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My favorite story, written in 1992, about the quality of AT&T's customer service is: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Folklore/How%20D

My favorite story, written in 1992, about the quality of AT&T's customer service is: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Folklore/How%20DOES%20AT&T%20Stay%20in%20Business%3F.html http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Fo...

pasbesoin 13y ago
This is hardly the only circumstance, but as a concise and personal (as opposed to commercial) example: Something over 10 years ago, I ordered DSL from them. It was my only high speed option at that time. Actually, to be fair, it was I think at that time Ameritech, which subsequently fairly quickly got sucked into SBC, which is what AT&T really is, now. (SBC bought the "shell" of AT&T some years back, that included perhaps principally the name and branding. All of the old AT&T "substance" had long since been hollowed out.) Placing the order took less than 10 minutes. The call was answered, by a live customer service rep, within a minute. Accomplishing the installation took three half-day appointments (they wouldn't provide a narrower window). They simply blew off the first two. The third appointment resulted in bare connections hanging on the side of my building. The third party contractor they sent reused some old, old wires someone had left hanging there and didn't even bother to wrap the splices. (Fortunately, my downstairs neighbor was friends with a real, honest to goodness union lineman for the voice side of their operations, who was over visiting subsequently and cleaned things up a bit as a personal favor to my neighbor.) Their network was for shit. tracert would show requesting bouncing through sometimes over a dozen of their servers before even making it out onto the wider Net. And it got to the point of going down at least once a week. One time, I spent a half hour or so on the phone just talking with and calming down one of their contracted "service" reps, who was so frustrated that she was quitting her job the following week and going back to Maine. She was nice, and straightforward, and with a good sense of humor, so I didn't mind taking the time. She told me that, in her contract position, all she could do was file a ticket. She couldn't even examine the status of an already-filed ticket. Even for them, the subsequent repair process was a black box. I guess I should add that a call for service (e.g. those weekly network dropouts, for example) took, at a guestimate, on average about 30 minutes to get out of queue and reach a person. During this time, sales calls (calling the number to order service) continued to be answered almost immediately. Priorities could hardly be clearer. Add to this the 700+ million in tax breaks and subsidies that SBC (now AT&T) received in return for committing to universal high speed Internet access in this state. Whereupon, they turned around and immediately deployed and hired lawyers and lobbyists to get them out of their half of the deal while keeping the incentives. Their lawsuits and lobbying against any and all attempts of municipalities to deploy their own networks, most often only after AT&T has refused to provide said service themselves. On and on... Anything that keeps them from growing further? I'm all for it.

pasbesoin 13y ago

This is hardly the only circumstance, but as a concise and personal (as opposed to commercial) example: Something over 10 years ago, I ordered DSL from them. It was my only high speed option at that time. Actually, to be fair, it was I think at that time Ameritech, which subsequently fairly quickly got sucked into SBC, which is what AT&T really is, now. (SBC bought the "shell" of AT&T some years back, that included perhaps principally the name and branding. All of the old AT&T "substance" had long since been hollowed out.) Placing the order took less than 10 minutes. The call was answered, by a live customer service rep, within a minute. Accomplishing the installation took three half-day appointments (they wouldn't provide a narrower window). They simply blew off the first two. The third appointment resulted in bare connections hanging on the side of my building. The third party contractor they sent reused some old, old wires someone had left hanging there and didn't even bother to wrap the splices. (Fortunately, my downstairs neighbor was friends with a real, honest to goodness union lineman for the voice side of their operations, who was over visiting subsequently and cleaned things up a bit as a personal favor to my neighbor.) Their network was for shit. tracert would show requesting bouncing through sometimes over a dozen of their servers before even making it out onto the wider Net. And it got to the point of going down at least once a week. One time, I spent a half hour or so on the phone just talking with and calming down one of their contracted "service" reps, who was so frustrated that she was quitting her job the following week and going back to Maine. She was nice, and straightforward, and with a good sense of humor, so I didn't mind taking the time. She told me that, in her contract position, all she could do was file a ticket. She couldn't even examine the status of an already-filed ticket. Even for them, the subsequent repair process was a black box. I guess I should add that a call for service (e.g. those weekly network dropouts, for example) took, at a guestimate, on average about 30 minutes to get out of queue and reach a person. During this time, sales calls (calling the number to order service) continued to be answered almost immediately. Priorities could hardly be clearer. Add to this the 700+ million in tax breaks and subsidies that SBC (now AT&T) received in return for committing to universal high speed Internet access in this state. Whereupon, they turned around and immediately deployed and hired lawyers and lobbyists to get them out of their half of the deal while keeping the incentives. Their lawsuits and lobbying against any and all attempts of municipalities to deploy their own networks, most often only after AT&T has refused to provide said service themselves. On and on... Anything that keeps them from growing further? I'm all for it.