A.T.&T. SUCKS HOLE

Why, you may ask? Because they lie. Maybe a month or two ago, we received a stupid sales call from AT&T, wanting us to migrate our internet over from a cable modem to their DSL line. They claimed it was just as good, for half the price. Just try it, you’ll like it, and if you don’t, there’s no penalty, just send the DSL box back, and they’ll remove any charges, no harm done. OK, we decided to give it a shot. The box came, we hooked it up, and you know what? IT SUCKED. SLOW like molasses. We took one look at that, and decided, never mind, let’s stick with what we have. I do know that if we UPGRADED (more money) we could have faster service, but the upgrade would put us paying what we pay now for cable, and why would we bother to go to that trouble for a company that LIES, when Comcast is at least honest (though they don’t give us Sci Fi on expanded basic for the TV, which also sucks). So, we called them and told them to discontinue the service, and we sent the box back.

A few days later, we received a bill, with charges for the box and the monthly service. I assumed it was too soon for the reversal to go through, so I just paid the part for our local phone service, and ignored the rest. Well, Friday afternoon, we received a bill from them, saying we were past due. I called and explained the situation (after being on hold for about 20 minutes) to a woman who had NO IDEA of how to deal with me (see Wednesday’s post about customer service), so she tried to transfer me to someone in the DSL department. She works for AT&T, and guess what? She couldn’t transfer me, and I got disconnected. So, I tried a different number from my bill. This guy knew what he was talking about, some, but couldn’t help me. He could take off the charges that had been accumulating since we canceled the service, (why were charges accumulating after we canceled, you may ask? BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T CANCEL IT), but he couldn’t do anything about the charges for the first 30 days of service, which by opening the box, we somehow agreed to pay. Of course, they never mentioned that when they sold us the stupid ‘no risk’ package in the first place, did they? So, he talked to his supervisor, who said someone would call us back within 48 business hours. They can’t keep track of time, because it was more than 60 business hours before we got a call. From a woman who said that they couldn’t help me. My only hope is to complain, in writing, and hope that they’ll remove the charge from the bill. $16 for the 20 minutes we had the thing hooked up, before we got it going and realized it sucked. Nice, huh?

Makes me wish I still worked for a certain company that provided benefits management for Pac Bell, before they became SBC, before they became AT&T. I could mess with someone’s health coverage. Sigh. But maybe back then, they had better customer service, and would SEE that we phoned in the day we received the box, that we requested to have the service turned off, that we did not try to get away with using it for a month and then cancelling.

OK, so it’s only $16. Hardly worth my frustration and a blog post, right? But what I hate, hate, hate, is companies who won’t let their employees think outside of stupid rules and do what they know to be right. And customer service reps who perhaps don’t think outside of those same rules, and can’t fathom that they might be in the wrong on this one. That once we open the box, included in the box is a letter explaining to us that we are liable for 30 days of service, whether we use it or not, because we’ve opened the box, no matter what the idiot at AT&T told us. UGH.

So…HOPEFULLY someone will come and buy our place, and we will move, and at the new place, we can switch to Astound or some other company, because where we are now, if we want a land line (I do) that isn’t Vonage (I don’t want that, they suck too), our only option is AT&T. And we’ll jump ship in a heartbeat, and I’ll make sure someone at AT&T knows exactly WHY we’re not going with them. Idiots.