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My conversation with AT&T

ENOTTY 16y ago
This really could be a conversation with any ISP and any technical support line.
- Xuzz 16y ago
  It doesn't even have to be an ISP, you get pretty much get the same with most technical support lines on any computer-related product.
jarin 16y ago
I've had similar situations happen before. Usually what I do is call the phone support, quickly run through everything I tried, and the first-line tech support guy transfers me to a call center in the US with higher-level technicians right away. I don't really think there's any point in arguing with someone manning the chat help or lower-level phone support anyway as they don't seem to have the ability to run the more advanced diagnostics even if they wanted to. All arguing with them is going to do is frustrate you. Just work with their system a little and you can usually get things taken care of.
- d2viant 16y ago
  I'm not AT&T's "partner", I'm their customer. I pay them for service. I shouldn't have to find the optimal path through their system to get things done. Move to a different ISP, plain and simple. There's no reason the customer should be inconvenienced because they can't get their act together. It seems like a no-brainer to me, especially since some ISP's will give heavy discounts to jump ship from their competitors.
  - jarin 16y ago
    I agree with you. But if you want to actually get the problem fixed in real life instead of in a theoretical best-of-all-worlds, just dial the phone number. You can lead the revolution against AT&T after you get your internets back.
    - derefr 16y ago
      You could always ask to speak to their customer retention department (i.e. phone and say "I want to cancel my service") and then ask to be transferred directly to a line tech once you have a retention agent on the line. They're a lot more flexible in what they can do for you.
      - chronomex 16y ago
        Absolutely. Tangentially - I ordered ISDN service from Qwest about a year ago. The business ordering agent (ISDN is only tariffed for businesses in Washington) transferred me to a supervisor, who then told me to hang up and call the retention department, and gave me the number. Retentions was able to transfer me to the person who was responsible for ISDN ordering, who was very knowledgeable. Lesson of the story: Retentions agents can transfer you anywhere.
  - gnok 16y ago
    It isn't always 'plain and simple' to move to a different ISP. Except for very few parts of the country, most users do not have a choice of ISPs.
  - patio11 16y ago
    I shouldn't have to find the optimal path through their system to get things done. Consider this a "hacking a non-computer system" challenge. It is a very useful skill even if you never send YC an application, since there are at least a few organizations which are isomorphic to AT&T customer service which are very difficult for you to opt out of using. (Your local department responsible for collecting taxes, for example.)
    - dmoney 16y ago
      Arguably it's not a non-computer system if the customer service rep is just a front-end for a finite state machine.
  - wwortiz 16y ago
    As someone who has the option of low speed dsl and satellite internet moving through the system as quick as possible and getting answers quickly is very handy. But if you have other worthwhile choices that's great, until you run out of choices and have to go through the same system again. (Most ISPs seem to run a similar support scheme.)
  - grandalf 16y ago
    99% of their customers would benefit from talking to that tech support person. As infuriating as the conversation was for a knowledgable person, it would probably suffice to resolve most technical issues people have. I think the mistake was admitting to having a mac. A rule of thumb is to pretend that the computer is Windows / IE so the rep can go by the book.
  - run4yourlives 16y ago
    But you aren't willing to pay for that, plain and simple. Where do you think the money comes from to offer the jump ship discounts? The sky?
- javert 16y ago
  Just work with their system a little and you can usually get things taken care of. It's pretty clear that the person who wrote the blog post has made multiple attempts to get help with issues from AT&T, both over the Internet and phone, and has found that it is just way too hard. Time is a limited resource. The right solution is to switch ISPs. Unfortunately, in my market, the government only allows two ISPs [both with terrible customer service] to exist, and if the OP is in the US, that's probably the situation he's in, too.
  - sorbus 16y ago
    There's no indication in the post that he made any attempts to do anything using a phone, and he in fact was refusing to do so towards the end of it. Do you have any evidence that he did try to call them and encountered the same difficulties there?
    - weaksauce 16y ago
      really? I have tried repeatedly to work with AT&T phone support with zero success. I am a programmer and a network engineer, I can find any setting, etc. you want to know about on the Mac
      - sorbus 16y ago
        Ah. I must have missed that. However, the opening to the post pretty clearly says that he had not done so for this particular problem, and so I'm forced to assume that he's either lying (intentionally or otherwise) or that he's referring to other incidents, which would mean that he made no attempt to resolve this incident using a phone.
    - phillijw 16y ago
      Maybe he doesn't have a phone. I wonder if the script handles that scenario. Skype was down today.
patio11 16y ago
If you're talking to front line support, you are talking to a finite state machine. Getting mad at the finite state machine because a transition was not written in it will not get you better customer service. Just inspect the finite state machine looking for the transition to escalation, and provide it exactly the input needed to achieve escalation. (Edited to add: plus such pleasantries as are necessary and proper to polite society.) (I only know what a FSM is because I was one for two years.)
- spicyj 16y ago
  What's the easiest path? Does simply asking for a supervisor usually do the trick, or is there a secret trick?
  - patio11 16y ago
    It depends on the company. Here, the agent is practically begging him to call the right people. That is the forward path. He should have done so. If you're getting the run around, asking for escalation usually works. If not, ask in so many words what information you could provide which would require someone else to evaluate, then repeat that exactly. You can also do social engineering in a good way -- I prefer paper for issues which are not time sensitive. Paper to the CEO's office or VP of CS is the way to resolve most bank issues, for example. Another favorite trick is calling Investor Relations. (I am an investor in AT&T. I own probably eight tenths of a share in an index fund. That is enough to call IR with the expectation of favorable treatment.)
    - fleitz 16y ago
      Love it, when I did tech support I would always get in trouble for my customer appreciation letters usually involving the customer being happy that I did something that I wasn't allowed to. I eventually learned to tell customers not to write letters of appreciation as I feared it would lead to my termination. Also, I was frequently in trouble for letting my average handle time fall below average, what I mean by this was that my AHT was 4 minutes instead of 6. Largely because I didn't waste the customers time doing things I knew they didn't need to. It turned out that Berkshire Hathaway owned a > 5% stake in the company, a good friend of mine who worked there learned of this from reading the stock info on Yahoo. He actually wrote Warren Buffet and explained the insanities, a couple weeks later he was taken into a supervisors office and asked politely not to write letters to company shareholders. Oddly enough he now works in IR. A few weeks after that the policy regarding reprimanding employees for below average AHTs was also rescinded.
deleted 16y ago
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IChrisI 16y ago
Any conversation with a large company not well known for service will probably go like this. The lower-tier support technicians have a script they follow, and if you stick to it you will A) actually get support, and B) not make some support guy's day suck. The person he was talking with was clearly out of their depth and doing their best to get him in touch with somebody that could help him.
vietor 16y ago
As obnoxious as these type of conversations are, I'd be interested to know what percentage of their 'my Internet is slow' support calls end up being resolved by kicking Little Jimmy BitTorrent offline and trying again. (Or turning off the computer that's participating in 7 botnets, etc. Anyone who has done freelance support can tell you that the customer's computer is always wrong.) It's why this was funny: http://xkcd.com/806/ http://xkcd.com/806/ I found that paying for business class Internet for personal use was worth it for the support and service nearly on it's own. Though on the subject of rebooting the modem, I've had it work the other way too: many years ago my 512K/3mb cable started giving me only 250k up ... but over 5mb down. (It went back to normal when rebooted. (I rebooted it because I need the extra 250K up more than the extra 2mb down)).
knieveltech 16y ago
http://xkcd.com/806/ http://xkcd.com/806/
devicenull 16y ago
Go here: https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/sbcdirect https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/sbcdirect and post about your issue. You can get actual competent techs to look into your issues. Every time I've had issues with SBC/ATT, this forum has helped me with 0 frustration.
- ben1040 16y ago
  This works great. Also, I've found that at least for my cable company (Charter), a mere mention on Twitter will get them to contact you and solve the matter quickly over email rather than going through their call center nightmare.
nhangen 16y ago
Seemed like the blogger had an axe to grind more than they wanted their issue resolved. If you were choked, I doubt a low level chat rep could fix it anyway.
noonespecial 16y ago
I had exactly this happen to me. After a week of explaining the issue, they finally threatened me with the cost of the lineman's visit if my computer was at fault ($1500). It had gotten so bad (128kbits) that I said I'd pay it in any case if they could just fix it. I didn't hear anything. The lineman missed his appointment and never showed and my ticket vanished from the system. The issue dragged on for 5 weeks. Finally I called a local cable provider and begged them for service. In a miracle of bureaucracy, the place I was renting had cable a decade ago and was so on their "served locations" list. They ran more than a mile of new cable and hooked me up. Months later I was talking to some local telephone linemen (we do a lot of T1 installs requiring truck rolls) and lo and behold, he knew exactly what had gone wrong. The DSLAM in our local exchange had gone bad and began running in degraded mode to compensate for the failure. AT&T decided that there just weren't enough subscribers to justify fixing it right away. It was scheduled to be repaired in 18 months. Edit: My takeaway from the entire episode is that you are so impossibly far away from the reality of boxes and wires when you're on those tech support lines that you might as well be trying to direct the mars rover from your back yard with a megaphone.
Athtar 16y ago
AT&T is bar none the worst company in the world when it comes to Customer Service. Although, in this case, the conversation could've been applied to just about any support call.
- fitzhume 16y ago
  While I don't doubt that AT&T internet service is terrible in some cases, I do have to say that they're wireless telephone support is actually quite good every time I've called. Always helpful, always apologetic, and issues get resolved quickly the times I've called. It's the one thing that I think I'll miss when the iPhone is available elsewhere. I dread having to deal with Verizon's customer support again when they finally have a few other phone choices I'm interested in.
bradleyland 16y ago
If you want to get this fixed, you should call their number and get a technician dispatched. He can put a test set on your line at the demarc outside your house. If the SnR is bad, or someone did something dumb like put a bridge tap on your loop, he'll know. If you want to prove that ATT sucks, congrats. Mission accomplished. Problem is, we already knew that. Go ahead and move ISPs. Don't be all that alarmed when the lawn guy cuts the cable vision line that Your cable provider buried the whopping 3" below the soil, as required by their policies. Don't be alarmed when their front line support requires you to restart your modem. Don't be alarmed when the experience still isn't what you expect as a network engineer. Front line support sucks because it's designed to handle calls from people who really do need to be instructed to reboot their modem. If you want effective support, you have to recognize that you are the exception to the rule, not the standard.
kevinherron 16y ago
I had this issue happen with my AT&T DSL line. I even got to the point where a technician was supposed to come out and look at the line but he never showed up. I called back, I jumped through all their hoops, and then they eventually connected me to another more advanced department who just looked a few things up, said "ok, here's the problem, hold on gonna put this order through to fix it." Within 2 minutes my connection was back to 6Mbit. Whatever they did they were able to do it COMPLETELY REMOTELY. I never found out what was going on but I suspect I may have ended up on some sort of black list, maybe because of torrents or some other traffic profiling. It blew my mind. I suffered that speed for nearly 3 months before getting it fixed.
initself 16y ago
I tried signing up for AT&T DSL twice via their online form. They never got in touch with me even though I received email confirmations from the signup process. I even chatted with an AT&T representative who could see that I had signed up, but couldn't tell me why no one had contacted me. And they also weren't able to sign me up for service either!
- theletterd 16y ago
  I had a similar experience with using their online forms to sort out moving my phone and internet to a new apartment. When it didn't happen, I called customer service who told me that sometimes things just disappear if you do them through the website. AT&T's website is a complete joke.
- joezydeco 16y ago
  AT&T DSL will sign you up even if you're too far from the SLAM to even get a signal. Make sure you confirm those details as well and have a tech actually visit your house to do the first setup.
S_A_P 16y ago
I get it. Sometimes ISPs realize that making your life difficult is easier than fixing the problems that can occur where lines go bad. No matter the provider, edge cases exist, and 3-5% of the time a company sucks. Anecdotally I can say comcast is that provider for me, but generally speaking they were not much worse than AT&T or my current provider, consolidated. All have been decent 95% of the time.
- andreyf 16y ago
  Aren't ISP's contractually obliged to stay somehow reasonably within the speeds they advertise?
ygd 16y ago
I had my suspicions, and then I came across this line: They are expertise on these stuffs. Yup. Definitely an Indian.
- trustfundbaby 16y ago
  ... because, obviously, only Indians can't spell.
  - Rhapso 16y ago
    no, because there is a set of grammars that seem to be consistently mis-matched when one overlays English on Hindi or Urdu. One of the exemplar being an intent of "Noun adjective" that ends up being "Noun Noun-form of adjective"
    - deleted 16y ago
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tibbon 16y ago
I think the problem being highlighted here is that AT&T (and many company's support) is becoming out of line with what we're expecting from good customer support these days. While I am not yet a customer, from my understanding if you call/contact Zappos for example, their customer service reps fix the problem. They don't run through a script, and they don't put you off onto another department that will have you troubleshoot the same steps again. Yes, I realize there is a difference between network troubleshooting and shoes, but having enabled and well trained reps who are the first to receive the calls and are able to actually fix most scenarios is important these days. Of course these things come at a cost and many larger/older companies are not able to come to grips with that type of a change.
- 5teev 16y ago
  "Good customer support" is a matter of perspective. As customers, we prefer highly qualified responders who understand and solve our problems. Most businesses prefer to pay as little as possible to people who are just good enough to keep you from canceling your service. At the scale of AT&T's business, if they can keep you just this side of canceling, they will consider their customer support "good."
mscarborough 16y ago
So someone gets frustrated with online customer service-person, obviously non-native English speaker, and then gets 'clever' by claiming something that doesn't even pass the smell test from Level-1 support? And then saves and posts the entire conversation? Ugh.
there 16y ago
No need to start a new session, I'm ready to troubleshoot on Windows XP How did you change the computer? I have an xp machine handy and plugged it into the modem, then connected the mac (with the chat session) to a second ethernet port Mr. Gullickson, the speedstream modem has only one Ethernet port. i couldn't help but laugh at that part. every time i've had to talk to technical support because of some problem on their end, i always get the runaround because i use an unsupported operating system, to the point that now i just lie and tell them i'm using windows. i was pretty surprised that the technician actually called him out on that.
- lwhi 16y ago
  i was pretty surprised that the technician actually called him out on that. I don't think you need to be surprised. There's a high likelihood that the operators are educated and intelligent. I'd imagine that having to stick to a script isn't very fun for the person on the other end of the phone / chat session - especially when you're tied to responding in a certain way and are regularly patronised by annoyed customers.
Encosia 16y ago
When he practically begged you to call, why didn't you? Those primitive chat features are not suitable for working out complicated issues. This reminds me of when people insist on discussing something a dozen messages at a time on Twitter, when it belongs in email (and would be simple there).
plinkplonk 16y ago
"We have some dedicated department for some specific technical issue like wireless, Mac or gaming console etc.They are expertise on these stuffs." Indian English! Not the "Are expertise" bit which is just wrong, and maybe just a typo, but "some dedicated department" and "these stuffs" are good markers. (FWIW: I am Indian, and not mocking anyone, just noting what I perceived)
- cnu 16y ago
  I also thought it was some indian who was on the other side. Though it has nothing to do with the bad service and response. He is just typing it off a script. Note: Indian here too.
  - shrikant 16y ago
    These two posts mirror me and my thought process exactly! What triggered it for me was: "I am sorry for my typo" - I've seen a few of the 'cultural training sessions' for tech support call-centre shops, and that's a line straight out of the playbook..
- cshenoy 16y ago
  dude! totally what i thought when i was reading the convo. Total giveaway - "I will be happy to chatting with you all day." nb: I am Indian and spent my last year there i.e. I know the "Inglish" dialect pretty well.
nikster 16y ago
My experience with DSL customer support is you have to lie. You don't use OS X - you use Windows, and IE. You don't have a WiFi router connected to the DSL modem - you're connected directly via Ethernet. You have re-installed your operating system and all drivers. Twice. Etc. It's just more effective to do that, since you already know the problem has nothing to do with your local setup. I'll actually do things that make sense. But when they ask me to re-install the OS or stupid stuff like that - no way. Also if you make a mistake - like admitting you're using a Mac - you can try again. Just call again and get a different agent on the line.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Um hm. Yes, I often "know the problem has nothing to do" with me. And then it sometimes Does have to do with me. The reason the suggestions are in the script is, to try what works most of the time. Thinking it out in your head can lead you to conclusions, but actually rebooting the modem may prove something. Also routers, modems are hardware shipped on a schedule, so they have bugs. Logic can be tripped up by bugs, since they negate assumptions - "clearly the modem isn't editing my UDP traffic!" etc.
kwantam 16y ago
I've generally had good luck with the AT&T customer service. I play the "standard customer" role to navigate first-level troubleshooting, get escalated, then talk to the tech about my actual debugging results. (It helps that, in addition to network admin experience, I design telephony integrated circuits; I'm very familiar with their testing procedures, since I've designed circuits and wrtten firmware to do it.) Generally once I'm actually talking to the tech it's only five or ten minutes before they get a truck roll scheduled and I'm on my way. It helps to have multiple DSL modems available before calling them so you can rule out equipment malfunctions, and to directly connect the DSL modem to the service entrance after disconnecting your home wiring to rule out internal wiring problems. In the several years that I've had my DSL, AT&T has piecemeal replaced pretty much all the copper between me and the DSLAM---no surprise, since most of it was 25+ years old. Each time, it's taken one phone call of no more than 30 minutes to get things done. The only trouble I've had that didn't require copper replacement was when a tech disconnected my (dry loop) line because he didn't hear a dial tone and assumed the connection was superfluous.
- ekidd 16y ago
  I spent years fighting with Verizon customer service about my DSL line. Not only was the DSL flaky, but the accompanying voice line would routinely lose dial tone. So there was obviously some sort of bizarre equipment problem. After about 6 phone transfers and a technician who claimed Vermont was a city, not a state, I hung up and called a local phone company that provided DSL. The very first thing they did was run new wires into the building. Everything has worked fine since.
thaumaturgy 16y ago
If you have a good local independent computer technician available -- not Geek Squad -- they can usually navigate AT&T for you and get the issue resolved quickly. We do this on a regular basis and don't have any trouble with AT&T. Yesterday I got to chat with the fellow doing front-line technical support about the 12 feet of snow they had gotten recently while he resolved the couple of system issues that AT&T were having on my client's line. There are some key phrases that can make things go a lot smoother, and technicians that deal with AT&T (or Comcast, or whoever) on a regular basis know what they are.
- paulschreiber 16y ago
  And the key phrases are?
  - Twisol 16y ago
    "Shibboleet". http://www.xkcd.com/806/ http://www.xkcd.com/806/
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    ...A matter of trust between technicians that work directly with this equipment on a regular basis and technicians that have to work over the phone with customers who may not know as much as they think they do.
Mrdev4 16y ago
I had same painful AT&T experience, although i was able to log into the modem and it displayed connection speed in the advanced menu.After frontline hell, second tier support fixed the problem.
colanderman 16y ago
I once had a Verizon support rep literally trick me into purchasing a service I didn't want, no doubt to get a commission. I have no love for Verizon. On the other hand: I had Charter cable internet a few years back. It was spotty, expensive service (1 Mbps, $50/mo), and tech support was crap. Funny thing is, I resubscribed to them about a year ago, and found that somehow, they've improved dramatically. The one time I was having connection issues (and knew it wasn't my box), the tier 1 phone support person performed a remote line test within 5 minutes of me calling, and actually understood concepts like "ping" and "DNS". She even had records of the times my connection had been down. Getting the issue resolved was a breeze (I think they increased power in a repeater or some such). For the first time I felt like I was interacting with a human and not a script. Hopefully this wasn't a fluke and ISPs are slowly starting to change for the better...
siddhant 16y ago
Its almost the same here in India. The so called "tech support" has 5 steps they want us to go through, irrespective of anything. 1. Press the "Start" button 2. Click on "run" 3. Type "cmd" and press "enter" 4. Ping router 5. Ping (their) DNS servers The good thing happens to be, they arrange for a visit by a lineman if you straightaway answer in the negative to all of them. In situations when they want me to "check the automatically configure IP address/DNS servers checkbox", restart modem, and such stuff (and I don't use Windows), I just try to simulate the system that they are expecting, from my Mac (if they tell me something like "open control panel, go to network properties, double click on TCP/IPv4", it fairly obvious they want me to change the IP address or the DNS servers). Usually it works out pretty well.
notyourwork 16y ago
Anyone else wonder why black was chosen for the two characters in the conversation along with one of their dialogue and only one was orange.
rmc 16y ago
I'm sure we all have horror stories like this. And we all wonder why the phone companies/ISPs don't hire technical people (like us) to do tech support, it would be so much easier! However can you imagine being a front line tech support person? You'd hate it. People ringing you up the when the cat knocks their cable out. You'll spend all day telling people to turn it off and turn it on again, and that'll work for 50% of people who call you. Front line tech support treat you like you know nothing about computers because most of their customers know nothing about computers.
swah 16y ago
Here's something strange that happened to me recently: I call to one of the frontline people, explain the problems, tell them that a technician already visited me came and checked that it wasn't a physical problem, etc. Then see says that they are going to send another technician. Then, 5 minutes later, someone that isn't a FSM calls me and talks to me and realizes that I'm not the average non-geek customer, oh he also uses a mac too. That makes me very hopeful. Then he says he is going to call me from the datacenter so we can run some tests, because there might even be a dirty optical fiber. He also cancels the technician visit because we two agree that the problem isn't in my house! At this point I'm very confident that this guy will solve my problem. Except he never called, I don't know his name and there is no protocol number (because he just called me directly).
runningdogx 16y ago
I have griped to AT&T several times about how their 2wire 3800hgv-b router (used for their UVerse service) is broken when you set up pass-through to an internal box. They call this "DMZplus". What happens is that when icmp packets relating to connections from the DMZplus host arrive at the 2wire router, the 2wire drops them. This breaks path MTU discovery, unix-style traceroutes, etc. It is not a general limitation of the 2wire box, since hosts that are not using DMZplus can receive related icmp just fine. It's caused by the pathologically stupid way that the 2wire router implements "DMZplus". It basically assigns itself AND the internal host the same external IP address, and uses its best guess which traffic to forward and which not to. They missed some corner case relating to ICMP in the state tracker, and AT&T's response is that since it's a "feature" that few people complain about, if I want it fixed I shouldn't be using UVerse. Even after I've pointed out that this behavior violates the tcp/ip standard.
Joshim5 16y ago
Reminds me of the problem my parents just had with Dell. My mother broke the USB port on her computer and got a technician to come and fix it. For some reason, the technician replaced the power supply and motherboard (which clearly were not causing the problem). After he did this, the computer would not boot and he decided it must be due to the hard drive having too much data on it. When I was home later that night, I moved that hard drive into another computer and booted it. It worked. Obviously this technician had no idea what in the world he was talking about. He came back the next time, he replaced the motherboard once again and gave us another hard drive. Now we have 2 hard drives in that computer (we have to send one back. We may clone the old hard drive onto the new one since the new one obviously has a longer life left). The USB port issue has still not been solved. TECHNICIANS SUCK (for the most part)
jhawk28 16y ago
While these various tech companies have terrible support, I'm glad they are the first line of defense so that I don't have to answer ALL the tech questions from friends, family, and acquaintances.
jasonkester 16y ago
DSL is one of those things it pays to spend a bit extra on. Here's a transcript of my last customer support experience: - dial dial dial, ringle-ringle (one ringle-ringle, that is) - <irish accent>Hello, Fast.co.uk. How can I help you?</irish accent> - Something's up with my DNS. I can't resolve google.com. - Hang on, let me check a few things... ... followed by a discussion with a guy who knew everything he needed to fix my problem (and every problem I've called them about) in a few minutes. For this privilege, I pay maybe $3/month more than I would with BT or some other terrible provider that you hear horror stories about. I consider it tech-support insurance. And since this is my livelihood, I consider it money well spent.
jasongullickson 16y ago
Follow-up post: http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/coincidence http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/coincidence
dedward 16y ago
Other side of the planet, but I've had my plan rate-achanged accidentally and it really did take severla levels of technical support (although the problem was recognized, nobodoy could solve it) to fix it -there turned out ot be only one or two guys in teh country who could actually figure out how to untagle the mess they'd created.
niels_olson 16y ago
I have a hard time believing a network engineer would know so little about front-line support that they would continue on this track for so long. If I was his supervisor, his evaluation would say "perseverates".

This really could be a conversation with any ISP and any technical support line.

Xuzz 16y ago
It doesn't even have to be an ISP, you get pretty much get the same with most technical support lines on any computer-related product.

jarin 16y ago

I've had similar situations happen before. Usually what I do is call the phone support, quickly run through everything I tried, and the first-line tech support guy transfers me to a call center in the US with higher-level technicians right away. I don't really think there's any point in arguing with someone manning the chat help or lower-level phone support anyway as they don't seem to have the ability to run the more advanced diagnostics even if they wanted to. All arguing with them is going to do is frustrate you. Just work with their system a little and you can usually get things taken care of.

d2viant 16y ago
I'm not AT&T's "partner", I'm their customer. I pay them for service. I shouldn't have to find the optimal path through their system to get things done. Move to a different ISP, plain and simple. There's no reason the customer should be inconvenienced because they can't get their act together. It seems like a no-brainer to me, especially since some ISP's will give heavy discounts to jump ship from their competitors.
- jarin 16y ago
  I agree with you. But if you want to actually get the problem fixed in real life instead of in a theoretical best-of-all-worlds, just dial the phone number. You can lead the revolution against AT&T after you get your internets back.
  - derefr 16y ago
    You could always ask to speak to their customer retention department (i.e. phone and say "I want to cancel my service") and then ask to be transferred directly to a line tech once you have a retention agent on the line. They're a lot more flexible in what they can do for you.
    - chronomex 16y ago
      Absolutely. Tangentially - I ordered ISDN service from Qwest about a year ago. The business ordering agent (ISDN is only tariffed for businesses in Washington) transferred me to a supervisor, who then told me to hang up and call the retention department, and gave me the number. Retentions was able to transfer me to the person who was responsible for ISDN ordering, who was very knowledgeable. Lesson of the story: Retentions agents can transfer you anywhere.
- gnok 16y ago
  It isn't always 'plain and simple' to move to a different ISP. Except for very few parts of the country, most users do not have a choice of ISPs.
- patio11 16y ago
  I shouldn't have to find the optimal path through their system to get things done. Consider this a "hacking a non-computer system" challenge. It is a very useful skill even if you never send YC an application, since there are at least a few organizations which are isomorphic to AT&T customer service which are very difficult for you to opt out of using. (Your local department responsible for collecting taxes, for example.)
  - dmoney 16y ago
    Arguably it's not a non-computer system if the customer service rep is just a front-end for a finite state machine.
- wwortiz 16y ago
  As someone who has the option of low speed dsl and satellite internet moving through the system as quick as possible and getting answers quickly is very handy. But if you have other worthwhile choices that's great, until you run out of choices and have to go through the same system again. (Most ISPs seem to run a similar support scheme.)
- grandalf 16y ago
  99% of their customers would benefit from talking to that tech support person. As infuriating as the conversation was for a knowledgable person, it would probably suffice to resolve most technical issues people have. I think the mistake was admitting to having a mac. A rule of thumb is to pretend that the computer is Windows / IE so the rep can go by the book.
- run4yourlives 16y ago
  But you aren't willing to pay for that, plain and simple. Where do you think the money comes from to offer the jump ship discounts? The sky?
javert 16y ago
Just work with their system a little and you can usually get things taken care of. It's pretty clear that the person who wrote the blog post has made multiple attempts to get help with issues from AT&T, both over the Internet and phone, and has found that it is just way too hard. Time is a limited resource. The right solution is to switch ISPs. Unfortunately, in my market, the government only allows two ISPs [both with terrible customer service] to exist, and if the OP is in the US, that's probably the situation he's in, too.
- sorbus 16y ago
  There's no indication in the post that he made any attempts to do anything using a phone, and he in fact was refusing to do so towards the end of it. Do you have any evidence that he did try to call them and encountered the same difficulties there?
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    really? I have tried repeatedly to work with AT&T phone support with zero success. I am a programmer and a network engineer, I can find any setting, etc. you want to know about on the Mac
    - sorbus 16y ago
      Ah. I must have missed that. However, the opening to the post pretty clearly says that he had not done so for this particular problem, and so I'm forced to assume that he's either lying (intentionally or otherwise) or that he's referring to other incidents, which would mean that he made no attempt to resolve this incident using a phone.
  - phillijw 16y ago
    Maybe he doesn't have a phone. I wonder if the script handles that scenario. Skype was down today.

patio11 16y ago

If you're talking to front line support, you are talking to a finite state machine. Getting mad at the finite state machine because a transition was not written in it will not get you better customer service. Just inspect the finite state machine looking for the transition to escalation, and provide it exactly the input needed to achieve escalation. (Edited to add: plus such pleasantries as are necessary and proper to polite society.) (I only know what a FSM is because I was one for two years.)

spicyj 16y ago
What's the easiest path? Does simply asking for a supervisor usually do the trick, or is there a secret trick?
- patio11 16y ago
  It depends on the company. Here, the agent is practically begging him to call the right people. That is the forward path. He should have done so. If you're getting the run around, asking for escalation usually works. If not, ask in so many words what information you could provide which would require someone else to evaluate, then repeat that exactly. You can also do social engineering in a good way -- I prefer paper for issues which are not time sensitive. Paper to the CEO's office or VP of CS is the way to resolve most bank issues, for example. Another favorite trick is calling Investor Relations. (I am an investor in AT&T. I own probably eight tenths of a share in an index fund. That is enough to call IR with the expectation of favorable treatment.)
  - fleitz 16y ago
    Love it, when I did tech support I would always get in trouble for my customer appreciation letters usually involving the customer being happy that I did something that I wasn't allowed to. I eventually learned to tell customers not to write letters of appreciation as I feared it would lead to my termination. Also, I was frequently in trouble for letting my average handle time fall below average, what I mean by this was that my AHT was 4 minutes instead of 6. Largely because I didn't waste the customers time doing things I knew they didn't need to. It turned out that Berkshire Hathaway owned a > 5% stake in the company, a good friend of mine who worked there learned of this from reading the stock info on Yahoo. He actually wrote Warren Buffet and explained the insanities, a couple weeks later he was taken into a supervisors office and asked politely not to write letters to company shareholders. Oddly enough he now works in IR. A few weeks after that the policy regarding reprimanding employees for below average AHTs was also rescinded.

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IChrisI 16y ago

Any conversation with a large company not well known for service will probably go like this. The lower-tier support technicians have a script they follow, and if you stick to it you will A) actually get support, and B) not make some support guy's day suck. The person he was talking with was clearly out of their depth and doing their best to get him in touch with somebody that could help him.

vietor 16y ago

As obnoxious as these type of conversations are, I'd be interested to know what percentage of their 'my Internet is slow' support calls end up being resolved by kicking Little Jimmy BitTorrent offline and trying again. (Or turning off the computer that's participating in 7 botnets, etc. Anyone who has done freelance support can tell you that the customer's computer is always wrong.) It's why this was funny: http://xkcd.com/806/ http://xkcd.com/806/ I found that paying for business class Internet for personal use was worth it for the support and service nearly on it's own. Though on the subject of rebooting the modem, I've had it work the other way too: many years ago my 512K/3mb cable started giving me only 250k up ... but over 5mb down. (It went back to normal when rebooted. (I rebooted it because I need the extra 250K up more than the extra 2mb down)).

knieveltech 16y ago

http://xkcd.com/806/ http://xkcd.com/806/

devicenull 16y ago

Go here: https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/sbcdirect https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/sbcdirect and post about your issue. You can get actual competent techs to look into your issues. Every time I've had issues with SBC/ATT, this forum has helped me with 0 frustration.

ben1040 16y ago
This works great. Also, I've found that at least for my cable company (Charter), a mere mention on Twitter will get them to contact you and solve the matter quickly over email rather than going through their call center nightmare.

nhangen 16y ago

Seemed like the blogger had an axe to grind more than they wanted their issue resolved. If you were choked, I doubt a low level chat rep could fix it anyway.

noonespecial 16y ago

I had exactly this happen to me. After a week of explaining the issue, they finally threatened me with the cost of the lineman's visit if my computer was at fault ($1500). It had gotten so bad (128kbits) that I said I'd pay it in any case if they could just fix it. I didn't hear anything. The lineman missed his appointment and never showed and my ticket vanished from the system. The issue dragged on for 5 weeks. Finally I called a local cable provider and begged them for service. In a miracle of bureaucracy, the place I was renting had cable a decade ago and was so on their "served locations" list. They ran more than a mile of new cable and hooked me up. Months later I was talking to some local telephone linemen (we do a lot of T1 installs requiring truck rolls) and lo and behold, he knew exactly what had gone wrong. The DSLAM in our local exchange had gone bad and began running in degraded mode to compensate for the failure. AT&T decided that there just weren't enough subscribers to justify fixing it right away. It was scheduled to be repaired in 18 months. Edit: My takeaway from the entire episode is that you are so impossibly far away from the reality of boxes and wires when you're on those tech support lines that you might as well be trying to direct the mars rover from your back yard with a megaphone.

Athtar 16y ago

AT&T is bar none the worst company in the world when it comes to Customer Service. Although, in this case, the conversation could've been applied to just about any support call.

fitzhume 16y ago
While I don't doubt that AT&T internet service is terrible in some cases, I do have to say that they're wireless telephone support is actually quite good every time I've called. Always helpful, always apologetic, and issues get resolved quickly the times I've called. It's the one thing that I think I'll miss when the iPhone is available elsewhere. I dread having to deal with Verizon's customer support again when they finally have a few other phone choices I'm interested in.

bradleyland 16y ago

If you want to get this fixed, you should call their number and get a technician dispatched. He can put a test set on your line at the demarc outside your house. If the SnR is bad, or someone did something dumb like put a bridge tap on your loop, he'll know. If you want to prove that ATT sucks, congrats. Mission accomplished. Problem is, we already knew that. Go ahead and move ISPs. Don't be all that alarmed when the lawn guy cuts the cable vision line that Your cable provider buried the whopping 3" below the soil, as required by their policies. Don't be alarmed when their front line support requires you to restart your modem. Don't be alarmed when the experience still isn't what you expect as a network engineer. Front line support sucks because it's designed to handle calls from people who really do need to be instructed to reboot their modem. If you want effective support, you have to recognize that you are the exception to the rule, not the standard.

kevinherron 16y ago

I had this issue happen with my AT&T DSL line. I even got to the point where a technician was supposed to come out and look at the line but he never showed up. I called back, I jumped through all their hoops, and then they eventually connected me to another more advanced department who just looked a few things up, said "ok, here's the problem, hold on gonna put this order through to fix it." Within 2 minutes my connection was back to 6Mbit. Whatever they did they were able to do it COMPLETELY REMOTELY. I never found out what was going on but I suspect I may have ended up on some sort of black list, maybe because of torrents or some other traffic profiling. It blew my mind. I suffered that speed for nearly 3 months before getting it fixed.

initself 16y ago

I tried signing up for AT&T DSL twice via their online form. They never got in touch with me even though I received email confirmations from the signup process. I even chatted with an AT&T representative who could see that I had signed up, but couldn't tell me why no one had contacted me. And they also weren't able to sign me up for service either!

theletterd 16y ago
I had a similar experience with using their online forms to sort out moving my phone and internet to a new apartment. When it didn't happen, I called customer service who told me that sometimes things just disappear if you do them through the website. AT&T's website is a complete joke.
joezydeco 16y ago
AT&T DSL will sign you up even if you're too far from the SLAM to even get a signal. Make sure you confirm those details as well and have a tech actually visit your house to do the first setup.

S_A_P 16y ago

I get it. Sometimes ISPs realize that making your life difficult is easier than fixing the problems that can occur where lines go bad. No matter the provider, edge cases exist, and 3-5% of the time a company sucks. Anecdotally I can say comcast is that provider for me, but generally speaking they were not much worse than AT&T or my current provider, consolidated. All have been decent 95% of the time.

andreyf 16y ago
Aren't ISP's contractually obliged to stay somehow reasonably within the speeds they advertise?

ygd 16y ago

I had my suspicions, and then I came across this line: They are expertise on these stuffs. Yup. Definitely an Indian.

trustfundbaby 16y ago
... because, obviously, only Indians can't spell.
- Rhapso 16y ago
  no, because there is a set of grammars that seem to be consistently mis-matched when one overlays English on Hindi or Urdu. One of the exemplar being an intent of "Noun adjective" that ends up being "Noun Noun-form of adjective"
  - deleted 16y ago
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tibbon 16y ago

I think the problem being highlighted here is that AT&T (and many company's support) is becoming out of line with what we're expecting from good customer support these days. While I am not yet a customer, from my understanding if you call/contact Zappos for example, their customer service reps fix the problem. They don't run through a script, and they don't put you off onto another department that will have you troubleshoot the same steps again. Yes, I realize there is a difference between network troubleshooting and shoes, but having enabled and well trained reps who are the first to receive the calls and are able to actually fix most scenarios is important these days. Of course these things come at a cost and many larger/older companies are not able to come to grips with that type of a change.

5teev 16y ago
"Good customer support" is a matter of perspective. As customers, we prefer highly qualified responders who understand and solve our problems. Most businesses prefer to pay as little as possible to people who are just good enough to keep you from canceling your service. At the scale of AT&T's business, if they can keep you just this side of canceling, they will consider their customer support "good."

mscarborough 16y ago

So someone gets frustrated with online customer service-person, obviously non-native English speaker, and then gets 'clever' by claiming something that doesn't even pass the smell test from Level-1 support? And then saves and posts the entire conversation? Ugh.

there 16y ago

No need to start a new session, I'm ready to troubleshoot on Windows XP How did you change the computer? I have an xp machine handy and plugged it into the modem, then connected the mac (with the chat session) to a second ethernet port Mr. Gullickson, the speedstream modem has only one Ethernet port. i couldn't help but laugh at that part. every time i've had to talk to technical support because of some problem on their end, i always get the runaround because i use an unsupported operating system, to the point that now i just lie and tell them i'm using windows. i was pretty surprised that the technician actually called him out on that.

lwhi 16y ago
i was pretty surprised that the technician actually called him out on that. I don't think you need to be surprised. There's a high likelihood that the operators are educated and intelligent. I'd imagine that having to stick to a script isn't very fun for the person on the other end of the phone / chat session - especially when you're tied to responding in a certain way and are regularly patronised by annoyed customers.

Encosia 16y ago

When he practically begged you to call, why didn't you? Those primitive chat features are not suitable for working out complicated issues. This reminds me of when people insist on discussing something a dozen messages at a time on Twitter, when it belongs in email (and would be simple there).

plinkplonk 16y ago

"We have some dedicated department for some specific technical issue like wireless, Mac or gaming console etc.They are expertise on these stuffs." Indian English! Not the "Are expertise" bit which is just wrong, and maybe just a typo, but "some dedicated department" and "these stuffs" are good markers. (FWIW: I am Indian, and not mocking anyone, just noting what I perceived)

cnu 16y ago
I also thought it was some indian who was on the other side. Though it has nothing to do with the bad service and response. He is just typing it off a script. Note: Indian here too.
- shrikant 16y ago
  These two posts mirror me and my thought process exactly! What triggered it for me was: "I am sorry for my typo" - I've seen a few of the 'cultural training sessions' for tech support call-centre shops, and that's a line straight out of the playbook..
cshenoy 16y ago
dude! totally what i thought when i was reading the convo. Total giveaway - "I will be happy to chatting with you all day." nb: I am Indian and spent my last year there i.e. I know the "Inglish" dialect pretty well.

nikster 16y ago

My experience with DSL customer support is you have to lie. You don't use OS X - you use Windows, and IE. You don't have a WiFi router connected to the DSL modem - you're connected directly via Ethernet. You have re-installed your operating system and all drivers. Twice. Etc. It's just more effective to do that, since you already know the problem has nothing to do with your local setup. I'll actually do things that make sense. But when they ask me to re-install the OS or stupid stuff like that - no way. Also if you make a mistake - like admitting you're using a Mac - you can try again. Just call again and get a different agent on the line.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Um hm. Yes, I often "know the problem has nothing to do" with me. And then it sometimes Does have to do with me. The reason the suggestions are in the script is, to try what works most of the time. Thinking it out in your head can lead you to conclusions, but actually rebooting the modem may prove something. Also routers, modems are hardware shipped on a schedule, so they have bugs. Logic can be tripped up by bugs, since they negate assumptions - "clearly the modem isn't editing my UDP traffic!" etc.

kwantam 16y ago

I've generally had good luck with the AT&T customer service. I play the "standard customer" role to navigate first-level troubleshooting, get escalated, then talk to the tech about my actual debugging results. (It helps that, in addition to network admin experience, I design telephony integrated circuits; I'm very familiar with their testing procedures, since I've designed circuits and wrtten firmware to do it.) Generally once I'm actually talking to the tech it's only five or ten minutes before they get a truck roll scheduled and I'm on my way. It helps to have multiple DSL modems available before calling them so you can rule out equipment malfunctions, and to directly connect the DSL modem to the service entrance after disconnecting your home wiring to rule out internal wiring problems. In the several years that I've had my DSL, AT&T has piecemeal replaced pretty much all the copper between me and the DSLAM---no surprise, since most of it was 25+ years old. Each time, it's taken one phone call of no more than 30 minutes to get things done. The only trouble I've had that didn't require copper replacement was when a tech disconnected my (dry loop) line because he didn't hear a dial tone and assumed the connection was superfluous.

ekidd 16y ago
I spent years fighting with Verizon customer service about my DSL line. Not only was the DSL flaky, but the accompanying voice line would routinely lose dial tone. So there was obviously some sort of bizarre equipment problem. After about 6 phone transfers and a technician who claimed Vermont was a city, not a state, I hung up and called a local phone company that provided DSL. The very first thing they did was run new wires into the building. Everything has worked fine since.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

If you have a good local independent computer technician available -- not Geek Squad -- they can usually navigate AT&T for you and get the issue resolved quickly. We do this on a regular basis and don't have any trouble with AT&T. Yesterday I got to chat with the fellow doing front-line technical support about the 12 feet of snow they had gotten recently while he resolved the couple of system issues that AT&T were having on my client's line. There are some key phrases that can make things go a lot smoother, and technicians that deal with AT&T (or Comcast, or whoever) on a regular basis know what they are.

paulschreiber 16y ago
And the key phrases are?
- Twisol 16y ago
  "Shibboleet". http://www.xkcd.com/806/ http://www.xkcd.com/806/
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  ...A matter of trust between technicians that work directly with this equipment on a regular basis and technicians that have to work over the phone with customers who may not know as much as they think they do.

Mrdev4 16y ago

I had same painful AT&T experience, although i was able to log into the modem and it displayed connection speed in the advanced menu.After frontline hell, second tier support fixed the problem.

colanderman 16y ago

I once had a Verizon support rep literally trick me into purchasing a service I didn't want, no doubt to get a commission. I have no love for Verizon. On the other hand: I had Charter cable internet a few years back. It was spotty, expensive service (1 Mbps, $50/mo), and tech support was crap. Funny thing is, I resubscribed to them about a year ago, and found that somehow, they've improved dramatically. The one time I was having connection issues (and knew it wasn't my box), the tier 1 phone support person performed a remote line test within 5 minutes of me calling, and actually understood concepts like "ping" and "DNS". She even had records of the times my connection had been down. Getting the issue resolved was a breeze (I think they increased power in a repeater or some such). For the first time I felt like I was interacting with a human and not a script. Hopefully this wasn't a fluke and ISPs are slowly starting to change for the better...

siddhant 16y ago

Its almost the same here in India. The so called "tech support" has 5 steps they want us to go through, irrespective of anything. 1. Press the "Start" button 2. Click on "run" 3. Type "cmd" and press "enter" 4. Ping router 5. Ping (their) DNS servers The good thing happens to be, they arrange for a visit by a lineman if you straightaway answer in the negative to all of them. In situations when they want me to "check the automatically configure IP address/DNS servers checkbox", restart modem, and such stuff (and I don't use Windows), I just try to simulate the system that they are expecting, from my Mac (if they tell me something like "open control panel, go to network properties, double click on TCP/IPv4", it fairly obvious they want me to change the IP address or the DNS servers). Usually it works out pretty well.

notyourwork 16y ago

Anyone else wonder why black was chosen for the two characters in the conversation along with one of their dialogue and only one was orange.

rmc 16y ago

I'm sure we all have horror stories like this. And we all wonder why the phone companies/ISPs don't hire technical people (like us) to do tech support, it would be so much easier! However can you imagine being a front line tech support person? You'd hate it. People ringing you up the when the cat knocks their cable out. You'll spend all day telling people to turn it off and turn it on again, and that'll work for 50% of people who call you. Front line tech support treat you like you know nothing about computers because most of their customers know nothing about computers.

swah 16y ago

Here's something strange that happened to me recently: I call to one of the frontline people, explain the problems, tell them that a technician already visited me came and checked that it wasn't a physical problem, etc. Then see says that they are going to send another technician. Then, 5 minutes later, someone that isn't a FSM calls me and talks to me and realizes that I'm not the average non-geek customer, oh he also uses a mac too. That makes me very hopeful. Then he says he is going to call me from the datacenter so we can run some tests, because there might even be a dirty optical fiber. He also cancels the technician visit because we two agree that the problem isn't in my house! At this point I'm very confident that this guy will solve my problem. Except he never called, I don't know his name and there is no protocol number (because he just called me directly).

runningdogx 16y ago

I have griped to AT&T several times about how their 2wire 3800hgv-b router (used for their UVerse service) is broken when you set up pass-through to an internal box. They call this "DMZplus". What happens is that when icmp packets relating to connections from the DMZplus host arrive at the 2wire router, the 2wire drops them. This breaks path MTU discovery, unix-style traceroutes, etc. It is not a general limitation of the 2wire box, since hosts that are not using DMZplus can receive related icmp just fine. It's caused by the pathologically stupid way that the 2wire router implements "DMZplus". It basically assigns itself AND the internal host the same external IP address, and uses its best guess which traffic to forward and which not to. They missed some corner case relating to ICMP in the state tracker, and AT&T's response is that since it's a "feature" that few people complain about, if I want it fixed I shouldn't be using UVerse. Even after I've pointed out that this behavior violates the tcp/ip standard.

Joshim5 16y ago

Reminds me of the problem my parents just had with Dell. My mother broke the USB port on her computer and got a technician to come and fix it. For some reason, the technician replaced the power supply and motherboard (which clearly were not causing the problem). After he did this, the computer would not boot and he decided it must be due to the hard drive having too much data on it. When I was home later that night, I moved that hard drive into another computer and booted it. It worked. Obviously this technician had no idea what in the world he was talking about. He came back the next time, he replaced the motherboard once again and gave us another hard drive. Now we have 2 hard drives in that computer (we have to send one back. We may clone the old hard drive onto the new one since the new one obviously has a longer life left). The USB port issue has still not been solved. TECHNICIANS SUCK (for the most part)

jhawk28 16y ago

While these various tech companies have terrible support, I'm glad they are the first line of defense so that I don't have to answer ALL the tech questions from friends, family, and acquaintances.

jasonkester 16y ago

DSL is one of those things it pays to spend a bit extra on. Here's a transcript of my last customer support experience: - dial dial dial, ringle-ringle (one ringle-ringle, that is) - <irish accent>Hello, Fast.co.uk. How can I help you?</irish accent> - Something's up with my DNS. I can't resolve google.com. - Hang on, let me check a few things... ... followed by a discussion with a guy who knew everything he needed to fix my problem (and every problem I've called them about) in a few minutes. For this privilege, I pay maybe $3/month more than I would with BT or some other terrible provider that you hear horror stories about. I consider it tech-support insurance. And since this is my livelihood, I consider it money well spent.

jasongullickson 16y ago

Follow-up post: http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/coincidence http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/coincidence

dedward 16y ago

Other side of the planet, but I've had my plan rate-achanged accidentally and it really did take severla levels of technical support (although the problem was recognized, nobodoy could solve it) to fix it -there turned out ot be only one or two guys in teh country who could actually figure out how to untagle the mess they'd created.

niels_olson 16y ago

I have a hard time believing a network engineer would know so little about front-line support that they would continue on this track for so long. If I was his supervisor, his evaluation would say "perseverates".