Despite all the horror stories about AT&T, I thought that they couldn’t really be as bad as all that when I switched to a land line phone from the company (after years of Vonage service). But it has been hell, and it is getting worse.
It all started with the robot. The AT&T Wireless robot, which calls me every day to discuss my bill. My bill, by the way, is never late. It’s a combined bill with mobile, landline, and Dish network all bundled together, and is paid electronically. That doesn’t seem to matter.
The next problem is the scam calls. I get them every single day, usually from some 877 number which I’ve blogged about before, but also from numbers in the UK. The call blocking service on my line has two important limitations that make it pretty useless: first, it is limited to 10 numbers. Second, it is limited to calls from my local calling area. In other words, you can’t block calls from someone harassing you from long distances or from blocked numbers.
I spent weeks trying to solve these problems, only to learn that AT&T customer service can’t help you with AT&T wireless issues. And vice-versa. Since the robot is calling my AT&T land line about my AT&T wireless number, no one could figure out the line of demarcation and I spent weeks being bounced between one company’s two divisions.
I finally found someone who looked something up and told me that no, my bill wasn’t past due and I had no balance, and that the robot was calling me in error and that she would take care of it.
She didn’t.
It continues to call.
Yesterday I talked to a service rep who, like most AT&T reps, if not empowered to do anything other than transfer your call elsewhere or, more often, ask you to write down a different number to call on your own. I informed her that while I didn’t hold anything personal against her, I was about 5 minutes away from canceling all three of my over-priced AT&T services. She offered to escalate my case… of course, it couldn’t happen right away, they’d call me back. On Friday. It’s 1:30pm on Friday right now, but no one has called.
She ended the call by launching into a long don’t-take-no-for-an-answer upsell session where she desperately tried to get me to give MORE money to AT&T. I finally got fed up — I’d been polite and nice to her knowing that none of it was her fault, but this was the last straw and I hung up.
Next, I tried AT&T Annoyance Call Bureau to deal with the scam calls. They only take messages and promise to call back. They haven’t.
Today, I’ve gotten another robot call about my bill, and a couple of scammer calls, as usual. But the result of my AT&T customer service experience was a clear change in today’s call list: yes, I received a robotic call from AT&T to survey me about my AT&T Customer Service Experience.
