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Worst customer service ever (AT&T Broadband)


Advil
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Time for another rant.

/rant on

My cable connection (AT&T) has been down for 13 days now. The problem has had nothing to do with their acquisition of @home, my service worked fine for almost a week after the conversion. The problems started when I decided to switch to a cable modem that I purchased. This is supposed to save you $10 a month. The procedure is clearly listed on their web page as something you can do and should be "no problem."

Well, the first person who put the paperwork through screwed something up. My service ended up disconnected. So we started calling tech support. For the first several days we were speaking with Level 1 support, and the hold times were well over an hour each time. Then we started getting routed to the level 2 support. This is insane, because to get to them you have to talk to level 1 first and give then your service number. So you spend around 1 hour on hold to talk to level 1, and then up to 3 hours on hold waiting to get through to level 2. We have made calls to level 2 several times, and our total time on hold must be well over 15 hours by now.

It getts better. It wasn't until the last 4 days (of 13 so far) that our problem was actually sent to be worked on, according to the last tech I talked to. They were supposed to have a person call me back twice so far during all this, and have not.

This all built up to the last call I made to them last night. The guy told me:

1) We don't know when we will get you turned back on.

2) I can't tell you who knows that.

3) I can't give you the phone number for anyone in sas (the network division)

4) You will get an automated phone call when its resolved, not a human one.

5) There is no one past me in tech support, even for unique problems.

6) I have no boss that you may speak to.

7) There is no complaint department for you to call.

I'm not really angry yet, what's the point? There's no one for me to yell at, but if I get asked if they need their monopoly of the cable system broken, I'll vote hell yes.

If I treat one of my customers even half this badly, I'd be lucky if all they did was go somewhere else.

/rant off

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Dump them. I know this might sound crazy, but I know severall people who have AOL DSL connection and they say it never disconnected them, and AOL customer service is actually ok, you never wait for more than 5 minutes and all the problems are usually solved in the first call.

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I have Earthlink, and they have been excellent.

Although, if I were you, I would get hold of your local provider for phone and ask if DSL is available, Verizon and the other usually have pretty good customer service. I'd get rid of the AT&T like a rotten fish..

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I had DSL briefly when it first became available. Actually I switched to cable because of the crappy DSL connection I had. At the time, I had the 384k up & down package. It should be capable of downloading up to 48k per second. Unfortunately, I never got more than 16. This was totally unacceptable. I had them look into it. They spent 3 weeks supposedly working on it, couldn't figure out why, and told me to live with it. I canceled just before my first month was up, which I had to do or I was going to have to pay the whole year contract.

I know things have changed a lot with DSL in the last year, but my cable was working VERY well right up until this fiasco started.

I just needed to vent some serious frustration.

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I had problems too when I switched to my own cable modem instead of renting one from them. Eventually after 1 week and many calls to them, they sent someone to my house for free to change the modem. I found out that if your new modem dosen't work after a few days, they are obligated to send a technition to your house at no charge to install it for you.

Advil, check out this link: http://www.petitiononline.com/001/petition.html

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: LordDavid ]

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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Around day 3 or 4 a technician did show up at my house free of charge. (A day early I might add which was the only pleasant surprise so far)

He did all the usual tests, determined it wasn't my problem, then spent 2 hours on his phone trying to contact someone to edit my account. He couldn't contact anyone, and got so frustrated at his own people he slammed his cellphone on my desk a few times. He was very good at his job and the soul of courtesy to us, he just couldn't fix it.

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Thats nothing. I've had MediaOne broadband long before AT&T even thought of buying it and calling it AT&T Broadband down here (SouthEast region). And that back when it was just one way (downstream).

Of course, once AT&T took over, service and customer support went down the drain.

In fact, speaking of coincidence. Mindspring (my backup ISP I've had since 1992) now owned by Earthlink, just had DSL in my area. I configured it this weekend, got it up and running (I opted for the self-install because I CAN'T stand strangers screwing around with my gear) and first thing I did this morning was call up AT&T and terminated the cable service. I LOVED having to make that phone call.

I still have their cable TV service though. But first chance I get, I'm switching to satellite service and cancelling that too.

I switched my AT&T long distance phone service in favor of Sprint about six years ago.

Yes, I *hate* AT&T with a passion. And if their constantly declining stock is any indication, I hope they keep losing money. Incompetent bastards.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Yes, I *hate* AT&T with a passion. And if their constantly declining stock is any indication, I hope they keep losing money. Incompetent bastards.

Ahhh....I can relate to that Telco hating vitriol . Down here in Australia we basically have one Telco (Tel$tra) which provides the infrastructure for broadband in this country. Problem is

a) they are incompetent.

B) up until recently, Tel$tra resold its wholesale ADSL at the same price as it's retail product. And they only had to change that fact because of a Consumer and Competition advocacy committee order.

c) they are incompetent.

d) their retail broadband only allows a dowload limit of 3GB per month before extravangant per MB charges kick in. What a joke.

e) they are incompetent.

f) they are currently only interested in spicing up the books short term because the current Govt. wants to sell off the remaining 50% and fully privatise it.

g) they are incompetent.

h) did I mention they are incompetent?

It's amazing that our Govt wants Australia to be seen as the technology centre of the Asia/Pacific region yet allows Tel$tra to hamper broadband uptake in this country as it is doing.

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Yea, I also dislike AT&T. If you AT&T Broadband Subscribers think you have it bad now, just wait, and get a load of this.

I currently have a friend at work that switched from DSL to AT&T. Surfice to say, he still isn't right from the @Home change over, and is ready to call Verizon up again. He has yet to get in contact with Tech support, and just sent them another Email. This time he gave them 2 days to respond, if not, he's jumping ship. He too has already dumped Long Distance, next will be Broadband, and Cable.

[ 12-17-2001: Message edited by: GREG MILLER ]

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quote:

AOL Time Warner's initial offer proposed having AT&T spin off its cable division, which would then be merged with the Time Warner cable system, according to media reports.


Now wouldn't that just be peachy, AOL owning AT&T broadband?

Just gives me the shivers thinking about it.

YUCH!!!

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Yes, I *hate* AT&T with a passion. And if their constantly declining stock is any indication, I hope they keep losing money. Incompetent bastards.

I don't know if this is true or not, but last summer I was visiting a friend of mine in Florida and he claimed that AT&T broadband was being sued on a daily basis by the state of Florida and a bunch of cities.

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quote:

Originally posted by Jaguar:

Now wouldn't that just be peachy, AOL owning AT&T broadband?

Just gives me the shivers thinking about it.

YUCH!!!

Hehe now we'll have AOL'ers that not only chats on-line but will also have picture avatars or streaming video. Imagine the possibilities.

Fendi : a/s/l

Kitty90210 : 18/f/anywhere you want

Fendi : cool wanna video conf?

Kitty90210 : er no I'm actually a 40 yrs male, still wanna conf?

Fendi : KTHXBYE

*places Kitty90210 in ignore list*

Then again maybe not....

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quote:

Originally posted by Advil:

Time for another rant.

/rant on

My cable connection (AT&T) has been down for 13 days now. The problem has had nothing to do with their acquisition of @home, my service worked fine for almost a week after the conversion. The problems started when I decided to switch to a cable modem that I purchased. This is supposed to save you $10 a month. The procedure is clearly listed on their web page as something you can do and should be "no problem."

Well, the first person who put the paperwork through screwed something up. My service ended up disconnected. So we started calling tech support. For the first several days we were speaking with Level 1 support, and the hold times were well over an hour each time. Then we started getting routed to the level 2 support. This is insane, because to get to them you have to talk to level 1 first and give then your service number. So you spend around 1 hour on hold to talk to level 1, and then up to 3 hours on hold waiting to get through to level 2. We have made calls to level 2 several times, and our total time on hold must be well over 15 hours by now.

It getts better. It wasn't until the last 4 days (of 13 so far) that our problem was actually sent to be worked on, according to the last tech I talked to. They were supposed to have a person call me back twice so far during all this, and have not.

This all built up to the last call I made to them last night. The guy told me:

1) We don't know when we will get you turned back on.

2) I can't tell you who knows that.

3) I can't give you the phone number for anyone in sas (the network division)

4) You will get an automated phone call when its resolved, not a human one.

5) There is no one past me in tech support, even for unique problems.

6) I have no boss that you may speak to.

7) There is no complaint department for you to call.

I'm not really angry yet, what's the point? There's no one for me to yell at, but if I get asked if they need their monopoly of the cable system broken, I'll vote hell yes.

If I treat one of my customers even half this badly, I'd be lucky if all they did was go somewhere else.

/rant off

good old dial-up modem works just fine for my uses...lol

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tried AT&T, Adelphia (Ever seen Cable d/l at 2k/s all the time, get Adelphia), and I'm going with Bellsouth Fastaccess. Of the three I like Bellsouth the most, since its the fastest(I'm practically next door neighbor to the server) and the support has ALWAYS helped me.

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quote:

5) There is no one past me in tech support, even for unique problems.

6) I have no boss that you may speak to.

7) There is no complaint department for you to call

I worked level 2 tech support for an e-commerce site for nearly two years. I can tell you from personal experience-

(5) is bull***t. If he was compitent then he should have been either able to solve your problem or ask someone that could (and called you back personaly.)

(6) & (7) are complete and utter bull***t. He probably had a supervisor a few feet away and didn't want to bother getting up. I had a couple of customers ask to speak to the VP of Customer Service and had to give them the address.

I had AT&T for cable and dial up service. It took me 2 days to get through to someone just so I could cancel my service. I was so tired of waiting just for spite the first thing I did was say, "So you're the only one working today? No? I need you're supervisor." I wouldn't let the little snot talk after a couple of minutes she transferred me to someone else. I don't know if it was really a supervisor (I used to just hand the phone to somebody else in my group most of the time) but all I really wanted was to ruin part of their day, since they had ruined part of mine. I know that it was mean and juvenile, but I didn't get my sig for nothing.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

In fact, speaking of coincidence. Mindspring (my backup ISP I've had since 1992) now owned by Earthlink, just had DSL in my area. I configured it this weekend, got it up and running (I opted for the self-install because I CAN'T stand strangers screwing around with my gear) and first thing I did this morning was call up AT&T and terminated the cable service. I LOVED having to make that phone call.

.

Damn right! Before I got midspring I went through a dozen ISP`s - ATT, and Bell Atl taking the prize for horrible service. When I got Mindspring I was in 7th heaven, in fact when cable came to my area, and I cancelled Mindspring, I felt like I was leaving a family friend! Thier support is absolutely first rate. (I got good speeds too for 56k).

I have Optimum Online now, and they are rated #1 I hear for cable so I have the luck of the Irish I guess.

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AT&T is terrible, I had their $20 for unlimited dialup for a while, and all of a sudden with NO notice, I started getting HUGE bills, well, I found out about this, turns out they switched it to $20 a month for 150 hours, well, little old me, just leaving it connected all the time, had to go on pb&j for about a month just to pay the bills, I got it switched to the 7/7 offer, which was fine, but when I got my new comp and installed the latest dialup software, I got an ad banner wtf? well, on my old comp, I used the old dialup software with no banner, no prob, but the new stuff was terrible, it messed with ICQ and did things to netscape(I now use IE mostly)..not to mention I couldn't play any multiplayer games, I"m switching today or tomarrow...good riddance, although I havn't had the tech support trouble that you have, but they don't know jack about anything, they're answer to everything is reboot and try again, reboot and try again, ok, well, try reinstalling this, reboot and try again, ok, looks like your gonna have to reinstall windows, reboot and try again...heh, no bloody way i'm going through all of that for 56k connection that usually connects at 22000, and has 1...only 1 access number, no backups, not alternates, just 1...oh, did I mention that since I switched to att, I've been getting triple the spam mail I used to get?

oh well, it's late, and I"ve got to meet the relatives tomarrow...bah.

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Here's something to watch out if you use a dial up connection:

You'll often get a large list of access numbers in your area, but before you use any of them, call your local phone company. Ask if any of them are long distance. Trust me on this...

I had been using the same number for about a year with no problem, and just the $20/month bill for MSN.

Then I got a $800 phone bill!!!

It turns out that somehow the access number that I had been using had been changed to a long distance line, even though it was in my city. I dont know who's to blame, but either the phone company or MSN really screwed me over. I finally got that resolved (after several months on hold with their customer abuse section) and only had to pay about half of that bill, but from now on, I'm checking every single number and recommend others do the same.

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