As usual, the employees at Earthlink get shafted and the customers suffer. What happened to the CV&Bs? Were they really that hard to follow? Mindspring adhered to the CV&Bs and as a result obtained profitability. Now Earthlink wants to be profitable - I know how they can do it, everyone on the legacy Mindspring side knows how they can do it, even Earthlink's customers know how they can do it. It's simple - treat the customers right and profitability will come. To treat the customers right, take care of your employees that are in direct contact with the customers and give them the necessary tools to do their job. It's that simple. Honest!
Earthlink repeatedly displays the corporate stereotype that it has become. Earthlink is a big, evil, greedy corporation and doesn't care about its customers. It's ridiculous that I have to point this out, but without customers Earthlink is nothing. I know that statement seems really obvious, but apparently some of Earthlink's suits don't catch on very quick. At Earthlink, customer service takes a backseat to corporate politics.
A prime example of corporate bullshit being more important than happy customers is the firing of Alex Feazell. Yesterday he sent an email out to most of the company regarding his termination and the years he's spent with Mindspring. Alex is a modem god. He put together vast amounts of modem information for training and teching purposes. The strong modem skills of Mindspring's tech support can be vastly attributed to this man. So why would Earthlink want to fire someone of such great value? Well, it's because he wanted techs to be able to help customers quickly and effectively. A change in the tools used by tech support caused a problem - techs couldn't find the information needed to fix modem problems. Alex tried to rectify the situation by contacting the appropriate people, but nothing was done. So, in order to help the reps (and in turn, the customers) Alex emailed all the techs with a link to his website containing modem information. Management wanted the techs to be using Earthlink's tools rather than outside sites, so they shut down Alex's website and terminated his employment at Earthlink.
There's a lot more to the story, so take 15 minutes and read Alex's email. It'll be well worth your time to see what Earthlink is capable of doing. Management shows utter disregard for the Core Values and Beliefs as well as its employees and customers. Alex created this page for people to petition to have Earthlink's tech support tools made available again through playbook. If I thought it would make a difference, I would start a petition page for Alex to get his job back, but I really don't think management would care.
