Mind Your Business: I Hate AT&T
Promises were made that it would work out soon, but to no avail. After a few days of nothing working, we cancelled their digital VOiP service and wanted to go back to POTS. We figured this would be easy, since no one had touched our physical phone lines yet. Nothing had changed or moved.
Nope. Not easy. A call to the AT&T Hotline led to a tech telling us they needed to determine why we cancelled before they could fix anything. “No”, I told him, “you don’t. You just need to get it working back on the original system, now.”
“Two hours,” he said. He lied.
The next day we called again, and were told that no ‘stop order’ had been placed and there were no notes on our account. Victims of more lies. Another tech was sent out. That tech said we were back on POTS. Our dead phone lines said otherwise. Then I looked at the VOiP base, and NOW the digital phone lights came on. But still no signal. We were told it would take up to two weeks to get our service back. It doesn’t take two weeks to melt raw copper into electrical wires, run new lines and install new service! NOTHING AT OUR PLACE HAD BEEN CHANGED!
Every time we called AT&T, we got someone else. We tried to work with the same person, but the AT&T phone system (god I hate that system) didn’t allow us to call any individual. We spoke with supervisors, more promises made, more promises broken and still no phone service. There were days we spent over 12 hours on the phone trying to get our system working.
Most of us can relate to calling AT&T over and over, getting caught in a cycle of phone options and then finally being hung up on. But that happened to our technician too. Watching his frustration was somewhat entertaining.
Then we tried to move our phone service to Brighthouse, but AT&T wouldn’t release our phones to them for over a week. All this while we have no business phones.
Side note. We tried to get AT&T to put a message on our dead business lines telling people to call another number. Nope. They can’t do that. Our numbers were lost in their system. Then I tried to get the numbers forwarded to our cell phones. Nope. Can’t forward numbers that have been cancelled. Even though we didn’t cancel the numbers.
We threatened to file a complaint with the FCC if they didn’t resolve this problem. They didn’t. We did. Yes, we filed a complaint. It’s easy. You can do it too. Go to esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm.
All of a sudden AT&T was calling us about the problems. Don’t get too excited. They called, but couldn’t reach us on our main lines. The phones still didn’t work.
One supervisor took pity on us. He dug through the system and found 14 outstanding orders on our account, all contradicting each other. He had never seen this. Lucky us.
A few days later, our standard old POTS phone system finally came back on. Two weeks without a business phone and we were finally back to where we started…and then our DVRs started acting up. FU*********** AT&T!
Mark Simon, is the co-founder of SellYourTvConceptNow.com. He is training and mentoring TV creators on pitching at the major winter TV conferences. Find more info online at http://www.HitMakerTour.com.
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Great ideas, Mr. Anonymous. That's actually how we got some of it resolved. Once I got a cell number for a supervisor, it all got resolved after 2 FULL DAYS.
About an hour after my last comment, one of our 4 phone lines came back on. My wife called AT&T and they said, yes, all 4 lines should come back on together (even though it's 2 separate companies which are billed independently).
I called again when only one line worked. Sure enough, they hadn't planned on turning on the other lines. Luckily I had a good rep on the phone who took care of it while I was on the line. What a nightmare!
While reading this, I found myself grimacing in pain at what you are suffering through. I work for AT&T. It has been your ultimate misfortune to be mired down in the idiot pool. This is what we call it when you are sucked into talking to idiots( new or disinterested people) in the business office; THEN having a pile of idiots sent to your offices, these are also either new technicians or worse, technicians that were hired to work on nothing but "U verse". Yes, large corporations will do these things. If the first guy out had had pissant sense , he could have cleared up your problems with a few calls. No, AT&T doesn't always know which hand is holding the ball, it's a sad fact of "empire" . When you take up so much real estate ( figuratively speaking ) you sometimes lose stuff. And, in somewhat defense of them, Bellsouth( a much smaller company, which I was also employed by) would lose orders and completely fowl up orders, with little regard to the customers downtime. To quote Murphy : "Shit happens..." I wish I could say that yours is an isolated incident- I can't. I wish I could say that it won't happen to some other poor schmuck- I can't. The best plan of action if ( God forbid) you should ever wind up in a situation like this again; is get the cel phone number of the guy in the truck. Forget the business office, DO NOT call these people again once you have made your initial report, they will only screw things up, and you can never talk to the same person twice- it will not happen- you can hang your hat on that! When you get the tech's cel#, also get the supervisor's cel# , these guys can do a lot more than they realise. Again, I am terribly sorry for your ordeal ( I don't work in your state, so I know it wasn't my fault) but, nobody else will do it. Good luck with your phone problems.
Unbelievable! AT&T gets even worse. I got up this morning and all of my office lines have been disconnected! AT&T has been sending us checks to make up for all the shit they caused this summer and now their accounting system says we owe THEM money for when they screwed up our phone system in the first place.
Yes, I can dispute it, but my phones stay off during the dispute. Or, I can pay their ransom to get my phones back on and then go back after my money.
During my call, instead of being transferred, I was also sent back into the cue line again and had to go through the entire issue AGAIN with a new person.
Our phones should be back momentarily, but I'm about to blow a gasket! The system is set so that no one is responsible and you can never speak to the same person twice. AAAARRRGGHHHHHHH!
Nice one !
Your not alone mark, I had a friend that had to deal with comcast a couple months ago. He sent out the techinican and things kept on going downhill from there the worst customer service ever.The techinican had to come back 4 times because first he was late, never showedup, brought the wrong equipment, or the equipment didn't work period. Thanks for the lesson and the warning about att. They are truly one of the worst.
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