I HATE AT&T customer "service"

[Sillygirl]

No service is more like it. I called a month or two ago to see if I could get an iPhone 3 with service in a bundle with our landline and cable service, which are through AT&T. After literally an hour on the phone with a rep who was clearly working in a Bangalore call center, she swore up and down that she would call me back within ten minutes, then never did. I tried the local AT&T store, heard the price of the iPhone and all the extras, and had them offer me $5 off for a bundle. Except the other accounts are in my husband's name, so they couldn't offer me the bundle, unless I wanted to pay extra to change the name on the account later. No thanks. I hiked over to Verizon and bought a Droid, which I'm very happy with.

Two weeks later, we get two cell phones in the mail from AT&T - they've signed us up for two wireless accounts. WTF? I called and they told me I could mail the phones back at my expense if I wanted to cancel. I told them it would be a cold day in hell before I did that. Every week, they call, asking why we haven't activated the phones, I explain we didn't order them, and if they send me a shipping label, I'll return them. They never do.

Now it's been more than a month, and AT&T tells me I'll be charged a $30/phone restocking fee because I didn't cancel within 30 days. I explain AGAIN that I never ordered the damn phones in the first place, and they say they'll waive the fees if I pay to ship them back right away. Nothing doing. They say they'll waive the fee if I return them to the AT&T store. I won't do that until I have something in writing that the fee has been waived, because at this point I don't trust AT&T an inch. They say they can't do that, I point out they're a billion dollar company and somebody must be able to hit a "Print Screen" button and stick it in an envelope. They say the store manager will be able to do that, but he's not in. I tell them to call me when he's available. I never hear back.

Last night, AT&T called again, wanting to know why we haven't started our wireless service.

I am seriously considering dropping our landline.

[sste]

I feel your pain. I spend FORTY hours on the phone (about 35 of which were on hold) this month dealing with AT&T to try to get our land line ported to them, our internet set up, and our iphone account. It would be a book to write about the many, many errors they made. Let's just say that at one point I had missed two days of work and was in my house eight months pregnant with no land line and no functioning cell phone for several days thanks to their errors.

I loathe and despise them. I really do.

Their phone line structure basically necessitates 2-4 transfer before you have someone "help" you - - that is lie to you and misinform you. A ten year old could set up a more sensible customer service organizational form.

And the worst is that after they have lied to you and misinformed you and kept you on hold for hours *but before you know you have been lied to and misinformed and niavely think they have solved your problem* they ask if you are "very satisifed with the customer service you have rec'd today."

OP, yours is a well-warranted bitch (and I hope I didn't hijack it!).

[wildfire]

We had problems with AT&T, too.

I ordered phones online. The order went through twice, so we had two sets of phones, two plans. We returned one set immediately without activating.

We got charged every month for 5 months for those extra phones. And every month we went to the store and worked with the same store rep to get the charges reversed. And THEN we got stuck with an early termination fee. Even though the phones were returned right away. We had to go in again to get that cleared off.

The store rep agreed that it was ridiculous. The thing is, they can't do anything other than call the customer service number to help you. They avoid some of the hold times, but not all. Ugh. It was a huge mess.

But I get a great deal on them through my work, so....we still use them. *sigh*

[BabbyO]

Wow. I'm so sorry to hear that you've had such crummy service. We've had nothing but A+++ service since switching to AT&T U-verse (cable & phone bundled). Every time we've called with service questions/concerns I've had someone stay on the line with me until the problem was resolved. They even sent a tech to our house to diagnose the one problem they couldn't over the phone. Then when he found out it was a problem with the cable lines in our home (not the service provider's responsibility), he replaced them all free of charge!

I'm not sure how your contacting AT&T, but perhaps try through your local U-verse number? Like I said, we've had exceptional service.

My similar horror stories were with our previous cable/phone provider. They wanted to charge us $400 for the DVR box we returned when we switched providers. Aparently they didn't log our box as returned before it went out to the next customer!

I will say, in my experience cable/phone companies have some of the worst customer service, in general.

I hope something gets resolved soon!

[SnuggleBuggles]

How frustrating!!! I wonder if you could track back your call? Almost every support line I have called says that "this call is being monitored and recorded"- maybe they still have a transcript to prove it? Not that you need to but you could play that card and remind them that they could simply check for themselves.

I've refused to buy an iPhone b/c back in the day when I had AT&T I have nothing but headache with them.

Beth