Yesterday I wrote about my awful experience trying to get through to customer service for AT&T to change my home phone plan. Well, this morning I tried yet again and was shocked when it took me less than three minutes to get a live person. However, my giddiness would soon wear off when I found out what AT&T promotes as customer service.
It was simple, really. Like most households we don’t use our home phone much. In fact if it weren’t for the occasional fax and odd call we make we’d have dumped our home phone long ago. The problem is we are still paying over $22 a month for unneeded services – add in a “long distance plan” that is around $7 a month and we soon have $30 per month of money going down the drain. I simply wanted to drop all that mess and have basic phone service with caller id. Sounds simple, right? Well AT&T and simple just don’t go together.
I explained to the customer service rep what I wanted to do. She was pleasant but I noticed from the beginning something was odd – you see in most organizations sales and customer service are two seperate entities, and for good reason. People don’t want to be sold more “stuff” when they are trying to resolve a problem. From the moment she answered the phone she started pushing DirecTV through AT&T on us. I had to tell her “no, thanks” at least four times over the course of the call.
Then the real fun started. She informed me that for the low, low price of only $21 per month I could have basic caller ID and call waiting. I told her that no, I just want caller ID. Her reply was that this was their “lowest package”. I then asked her why I would want to pay more (right now I only pay $20.48 per month for caller id, call waiting, three-way calling and some other stuff) and receive less? Her answer, “Well, that’s the way it is.”
She then wanted to know, yet again, if I wanted to sign up for DirecTV.
So let me guess this straight. CallerID, which already comes over the phone system and costs them next to nothing to deliver, they want to charge me $21 a month for. Something that I remember getting for $3 a month years ago. When I wouldn’t bite that bullet, they wanted to take away services and charge me more for the same thing I was getting five minutes ago. When I wouldn’t have none of that they wanted to upsell me on more stuff. Yeah, right, if AT&T thinks I’d buy something else from them after I’m already fuming mad over this racket for local phone service they have another think coming.
I thought to myself “fine, we’ll just take care of this long distance plan”. On their website, which never works except to take your money, they tout a 60-minute flat rate plan for $2.00 per month. We pay $5.00 a month for the same thing now. I told her I wanted that plan. She then informs me that there is no such plan like that, and the cheapest thing she can offer me is some plan with NO minutes and a base price of $5.00 per month. Now, let’s step back here again and examine this. I get 60 minutes a month of long distance (which we use about 3 minutes of) for $5.00 plus a whole bunch of taxes. They want to switch me to a new plan that gives me zero free minutes, costs $5.00 just for the privilege of having it, and then costs 5-cents per minute to use. Wow! What a deal!
Needless to say I told her to forget it all and I was done. Leave my phone the way it is. Of course, before I hung up she couldn’t help but push DirecTV on me once again. They must get a pretty big commission for every sucker they sign up for that.
So now I’m stuck with something I don’t want, paying a ridiculous amount of money for each month. At this point I’m starting to investigate my options of getting rid of the land line. So instead of keeping a paying customer, AT&T has used their great customer service to run me away and look at alternatives – and rest assured, I will find an alternative.
I wonder how long it will take for AT&T to go running to the government for a bailout.