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.

Tags: at&t, Customer Service, phone service

You know, few companies are doing well nowadays.  The economy is really dragging everyone down.  You’d think, given the dire circumstances, that companies would be doing all they can to make sure customers are happy and not thinking about going to a competitor.  Unfortunately, there are a few companies out there who have no competitors – companies like the phone company, cable company, electric company, etc.  It’s these businesses who seem to think that customer service is an afterthought and a good deal of them have the attitude of, “If you don’t like it, where are you going to go?”  And so begins my tale of AT&T…

I got home from work the other night and found the phone bill waiting in our mailbox.  We’ve been examining every expense lately and making sure that we are getting the best value for our dollars.  This is not the time (nor is it the time no matter what the economic conditions) to be wasting money.  I found that we were paying for something called the “Essentials Plan” that provides Caller ID, Call Waiting, Three-Way Calling to the tune of $20.82 per month.  I also found out we still had Call Waiting Caller ID to the tune of $1.43 per month.

Now there was a time when we had a use for these services – but nowadays we use our home phone for the occasional fax and less than 10 minutes of outbound calling a month.  Cell phones have all but replaced the need for all these fancy services.  So I decided it was time to call and change our plan – to put the $22 and change back in our pocket every month instead of handing it over to AT&T for something we don’t use.

It was around 6:30PM on Friday evening when I called and I got thrown into the “hurry up and wait queue”.  You know the one I am talking about – the one where your call is so very important, but we only have one person working because we don’t want to pay for anyone else.  That queue.

While waiting they told me to go online and I could change my plan easily – so as I sat on hold I fired up my web browser and went to AT&T and logged into my account.  Sure enough, I could make changes to my account – at least part of them.  Well, that is I thought I could until I hit the submit button and was told “Oh, too bad, you have to call and talk to someone to make these changes”.  Uh-huh – how is it when you want to DELETE things you have to call in, but you can ADD things all day long?

So I continued to wait… and wait.  Then the clock struck 7:00PM.  Almost instantly a recorded voice came on telling me that they were sorry, but I was calling outside of normal business hours (they didn’t bother to tell me what those hours were) and then hung up on me.  I was furious.

What other company makes you wait and then hangs up on you?  It’s like going to a grocery store and being in line at 9:00PM when they close and them just turning the lights out on you and locking the doors.  I wasted 30+ minutes of my time and for what?

This is lousy, awful customer service that AT&T should be ashamed about – but why do they have to worry?  It’s not like there is a competitor I can go to for my local phone service.  If there was I would guarantee you that I wouldn’t have been hung up on after waiting in line for 30 minutes.

So come Monday I’ll try again – and perhaps, while I’m sitting here fuming over it, I might just decide to drop my home phone service once and for all.

Tags: at&t, Customer Service, phone service