Customer service seems to be taking a turn for the worse, except in small businesses.

Worse yet, initial contact would make you think it’s not bad. Lots of numerical options, friendly voices.

But there’s a bad side: you can’t in some cases get out of the loop.

ATT sounds good, but the last number you hit to change carriers doesn’t work. When they get the switch notice from Cox, they call again, sweetness and light. Why not do it right the first time?

Century Link, of course, is bad to the bone. Our landline is up maybe 80 % of the time, and they can’t or won’t fix it. So, we’re moving our entire account to Cox.

Cox isn’t entirely clean, either. After accepting the account, worth about $225 a month, they want a deposit from a person with an 840 credit score. Go figure.

And Equifax won’t release the credit report without four factor authentication which doesn’t work for some reason.

The good news is that small business isn’t falling for these trends.