This is a long, boring story for other customers, but I am hoping it gets the attention of people at AT&T who want to try and improve the current customer service system which is obviously incredibly broken. It is also posted in the wrong area, but I couldn't find a board that fit my issue.
I am an AT&T Uverse customer and also use AT&T for their land-line phone service. Nearly every time I have to call AT&T with an issue, I am forced to spend 20+ minutes being transferred from department to department, and in most cases have to request a manager or hang up and call the retention department to get my problem solved. I want to add that my issues are never complicated, or at least they don't start out that way.
Case in point: I was just on hold for well over an hour before finally speaking with someone who only partially solved my problem.
The reason for my call today is because in late March, when I moved into my current residence, I had an old-school land-line (not VOIP) set up. When I set up this service, I dealt with a retention specialist. The reason I dealt with a retention specialist is because at my previous residence, I had also requested to have a land-line set up, and even though I confirmed multiple times that I wanted a land-line and not a VOIP line, the technician that came out set up a VOIP line. I had just had a baby and did not have the energy to call back and deal with the entire frustrating set-up process again. So in late March, when I was setting up service at my new home, Michael in Retention empathized and told me that he would set me up with proper land-line service, would waive the activation fee, and if there was no dial tone when I plugged in my phone, send a technician to repair the issue for free. He gave me a confirmation number and promised that when and if I called back to schedule the technician, all the info from our call would be there and I would have no issues getting the free technician service. I got very busy, and when I finally had an hour or so carved out to call AT&T, I discovered there was a billing issue. This was completely my fault. I mistakenly thought my phone bill was included with my Uverse services online and thought the phone bill I was sent via regular mail was junk mail, since I do regularly receive a lot of AT&T offers. I paid the slightly overdue bill and was transferred to Repair to set up my technician visit. The woman in Repair told me the system still showed my bill was overdue and I needed to call back the next business day. I did not get a chance to call back until today.
When I called today, I dialed the retention phone # so that I could speak with someone in the department that promised me the free technician visit in the first place. I explained my situation, and was told I needed to speak with someone in Repair, although the specialist was not sure if I should speak with someone in Damage or regular Repair. He finally decided on Repair. I waited on hold for a while, then explained my situation to the representative who told me this was a customer service issue, and needed to transfer me. He did, and after a long wait, I once again explained my situation to the representative. He put me on hold while reviewing my records, and when he finally came back, told me he needed to transfer me to Repair. I was extremely frustrated at this point and told him I was not willing to be transferred again. I told him he needed to find a manager or someone who could help me. I want to mention that this rep was very sweet and I could tell he was doing all he knew to do. He put me on hold for quite a while and when he came back on, introduced me to a manager. I explained the issue once more, and was told I needed to be transferred to Repair, but that he would explain to the repair rep the situation so that I could get my free technician visit. The repair rep reviewed the notes from my original call back in late March, and told me that while he could see there was promise of waived "restoral" fees (I don't even know what those are and had no mention of them in my own notes), he did not see anything indicating that the technician fees would be waived. He also mentioned that he could see there was an issue with the line (obviously, this was why I called in the first place), and as such, there was a chance I would be charged a service fee to fix the issue if necessary. And if a repair was necessary and I was billed, he said I could call back and try and get billing to waive the fee. I told him that was not acceptable since I was promised waived technician fees to fix the issue with the nonworking landline back in late March. He told me he could not waive the fees. At this point I had been on the phone for almost an hour and a half. I decided to go ahead and schedule the visit, risk being billed a service fee and then try and carve out another hour or two to call Billing and fight the fees.
AT&T, this is ridiculous. I just spent about an hour and a half of my work day dealing with this nonsense. If I treated my customers the way that AT&T repeatedly treats me (and others, based on the countless posts on this site, and websites dedicated to complaints), I would be out of a job! It's a shame that a company this large is able to continually get away with this sort of behavior, and make tons of money doing it. I am going to now research other companies so that I can cancel my service.
dhascall
