Supra Telecom ripoff the business that doesn't give a dam Miami Florida

it can be bellsouth they have lied to me in the past
a lot of time so big it is a big joke they over change me then they say they gave me a credit but on the next phone bill there is no credit at all what a joke bell south is

it can be bellsouth they have lied to me in the past
a lot of time so big it is a big joke they over change me then they say they gave me a credit but on the next phone bill there is no credit at all what a joke bell south is

it can be bellsouth they have lied to me in the past
a lot of time so big it is a big joke they over change me then they say they gave me a credit but on the next phone bill there is no credit at all what a joke bell south is

it can be bellsouth they have lied to me in the past
a lot of time so big it is a big joke they over change me then they say they gave me a credit but on the next phone bill there is no credit at all what a joke bell south is

I am also one of the many employees who lost their jobs in Quincy...I want to apologize to all of the past and current Supra customers for all the misinformation that we were forced to give out as well as the magnitude of lies that were told...It is my suggestion that if you currently have Supratelecom service, you need to switch back to Bell South or another carrier...Supra will screw you, as they have so many other customers and employees...To those who are employees in Costa Rica, I feel for you! Without proper training and experience, there is no way possible that you can do your jobs and provide good customer care to the customers of Supratelecom..I am one of the fortunate ex employees who was able to retain a new position with another phone company and am pleased with my new career choice and the company that I am employed with...SupraTelecom will go down, its just a matter of time! Leave while you can!

I too am a former Supra employee from the Quincy, Il office. I also say to every caller that I spoke with "I'm Sorry!" Being forced to lie to the caller "to make them happy and so they will get of the phone quicker" is NO WAY to run a business! Supra was the best job, and my 2nd favorite job so far. It's been hard (impossible) to find a job that pays close to what I made at Supra and as easy as it was their. For the most part we had good mangers and support team, and a great training dept. Also I agree with Cathy we were told everything was okay until the day we got the ax! And yes I also say that if you have Supra's services switch back to Bell South! And yes I also agree that still doing paper orders is VERY outdated and they sometimes get lost. I think that everyone of us who used to work for Supra wanted to tell our customers stuff everyday but we couldn't. And there is no way that a customer should have to wait 1-3 months for a credit! Because as we all know Supra didn't give you 1-3 months to pay your bill! And yes their billing system was screwy as I remember. I wish the best to all current Supra customers and employees in the new centers and to the former employees at Quincy I wish that you all find great jobs that are way better then Supra was to us and their customers!

As a recent former employee I can tell you Kathy and Felipe that you are right, altough the company recently made some policies for adjusting and giving better service and when they're good they're good it is still a mess.

For example most people are trained and they try to do their best, but they have to get the experience they need on the floor taking calls.
The biggest problem with Supra is that they constantly change policies, for example they trained the whole staff to provision orders for LENS so when a customer calls and needs something added to his phone(for example adding a caller ID) we would provision the order and the customer would get his feature going in 24-48 hours because we would not have to fill a paper order and wait for it to get done(if it ever did). Now about five weeks later they changed it and nobody can provision LENS anymore so customers have to wait for their order to be completed by provisioning dpt.

As it is stated here in this page their billing sucks(which makes most of the call volume), altough the agents were given rights to give credits right away to certain amount(they had to send a report to billing before) if a customer calls because they billed him/her for something they should not have been billed for it was great, but the thing is that they do not refund the taxes generated by it, for example if a customer is billed for domestic long distance calls and they had the unlimited plan meaning they are not supposed to be charged for the calls they do credit the calls but they do not credit the taxes generated by those calls($110 in taxes for wrongfully billed calls anyone?).

Also their billing system is not accurate at times and also their system fails a lot(sometimes crashed up to 5 times a day and the ordering system did not work at all, accts could not be disconnected or activated and so on), so sometimes you are talking to agents who are taking your calls blindly because they have no system and have no way to access your account(people are told that the system is being updated). Not only that but they are now messing with the employee's schedules and paychecks, when they paid the whole staff the wrong amount I decided that was it and I quit.

It is also true that when you finally know what you're doing you realize you don't want to work for Supra anymore,it was sad because when I got the hang of it and was able to help a lot of customers I felt uncomfortable with the constant changes in policies and other things that makes working for Supra now unbearable.

Thank you Felipe. I feel so bad for Costa Rica and what you are going through. We could have worked great together as a team. We in Quincy needed the extra help, especially with the Spanish speaking population. But I don't think any of us ever considered the possibility that Supra would close Quincy and put Costa Rica in charge! That just didn't make sense. Surprise!

When we were hired in June '01 we were told that the Supra Corporate offices would be moved to Quincy. When they started closing Miami call center offices we felt bad for them, but it looked like it was really going to happen. It would have been a good decision. Of course, at that time, they expected to provide service in Illinois within the year! Well, we know that never happened and couldn't happen the way they were running the business. They can't even handle Florida and they've been providing service there for several years.

This phone service that you are talking about, the TOS being connected in the wrong apt. That can be fixed immediately. The customer should not have to wait. I assume there is someone living in Apt 10? This means their phone number was disconnected and replaced with the original customer's phone number! Apt 10 might not even be a Supra customer!! Imagine their surprise! It doesn't matter what the original order said, but there should have been notes in the computer even if it was a transfer of service. The important thing is to make the order RIGHT. LCSC could fix that for you by cancelling the hook-up order. If they can't do that or it's been too long, simply cancel the connection, and enter 2 new orders connecting the correct old number in Apt 10 and the correct transfer number in Apt 13, or whatever it was. We fixed errors like that all the time. There might be a 24 hr. delay while the numbers disconnect and before the same numbers can be used again, but that beats 10 days! And IF the problem was a BS error, they can fix it immediately. Tell your friend to call someone at LCSC who is helpful and see what can be done. The customer has every right to be angry, and the person in Apt 10 should be extremely angry! I know I would be.

The repair issues were supposed to be fixed when Supra contracted out to a repair company other than BS. I'm sorry to hear that it hasn't worked. BS may have given us some grief, but I do have to say when they were doing all of our repair and new installation orders, at least they got it done and got it done professionally!

In the same token, even though LCSC is a help desk for "alternative phone companies" and working for BS, some of those employees were very helpful and really wanted to do what was right. Maybe not so much for US, but for the customer. Some were ignorant, and some flat out refused to help us, but we had some nice contacts there too. I can't tell you who they were because their jobs would be in jeapardy, but I'm sure the provisioners know who the nice ones are by now.

All I can say to customer's who are reading this, if you've had any problems that are not acceptable with Supra, change companies. Copy and send them the "proof" they have asked for & send it registered mail. This way when they lose it, you can prove it was sent! Eventually you will find someone in billing to settle your account. If they don't owe you money, but have totally messed up your telephone service, change companies. The telephone is sometimes our only lifeline for emergencies or general well being. You deserve the best service you can get.

Thank you Felipe. I feel so bad for Costa Rica and what you are going through. We could have worked great together as a team. We in Quincy needed the extra help, especially with the Spanish speaking population. But I don't think any of us ever considered the possibility that Supra would close Quincy and put Costa Rica in charge! That just didn't make sense. Surprise!

When we were hired in June '01 we were told that the Supra Corporate offices would be moved to Quincy. When they started closing Miami call center offices we felt bad for them, but it looked like it was really going to happen. It would have been a good decision. Of course, at that time, they expected to provide service in Illinois within the year! Well, we know that never happened and couldn't happen the way they were running the business. They can't even handle Florida and they've been providing service there for several years.

This phone service that you are talking about, the TOS being connected in the wrong apt. That can be fixed immediately. The customer should not have to wait. I assume there is someone living in Apt 10? This means their phone number was disconnected and replaced with the original customer's phone number! Apt 10 might not even be a Supra customer!! Imagine their surprise! It doesn't matter what the original order said, but there should have been notes in the computer even if it was a transfer of service. The important thing is to make the order RIGHT. LCSC could fix that for you by cancelling the hook-up order. If they can't do that or it's been too long, simply cancel the connection, and enter 2 new orders connecting the correct old number in Apt 10 and the correct transfer number in Apt 13, or whatever it was. We fixed errors like that all the time. There might be a 24 hr. delay while the numbers disconnect and before the same numbers can be used again, but that beats 10 days! And IF the problem was a BS error, they can fix it immediately. Tell your friend to call someone at LCSC who is helpful and see what can be done. The customer has every right to be angry, and the person in Apt 10 should be extremely angry! I know I would be.

The repair issues were supposed to be fixed when Supra contracted out to a repair company other than BS. I'm sorry to hear that it hasn't worked. BS may have given us some grief, but I do have to say when they were doing all of our repair and new installation orders, at least they got it done and got it done professionally!

In the same token, even though LCSC is a help desk for "alternative phone companies" and working for BS, some of those employees were very helpful and really wanted to do what was right. Maybe not so much for US, but for the customer. Some were ignorant, and some flat out refused to help us, but we had some nice contacts there too. I can't tell you who they were because their jobs would be in jeapardy, but I'm sure the provisioners know who the nice ones are by now.

All I can say to customer's who are reading this, if you've had any problems that are not acceptable with Supra, change companies. Copy and send them the "proof" they have asked for & send it registered mail. This way when they lose it, you can prove it was sent! Eventually you will find someone in billing to settle your account. If they don't owe you money, but have totally messed up your telephone service, change companies. The telephone is sometimes our only lifeline for emergencies or general well being. You deserve the best service you can get.

I Agree Kathy:

I worked At the Repair dpt (felipe@repair dpt) To all the customers that i couldnt help SORRY about the inconvenience BUT i really tryed helping you . The problem is the burocracy of the company

Kathy and others: Can you believe that NOW Supra operators from repair are taking INTERNET related calls about troubleshooting etc,AND that Internet operators are taking REPAIR calls

CUSTOMERS BEWARE Prepair for the headaches !!!!

Another Typical situation::
a friend of mine in Supra told this latest problem that happend a few days ago:: A customer called many days ago for a (TOS)-transfer of service to new location- and he or she requested the order to be done in apartment 13,but Supra messed up the order and placed the serv in apt 10.The concerned customer called Supra to find out what happend,(-because Supra NEVER follows up on anything ) and guess what the answer was???

Supra said and did this: They told the customer that they couldnt do anything,and that it would take an extra 10 days for the order to complete.
They also checked the notes of the account to find out if the order info was posted. ,but guess what IT WASNT !,IN THE NOTES THERE WAS NOTHING.

Another way to find out the source of the error,is to check on the original order from the day that the customer called, BUT GUESS WHAT?????

Supra still works with paper orders, so by the time the problem emerged this paper was thrown away.CAN YOU IMAGINE THE PROBLEM THAT THIS GAVE TO THE CUST. My point is that with Supra you have no assurance that things will be done right. And if they mess up ,they will not give you a good answers. THE ONLY ONE WILL BE :BEAR WITH IT !!!!!

I too am an ex-employee of Supra, Quincy, IL. I highly advise anyone who has had any kind of problem with Supra to change their telephone service immediately!! I couldn't tell you that when I worked there, but I highly recommend it now that we are layed off and Quincy is closed down.

The initial idea of alternative telephone service was great. We in Quincy jumped on the bandwagon and literally spent all of our time trying to learn the system and the ins and outs with Bell South. I was in the first group of Supra employees in Quincy. Having worked the telephones and being a "provisioning expert" for almost 2 years, I can tell you the problem with the company is not the employees (for the most part) and it's not all Bell South's fault. It's the MANAGEMENT!!

We in Quincy had some good training, alot of contradictory training, and found out what we were doing pretty much on our own. We had some Excellent & Professional employees. What we lacked was 1) Good Solid Honest Directives from Supra Corporate Office in Florida, 2)The Ability to Do Our Job in whatever time frame it took, 3) A Manager in Quincy Who Was Allowed to do What was Best Without Permission From Florida, and 4) The Respect From Florida Corporate For the OUTSTANDING Job we Were Doing EVEN WITHOUT THEIR HELP!

For those customers who don't understand, it is not Costa Rico's fault your orders are messed up. They don't have the proper training, they do have a language barrier, even though they speak both Spanish & English, there are enough differences in languages so nobody can understand some of them!!, they don't even have the resources we in Quincy had. I cannot imagine turning the entire customer service, billing, installation, etc. over to employees who have only had 6 month's training AND most of that time their phones or computers or computer programs didn't work! The people you speak to on the phone are being trained by, and Depend on, people who have no idea what they are doing.

This company has made one bad decision after another. Refusing to pay Bell South any money because they didn't agree with parts of the bill?? Honestly we in Quincy did not know about this until the AX fell and our system with Bell South was turned off for 3 months. We couldn't do anything and we were not allowed to tell our customers we couldn't do anything!! Most people & most companies know they need to at least pay the part of the bill they cannot dispute! We did not know Supra was not paying anything, and we never dreamed our order link with Bell South would be down for so long.

Closing the Quincy Call Center was a huge mistake, and I predicted then that Supra would go under within 6 months. We had the only long term, trained professionals in all of Supra who spoke and worked with customers. There are long term "management" people in Supra Florida, but they don't talk to customers!! They wouldn't even take our calls!

Before the price increases in August of 2002, Supra pricing was a steal! Now the prices are higher and you are paying extra for features you used to get for "free". Pretty soon you are going to realize that there are other companies out there with a much better reputation who can offer you basically the same service for the same price, and you don't have to Call Them Every Day!!

The way Supra trains and Treats their employees generates employees who eventually don't care. You're seeing it now in Costa Rica. They got dumped on in a big way. They couldn't handle the call and work volume while Quincy was still open. They certainly can't handle it now. They are losing the almost-trained staff they had and you are stuck with whoever you get on the phone. They are frustrated, you are frustrated, and there is no one there who can help either of you!! That's very sad and an intolerable way to run a business.

Provisioners are the people who "work" your order. They are the ones who enter your custom order and Make It Work. For the most part, they fight whoever needs to be fought and they get you (the customer) what you wanted and as quickly as possible.

Now imagine all of these people tirelessly working complicated orders, and in the middle of everything, being told to stop what they are doing and answer phone calls. For most of my almost 2 years at Supra in Quincy, phone calls were the most important thing. Why? Because they wanted the new customer orders! Everybody had to drop whatever they were doing and answer phones. What happened? New orders were taken, problems were written down, promises were made, but NO WORK WAS DONE! EVERYONE WAS ON THE PHONE!! I've worked for Professional Companies, and this is not the way to do business. Yes, phones must be answered, but if the work isn't done, why bother to take the orders?? You have then created more complaints, more phone calls, and what can you tell them? We can't work your order, fix your problem, do anything, because we have to answer the phones!

There was a time, toward the end of Quincy, when we as "order entry people" were allowed to only take problem calls and allowing us time to actually work the customer's order while they were on the phone. And most of us knew what we were doing and the order was almost guaranteed to work. The way it was supposed to, and should have, the first time.

Sadly, you are probably not finding that now because the people who are working your orders are not properly trained & will never be properly trained. By the time anyone knows what they are doing, they are finding out they don't want to work for Supra anymore!! So you are left with a bunch of new employees who don't really understand what they are doing or how to make it work, and there is no one left who knows what they are doing to train them!

I could go on forever, but I think you get the picture. Someone in top management is only interested in making money for themselves and maybe a few selected family or friends. They are not interested in doing what is right by the other companies they deal with or the people they work for: YOU, THE CUSTOMER.

Finally, for anyone reading this who used to talk to "Kathy in Quincy" about your order, I APOLIGIZE. I truly care what happens to each and every one of you, and to your telephone service. I am sorry you are probably not getting what the company promised you either!

Jessica and everybody else :

You are right Supra takes advantage of the cheap labor here in Costa Rica because like you said: Less pay and less benefits.

But not all companies that are here in Costa Rica are taking advantage of workers.Im going to star working in another American company and the deal with them is much diferent.They have benefits, bonuses and they really treat the employee well.So it depends on the company, and this REALLY affects the way the employee work.

I can tell you that most of supras employees at the CR call center are TIRED of supras way of doing things.This guy "Kay Ramos"(the owner of the company) and his people make it impossible for workers to work.And they are firing SO much people So fast, for SO many stupid things , that a mayor SUPRA problem is that most of the employees dont know the system or the way the industry and the company works.So if you call Supra`s customer line what you will get is a person not to familiarized with the company.

In my case a considered myself a person that liked his work and liked to help people or customers or whatever,but after many stupid problems with my bosses a realized that the best way to work in Supra if not to try and help the customer ,JUST TAKE CALLS.It`s not worth the hasle to try and help someone or go the extra mile ,because in my case I GOT FIRED.

If supra explains to it's customer the way they do things ,i bet most would go to another company.

In my country or others in the third world the burocracy is HIGH. And by looking at Supra's share of burocracy you would think it is from here NOT THE U.S .

Jessica and everybody else :

You are right Supra takes advantage of the cheap labor here in Costa Rica because like you said: Less pay and less benefits.

But not all companies that are here in Costa Rica are taking advantage of workers.Im going to star working in another American company and the deal with them is much diferent.They have benefits, bonuses and they really treat the employee well.So it depends on the company, and this REALLY affects the way the employee work.

I can tell you that most of supras employees at the CR call center are TIRED of supras way of doing things.This guy "Kay Ramos"(the owner of the company) and his people make it impossible for workers to work.And they are firing SO much people So fast, for SO many stupid things , that a mayor SUPRA problem is that most of the employees dont know the system or the way the industry and the company works.So if you call Supra`s customer line what you will get is a person not to familiarized with the company.

In my case a considered myself a person that liked his work and liked to help people or customers or whatever,but after many stupid problems with my bosses a realized that the best way to work in Supra if not to try and help the customer ,JUST TAKE CALLS.It`s not worth the hasle to try and help someone or go the extra mile ,because in my case I GOT FIRED.

If supra explains to it's customer the way they do things ,i bet most would go to another company.

In my country or others in the third world the burocracy is HIGH. And by looking at Supra's share of burocracy you would think it is from here NOT THE U.S .

i too am an exemployee of supra telecom. however i was no fired or anything. this company shut down everything in the united states except what it had to keep here by law.

no customre service rep you speak to lives or pays taxes to the united states. this company takes advantage of third world countries for the cheaper pay and less benifits it has to provide for its employees.

if you want to help the economy choose american. the money you pay for this service goes right out of our country. and supra cant even pay bell south the money that it owes them. what can you expect from a native nigerian that can bearly speak english?

i too am an exemployee of supra telecom. however i was no fired or anything. this company shut down everything in the united states except what it had to keep here by law.

no customre service rep you speak to lives or pays taxes to the united states. this company takes advantage of third world countries for the cheaper pay and less benifits it has to provide for its employees.

if you want to help the economy choose american. the money you pay for this service goes right out of our country. and supra cant even pay bell south the money that it owes them. what can you expect from a native nigerian that can bearly speak english?

i too am an exemployee of supra telecom. however i was no fired or anything. this company shut down everything in the united states except what it had to keep here by law.

no customre service rep you speak to lives or pays taxes to the united states. this company takes advantage of third world countries for the cheaper pay and less benifits it has to provide for its employees.

if you want to help the economy choose american. the money you pay for this service goes right out of our country. and supra cant even pay bell south the money that it owes them. what can you expect from a native nigerian that can bearly speak english?

As a former employee of Supra at there call center in Costa Rica , i can tell you that i wouldnt trust my business to Supra.

in this case what happend is that nobody went to this persons bussines to connect the lines. Can you imagine trying to run a bussiness with this situation.IMPOSSIBLE.

Im my experience as an employee , i saw SO many burocracy that it made me angry because it only caused trouble to the customer.an the operators can't do anything

I worked for Supra for 6 months,at their call center in Costa Rica.YES in COSTA RICA.They have call centers in Costa Rica,Dominican Republic and Ghana.I worked until i got fired for going the extra mile with a customer.I left Supra very angry and confused because i couldnt understand how a company can treat their employees so bad , as well as their customers.

The Supra idea is good because it`s suposed to deliver serv at a cheap rate.But the reality is other.a LEMON company !.

There are 2 mayor problems:First,Supra's dependence on BELL SOUTH,and second Supra's mediocrity.

In the long run i think that supra is a bad option because a customer cannot bear with the run around everytime he calls his phone company. Specially the phone service.PEOPLE DEPEND ON IT.

Supra's mediocrity revolves on the fact that they have TOO many call centers,and TOO many new employees.The provitioning dpt is handled by employees with less than 1 year experience,some of them with less than 6 months,so the error count is HIGH.

Can you believe that Supra still uses paper to process orders ??? Do you think that they can keep track on ALL of them???.

I know that sometimes orders get cancelled or get done with mistakes on them ,but this is no excuse to omit those orders or not to let the customer know about it.My point is that supra does not respond like it should.

The customer is always the one that has to call the company to find out about it's orders,and to receive the bad news .Like the case above.

I think that customers should beware because this is not the correct doing of a phone company.

The company has to be on top of everything that the customer requests NOT THE CUSTOMER.

PLEASE VISIT MY PAGE AT: www.supra.8k.com
Or e-mail me at: supraripoff@hotmail.com

If you have any questions on how things work at supra contact me, i will be glad to repond to your questions on any subject about Supra

Supra telecom was one of the best places i worked for. the enviorment was wonderful and so were the staff. Although i feel that Supra could have handled our customers better. i feel bad for all the customers that went with supra that had problems. if we could have fixed the problems we wouldn't have had so many calls in queue. what do expect though from a company that was just starting out? No matter how many times we had meatings after work team leaders and managers kept telling us that everything was fine, why couldn't they be truthful, after all we did have a right to know. Supra telecom was a wonderful business we just didn't have the ability to run it. Not all of it is Supra's fault though, Bellsouth did have a lot to do with it. When we called BS they would give us false information. BS could tell us anything about our orders and we would have to go with what they say. So a lot of Supra customers were upset with Supra when BS would give false information. I don't feel that customers should be mad at Supra only BS had a lot to do with it.

I think that BellSouth would also appreciate a level playing field in as much as having CLEC's adhere to the same rules and regulations BellSouth must follow. Plus - we do pay our bills!

With the Telecommunications Act of 1996 it states that the Baby Bells had to allow for compitition to stop the monopoly that was happening. Unfortunately I feel that there is still a monopoly in place so to say.

When we place an order to Bellsouth they have 10 business hours to respond. That could be eithor good or bad. Sometime they come back with what is called a "false clarification". What this means is that their "system" could not understand the order so it sends an "error message" or "clarification". This can greatly slow down the process in which it takes to get our customer's the features or supplies they need.

Sometimes we are told that the clarification will be given to a "work leader" to have fixed as there are too many calls holding. What we have come to find is that we have had to document the name of the person we are speaking to & the "work leader" to then callback a second time to verify that the work was done.

To give you a better idea of how this process can slow down an order, let me show you an example:
1) Order called in on April 24th say 4pm est
2) Order gets to provisioner on April 26th
3) Order placed into system at 3pm est
4) 10 business hours means that Bellsouth does not have to respond back until 4pm est on April 29th (the business days are Mon-Fri 8am - 5pm)
5) Clarification received by Supra Telecom on April 29th at 4pm est
6) provisioner works correction on April 29th and resubmits order at 4:15pm est
7) Bellsouth now has until 8:15am on May 1st(the extra 15 minutes could be pushed through to the next business day!)
8) Order given Firm Order Commitment for May 6th

In a customer's eyes, it has now taken Supra Telecom 11 days to possibly have the call waiting removed and caller ID added!

Sometimes, however,giving the work to a "work leader" can then lead to additional "clarifications" being found. These are different from person to person that you speak with.

These additional clarifications can also lead to additional time being added for an order to be completed. The 11 customer days could now lead to 15 customer days, because we have to keep calling the support center to get the orders "worked" into Bellsouth's system for be it dispatched out on or simply the changing of features.


For example: You have a home business that has just closed, and you move across town into your new home. You were unable to keep your old telephone number due to the change in central offices. Two days later, after you just moved across town and had a new number issued to you, you decide that you want this new number to be just an additional residential line. Well one person from Bellsouth might tell us that a business to residential change requires a telephone number changed if it has been published in the directory or 411 in the past year. However, the next person will state that it is not necessary due to the short range in time. This might take several calls, and several hours to get straightened out. However, when the order is finally allowed to completed, Bellsouth still has 10 business hours to send back a Firm Order Confirmation.

The problem is that it seems that we at Supra Telecom are given one set of rules to abide by, and at the same time, Bellsouth's people are given another set of rules for us to abide by. Now I know that there are terrif regulations and fcc standards, and psc standards. However shouldn't everyone from Bellsouth to Supra Telecom has a set of these same rules????