• Please be sure to read the rules and adhere to them. Some banned members have complained that they are not spammers. But they spammed us. Some even tried to redirect our members to other forums. Duh. Be smart. Read the rules and adhere to them and we will all get along just fine. Cheers. :beer: Link to the rules: https://www.forumsforums.com/threads/forum-rules-info.2974/

Dealing with AT&T

R

rlk

Bronze Member
Rant on:
During March, while I was on a cruise through the Caribbean, AT&T decided to switch my long distance service to Sprint. Have no idea why they did this, but they did it.

When I returned back home, I tried to make a long distance call and a recording told me my long distance service was temporarily discontinued.

Last Thursday I called AT&T to inquire about it. After 20 minutes of trying to work my way through their very unfriendly menus, and after entering my phone number several times, I received a message that the office was closed and to try again during 7:00 am - 7:00 pm.

I didn't believe that you could only report a problem from 7 - 7, so tried the menu again. Again after 20 minutes of fighting their phone menus, I reached a person. Explained the problem and was told that on March 30 they switched my long distance service to Sprint and that I needed to call Sprint.

No one at AT&T would tell me why I was switched, but my wife had read somewhere that AT&T wanted to get rid of all customers who rarely make long distance calls.

Called Sprint and they said I do not have an account with them, and never have had one, and that I needed to call AT&T.

Called AT&T again, worked through their stupid menus, and talked to someone else. He said he opened an incident and someone should call me Friday. No one called Friday.

Tried to call over the weekend and got no where.

Called AT&T Monday morning. This time instead of answering their voice menus, I repeatedly said "agent" and pressed "0". Eventually this got me to a person.

After being transferred multiple times to different people, I finally talked to a lady who said she would have long distance restored on Tuesday.

I had to work the election polls on Tuesday, so did not know until 9:00 pm that long distance service had not been restored.

Wednesday I made a few more attempts to contact AT&T but got frustrated and gave up.

This morning, Thursday, I called 611 to report the problem. After entering my phone number 3 times, and getting transferred 4 times, I talked to someone in customer retention. She had no record of any of my previous calls to AT&T complaining about no long distance service.

Told her the story and told her I was so frustrated trying to deal with AT&T that I wanted to discontinue long distance service with AT&T, and that as soon as I could find a different local provider, I would call back and discontinue local service.

She apologized and said it would never happen again, and if I would sign up for unlimited long distance service, at $40 per month, she could have my service restored today. We use our cell phones for most long distance calls, and rarely use the home phone for long distance, so paying $40 per month for something we rarely use is not going to happen.

I told her no, that I was so frustrated dealing with AT&T that I have lost all confidence in them, and wanted nothing else to do with them. She continued to try to get me to sign up for more service, but I finally convinced her that there was no way I would ever use AT&T again. She kept asking why, and I kept asking her if she heard the story I told her.

Finally she assured me my long distance service has been removed and that I would only have local service on my home phone.

I can only guess what will happen next. Would not surprise me if they discontinue my home phone.

Rant off, blood pressure has finally returned to normal. If any of our members work for AT&T I apologize for exposing your company to it's very unfriendly business processes.

Bob
 
Hell, I believe you can substitute the name of just about any of them and it is the same story. I have Verizon cell that I buy $100 a year worth of minutes and that is it. Last September they did not roll over my unused minutes so I went to the Verizon store and bitched. Two weeks later I not only had the minutes but I also got a credit toward this years $100. Then at the beginning of April they gave me another $30 credit on top of the first one. I called them up and they said yes I can use the credit to pay this September and still have the $30 toward the following year. They have no clue and make their money robbing kids who never question a bill and just pay so they can keep texting.:yum:
 
Yep, mule is correct, it makes no difference who the telecommunication company is the support is atrocious. I have some absolute horror stories about Sprint and a bundle of attorney bills to prove it.
 
A few years ago, I had a problem trying to get Bell South to connect me to DSL. The Bell South field technicians told me DSL was available at my house. Bell South customer service reps told me DSL was not available. I told them the technicians who were installing it next door told me it was available. Repeatedly the customer service person said the field technician is wrong. I told them to look up my neighbors address and see if he had DSL. They did and saw that he had DSL, but still said it was not available for me.

Through a long investigation period, I found the top manager for Bell South in NC. Wrote her a letter. She replied she would have someone investigate. Never heard back from Bell South.

I contacted the NC Utilities Commission. They said to take it up with Bell South - the utilities commission refused to intervene. So much for them representing the people of NC.

Finally contacted Earthlink about DSL service. They had me connected within days to DSL using Bell South.

Like others have said, it seems all the big communications companies just don't give a flip about customer service. What a shame. I thought deregulation was supposed to fix some of this.

Bob
 
Almost 2 years ago, our cell provider, who was Alltel, was merging this area with AT&T, but it wasn't done yet. We had our desktop and laptop computers on aircards using Alltel. I noticed that I had a lot of connection problems with both computers, which suggested to me that it was an Alltel problem. I called and was told that they would look into it. 2 weeks later, still bad connection. Mind you, my Blackberry connected with internet just fine. I called again and no trouble ticket was recorded. I had to practically BEG the idiot to pull one. It dawned on me that they just didn't want to put any money into equipment that was going to be abandoned within weeks.
In the meantime, my wife had contacted our local cable/phone/internet provider and had us hooked up to them. I called Alltel to cancel the 2 aircards. One was out of contract, so, no problem, the other one was gonna cost me $200 to break the contracts. Nuh-uh! :ermm: I argued with the lady that, since we hadn't been able to use a service we were paying for, that THEY had broken agreements and therefore, there was no longer any contract. All she could do was repeat her mantra about the $200.
I sent off an email to the FCC and explained what had happened. 2 Days later, I got a call from Alltel, asking if I still wished to cancel the remaining aircard and it would be done with no fees.
Ya think? :unsure:
Can't believe NC's commission wouldn't step in. That's their job. I'd remember that on election day! :whistling:
 
I cancelled AT&T long lines a couple of years ago. I get all my land line service via IP with Comcast. Better quality and cheaper. A no brainer.
 
bczoom said:
Can't you use your DSL for phone (outside of AT&T)?
Click to expand...

I think so, but have not investigated it.

I'll still be hooked to Bell South though since they since they provide DSL, and Bell South is just as difficult to deal with as AT&T.

Better times are coming.

Bob
 
I have to say my phone company has been great about fixing any problems we ever had. Took a few weeks and all new fiber lines up the valley but they got our internet up to speed with only brief outages when some asshole shot a box where it was spliced. It is also nice to be able to go to a local office when you have a problem. The manager came out to my place personally to assure me they would fix the troubles we were having and they did.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top