with some other people later down the road and They were telling me that there was a major outage in the fiber optic network And they were doing some maintenance work on some of these things in addition to that I was also informed that this affected the cellular network and that is one of the reasons why when I decided to actually Come up with a backup plan for my internet to use my mobile hotspot on my phone or any and other places Any of those solutions were not going to work your data plan That's associated with your cell phone still has to come back to a Physical internet connection something that is hardwired to the internet via fiber optic or Coaxial or some type of telephone line that then gives you access to the internet and that is what was going on here AT&T was the provider of service for cellular networks and it was Experiencing quite a major outage in these particular things in addition to that when I talked to some of my colleagues Some of my colleagues have much bigger businesses that affect a lot of people One such instance is in the health care industry, right in the health care industry Telecommunications is very important and I talked to this colleague who was in the health care industry and they had quite a major Effect as a result of this particular outage. They didn't have telephone systems for a while They couldn't take payments. They had to follow people via their cell phone because they could still use the cell networks But this was a major outage for a lot of people involved and I can see why as me as a consumer of Just regular AT&T fiber was not privy to all the information that other businesses and other people that Operate bigger businesses was privy to and this is what I want to really talk about What is it that I did that most people wouldn't do or something that was different or could Differentiate you when it comes to your business. I'm gonna talk about those things next Okay, so I have a copy of my bill right here and I'm actually gonna review some of it with you now I'm not gonna show you all of my personal information or any of those things But what I will show you is the comparison of what the differences are when you have This particular outage and you seek a refund. So if you remember part one I talked about how when I called initially after the first 13 hours of 14 hours of the outage I called them and I said hey look My service has been down and I I feel like I should be compensated for that in addition to that I sought more information which they weren't able to give me at that particular time They started issuing me refunds and I said I will be continuing to pursue these refunds until my services restored That put me on a different level Than other folks right because the minute you actually have to compensate someone for something that is tying into their bottom line So if you look at the account activity here, it says my last bill was $70 and 69 cents So based on that they were able to calculate what a two-day discount would be which was $5 and 81 cents and you could see that here that was actually applied on December 2nd The day I called and I requested the refund this actually fully covered me for the two days that I was out that they didn't have service in my area and Ultimately put me in a different category of person right when you think about Who's gonna get service first? You're gonna try to give give service to the folk your higher-paying customers They're gonna be prioritized first and ultimately those same customers are probably customers that are going to receive discounts as well for their service being down so You want to distinguish yourself and you want better service you need to pressure your ISP or your provider for these refunds In addition to that apply enough pressure that you can actually get the right level of communication In this particular instance I was getting text messages at the beginning and I showed some of those text messages from the first video I'll show you a couple more here that I received but at some time I stopped receiving these text messages I was very clear to Customer support and to everybody I talked to that hey, I was receiving communications I was happy with being patient and being a loyal customer and just Understanding that outages do happen, but the communication has really tailed off. How do we how do we? Fix that how do we compensate me for that because that is something that is very important when it comes to Your plan right if this outage. We're gonna take longer right if there were a weeks worth of time where I wasn't gonna have Internet service from my provider. I need some other way to Compensate for that. I need some other measure to make sure that I have service so that I can Continue to operate and that's something I think for a lot of business owners. We don't necessarily think about initially right we may have a Semi backup plan we may understand. Hey if this were to happen I'm gonna do this, but we don't have a very detailed plan and ultimately in the end. There isn't much you can do in the moment I want people as business owners or people even as myself to be able to handle these types of things Even if they don't think they'll happen a lot of times in my Experience with bigger corporations. They have what they call disaster recovery plans These plans are very detailed They explain a lot of different things in detail and the reason you want those things is because you don't want to be in the Middle of a disaster or some type of catastrophic event and not have a plan or not have something you can point to and says This is what I need in order to continue to run business And in my case for this particular issue. I didn't have a plan. I had a Plan in my head, but nothing on paper Okay, so what am I going to do differently? How am I going to create this plan? I think for myself? I've already started Some of that work. I have talked to a lot of different people in business Some of those people are actually very much closely tied to AT&T and know its business very well and There are measures you can take there are things that certain people in this particular instance said they did to Compensate for the problems that they were having that I didn't have and so I'm exploring those options In the end I only had maybe one contingency and that was hey I'm going to use my cellular plan and its internet package if my internet goes down and I've done that in the past on Smaller outages where you know, hey, maybe it's a few hours here or there The internet service on your cell phone plan is a very good way to continue to do business if you need Connections to maybe a few devices, but the minute you get more than maybe five Devices using a cell phone plan to do to compensate for internet You are in a different category of type of need there in the short term I would say a Wi-Fi hotspot or your or your phone tethered to your devices is a great Contingency for a short outage, but in a case of a major outage you need more Resources you need a better way to control that you need to create a list or a different plan for Critical devices versus devices that aren't as critical. You need to categorize What is important and what isn't and that is something I'm going to start doing I'm going to actually create a list of different contingency plans how Each one of those plans fit with each one of the types of devices and know that when this type of thing happens again Who to call what the phone number is if there are certain contact people their phone numbers and email addresses and and Other folks that I can reach out to in business that if they are not experiencing an issue or I can reach out to and say Hey, do you have problems with your internet at this time? I know for myself that was one of the things I actually did but I reached out to just random folks I had I want to have identified people. I want to know what plan they're on I want to have a good idea of the kind of service they have because maybe we can come up with some type of Mutual benefit if my services and down and theirs is maybe we can sort out some some way to say Hey, look if you are in the same type of issue that I've run into with a major outage Maybe you can use My plan and this is the kind of agreement that we can set up Given that I was down for two days and those were two working days the second day of my outage I was able to to come up with a contingency where I did not have to have Internet in my home and I was able to complete all of my work and do some of my work Remotely and that is something I think had I known Was an option to me the first day I could have just moved to that and not had to worry about How long this was going to take and then reap the benefits of of the rest of the process which is hey I called AT&T and I received my discounts. So with that that's really a lot of information I know and and a very interesting story one last bit that I want to Want to point out is I did take this video and let me show it to you There you go guys look the AT&T guy driving away Tried to sell me self-service You know That's what I need. You know in addition to having no internet by AT&T. I need no self-service There you go. Thanks AT&T That's right. AT&T once the outage was over Decided hey, it would be best if we go door to door Over the neighborhood here of all of our fiber customers and offer them wireless telephone service I am not kidding you that is what happened. I could not believe it I certainly wouldn't have appreciated a conversation with them I would have probably recorded it but in the in the interest of not having to deal with it I was on my way home at the time They came to my door my wife answered the door and was like you need to talk to my husband about this and I was on my way home at the time. She had called me. I said I don't really want to talk to them Let them go and they left. Why would you want to cap? Why would you want to try to capitalize on an issue such as this? This was a major outage by the same provider There's no reason to try to say well, you know, hey, maybe you should have wireless service in addition. I Just I shuttered to think I understand the logic there Let me know in the comments section below what you think of this story. Should I have done something different? I don't believe I Missed anything when it comes to how to best deal with this issue I know I didn't have a good plan and so I'm gonna I'm gonna work to work on I'm gonna work to Correct that in the future, but Going forward. I think I have a good Feel for what is really going on and in the case of five fiber internet Why this was such a big deal. I think it affected a lot more people than just myself Right, I was one of thousands of customers who didn't have internet for several days So that gives me some solace in the sense that I know a lot of people were caught off guard A lot of people were disrupted in this and there was really no coverage There was no news coverage of it a lot of folks in in business who didn't know anything about it When I told them, hey, I haven't had internet for the last two days I haven't been able really to make any phone calls because of the So your network problems I was having as well. They They were surprised. They couldn't believe it. That's what I have I really appreciate your time and attention to this. Please like and share this video with your friends Tell them about this particular story. I know they'll want to hear kind of how everything works out how you can Really fight for what it is that you are owed in this particular sense because I'm a cost reduction consultant, right? I Definitely don't want to overpay for anything and when it comes to something like this when you experience an outage You should seek your refund. That is the genesis of what I'm trying to say I talked about this at the very beginning of the first video vendors do not care about you You need to care about yourself. You need to seek these things out You need to fight really hard to make sure that you have a plan because as a business owner These services are essential. They're key to you. You need to have a Way to continue to do business and if the vendor doesn't care Then you need to make them care and this is my website. I am Ken Ross calm and until I see you next time I'll see you around Happy New Year. I can't wait for this year. I have a lot of things playing