4 ms·

The company i recently started managing it for previously went through some business and personnel changes and so doesnt have a good hold on their IT budget. Iv

The company i recently started managing it for previously went through some business and personnel changes and so doesnt have a good hold on their IT budget. Ive been discovering and recording bills from only at&t for days now. Highlights: 1300$/month for IT support 800% difference in per month rate vs 1 year contract rate Different departments cant talk to each other and have separate accounts. I have att.com accounts and businesscenter.att.com accounts. Is AT&T BusinessCenter different than AT&T BusinessDirect? You fuckin tell me Before i started, we were paying over $10k a month to only AT&T, right now we're <$7k and I'm not done. We have an account manager that i havent talked to. Clearly hes either incompetent or malicious, no desire to loop him in. Never before have i wanted to killdozer a company so badly. I have better things to do than review bills (although clearly not).

dennnis 7y ago
Wow, can't change providers?
- xnyan 7y ago
  lol. You are from SoCal or Europe, right? Sorry, not trying to be an asshole. Those are (almost) the only two places where people on hackernews have more than 1.5 internet choices.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    New Zealander here. The hopeless state owned telecom was sold off then forced to break up (into a line provider and a separate phone/ISP company). It has taken a very long time to come right, but NZ is now a great place to get internet and many good options are available from a range of companies. Gigabit fibre is here for a huge portion of residential customers. Connections of 2 and 4 gigabit are scheduled for early next year. I just tested a wall plate I mounted and am getting 920Mbps, for about US$80.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
    Even SoCal has plenty of areas with only a single broadband provider. :/
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      SF is finally starting to get competitive between gigabit options from Sonic, MonkeyBrains and WebPass. There's also of course Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      That's the case for most of LA, as far as I know. Certainly true for the two apartments I had there. No gigabit, obviously.
  - syshum 7y ago
    Midwest US..., with locations in several states (and internationally) While I only have 2 choices for my home, getting Business Fiber runs has been no problems, normally at least 3 companies if not more will provide them. Of the 5 companies that will provide us fiber at main office, only 2 of them also offer Residential Services (ATT and Comcast), the others are B2B only companies, and offer services at a faction of what ATT provides business services for, but considerably more than a Residential line, which is why there are only 2 choices for a home, there is not much money there
  - dismalpedigree 7y ago
    Northern suburbs of Indianapolis. I have two fiber providers, a cable provider, and fixed 5g available to my home. Hardly europe or SoCal.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
      Austin, TX. Known for being tech hub. I have two choices. Spectrum or AT&T. Both overpriced with mediocre but acceptable service. Known that we have it better than most of the USA. Your situation is an outlier and not the norm.
      - todd8 7y ago
        My wife and I mostly work at home and our kids are avid gamers so loss of internet access causes havoc, especially for the IT guy (me). I solved most of my problems by just getting the fastest service from Spectrum and a medium speed backup from AT&T.
  - qes 7y ago
    Midwest here. I've got 100 Mbps cable for $70/month and can get 1 Gbps fiber for $100. Then there's the 0.5's like a couple DSL services.
akira2501 7y ago
I've faced similar issues.. it's almost impossible to do it directly on your own, unless you have enough business to get a real account representative. This is why there are tons of third-party companies that are run by ex-employees that will manage all of your AT&T billing and accounts for you. There was a one-time fee, but it was more than made up for in what we saved by consolidating and normalizing all of our accounts through them. It's annoying that I have to go through this extra hoop just to get reasonable service, but it's the only path I've discovered that doesn't make me want to tear my own eyeballs out at the end of the day.
majora2007 7y ago
I actually worked on the Business Center application. They are different systems, Business Center is supposed to be the future of Business Direct, which is our legacy product. The idea is that we on-board people onto Business Center, but since not all products and services are ported over, there is still a need for BD accounts.

dennnis 7y ago

Wow, can't change providers?

xnyan 7y ago
lol. You are from SoCal or Europe, right? Sorry, not trying to be an asshole. Those are (almost) the only two places where people on hackernews have more than 1.5 internet choices.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  New Zealander here. The hopeless state owned telecom was sold off then forced to break up (into a line provider and a separate phone/ISP company). It has taken a very long time to come right, but NZ is now a great place to get internet and many good options are available from a range of companies. Gigabit fibre is here for a huge portion of residential customers. Connections of 2 and 4 gigabit are scheduled for early next year. I just tested a wall plate I mounted and am getting 920Mbps, for about US$80.
- omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
  Even SoCal has plenty of areas with only a single broadband provider. :/
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    SF is finally starting to get competitive between gigabit options from Sonic, MonkeyBrains and WebPass. There's also of course Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    That's the case for most of LA, as far as I know. Certainly true for the two apartments I had there. No gigabit, obviously.
- syshum 7y ago
  Midwest US..., with locations in several states (and internationally) While I only have 2 choices for my home, getting Business Fiber runs has been no problems, normally at least 3 companies if not more will provide them. Of the 5 companies that will provide us fiber at main office, only 2 of them also offer Residential Services (ATT and Comcast), the others are B2B only companies, and offer services at a faction of what ATT provides business services for, but considerably more than a Residential line, which is why there are only 2 choices for a home, there is not much money there
- dismalpedigree 7y ago
  Northern suburbs of Indianapolis. I have two fiber providers, a cable provider, and fixed 5g available to my home. Hardly europe or SoCal.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
    Austin, TX. Known for being tech hub. I have two choices. Spectrum or AT&T. Both overpriced with mediocre but acceptable service. Known that we have it better than most of the USA. Your situation is an outlier and not the norm.
    - todd8 7y ago
      My wife and I mostly work at home and our kids are avid gamers so loss of internet access causes havoc, especially for the IT guy (me). I solved most of my problems by just getting the fastest service from Spectrum and a medium speed backup from AT&T.
- qes 7y ago
  Midwest here. I've got 100 Mbps cable for $70/month and can get 1 Gbps fiber for $100. Then there's the 0.5's like a couple DSL services.

akira2501 7y ago

I've faced similar issues.. it's almost impossible to do it directly on your own, unless you have enough business to get a real account representative. This is why there are tons of third-party companies that are run by ex-employees that will manage all of your AT&T billing and accounts for you. There was a one-time fee, but it was more than made up for in what we saved by consolidating and normalizing all of our accounts through them. It's annoying that I have to go through this extra hoop just to get reasonable service, but it's the only path I've discovered that doesn't make me want to tear my own eyeballs out at the end of the day.

majora2007 7y ago

I actually worked on the Business Center application. They are different systems, Business Center is supposed to be the future of Business Direct, which is our legacy product. The idea is that we on-board people onto Business Center, but since not all products and services are ported over, there is still a need for BD accounts.