>Hopefully whoever they outsource to can continue the good work. I've never seen this go well. My most recent experience is one of many where "improvements" w

>Hopefully whoever they outsource to can continue the good work. I've never seen this go well. My most recent experience is one of many where "improvements" were terrible for me as a customer. Amerigas, a national propane company, did the same thing the year before last. When I needed someone, I'd call the local office and talk to someone who knew the area and the business and would get whatever question or issue resolved almost immediately. When they "improved" customer service by firing all of these local people and consolidated them into a (not offshore, at least) customer service center, it was a total nightmare. We were in the middle of a backyard renovation that required burying the propane line for our grill and stove. I called the local office and scheduled everything a couple months in advance. When the appointment time came, I received a notification that it was going to be delayed by a week, which would also hold up my project at a cost of $1000/day to pay for an idle crew and their equipment. Unfortunately, between the time I made the appointment and the time I called to see if it could be moved back, the customer service "upgrade" happened. Every rep was super friendly, but no one had any knowledge of the business and every call required about 40 minutes of hold time just to speak with someone, 10 minutes of conversation, and then another 40 minutes of hold time to speak with the supervisor who was more knowledgable. Even the supservisors didn't have answers and would promise to call back by the end of the day. Of course, out of the 5-6 conversations we had with that promise, exactly zero resulted in a callback. When the work was finally done, it was done without a permit, which could only be pulled by the gas company, so the project was on hold again until that was resolved. In the end, I had to find a customer service VP on LinkedIn and send them a very polite note about the "unpermitted gas line work" done on my property. That resulted in the issue being resolved the very next day. Before the upgrade, I could have spoken directly with the local rep, who would then just speak to the local tech, and resolve things almost immediately every time.