I guess I should have looked at this message board before signing up with at&t. I would have seen this coming.
On three different occassions I have spend hours being transferred from person to person within your poor excuse for a customer service team, trying desperately to actually talk to someone who could resolve the errant $75 tech fee that landed on my account. On two different dates I was told my complaint needed to be "escalated" and that someone would call me back within 48 hours. It never happened, either time. Every CSR I spoke to was at a loss, and very good at playing stupid and feigning ignorance.
It is impossible to believe in this day and age that a leading (?) technology provider is so bad at giving their CSR team the tools they need to resolve customer issues, and that none of the 10 people I talked to could actually be empowered to do something about my situation other than to transfer me repeatedly or to tell me it will be escalated to some unknown, unnamed supervisor in a land far, far away...
I was fortunate to finally get a CSR who actually seemed to care about me as a customer (an apology was actually the first words out of her mouth--the first of 11 CSRs to actually do so), and, instead of passing the problem off to someone else, she took care of it then and there and credited my account. I WAS AMAZED!!! Why couldn't any of the previous 10 CSRs I spoke to over the last four weeks do what she just did?!?!?!
There is clearly something wrong with the customer service philosophy of at&t. My main reason for posting this is to encourage other customers with problems to keep calling back until you get lucky and find a CSR like the one I did. Hang up on the rest because they aren't worth your breath!
The other reason I have for posting this is to vent. I would normally call customer service, but I honestly don't think anyone there would give a s*&!. Even though I got my account credited, at&t had already sent me a warning letter about the past due amount from last month, threatening to temporarily disconnect my service if it wasn't paid in full. Now, I know this letter was already being processed when I got my situation resolved last week and doesn't mean anything now, but it really fries me because their opening sentence is, "Did you forget to pay your bill?" Uh, no, at&t, I did not forget to pay my bill. The real question is, did you forget to call me back? Yes, you did. Twice. And how many other customers have you conveniently forgotten to respond to? That is what you should be asking yourselves. Whoever is in control over there is doing a really crappy job.
