This is the story on how At&t can waste your time, take your money and not fix you problems. It’s a classic story on how some of the services and customer support over here are just crappy… but after that the one who provides them proclaims out-loud that “Customer satisfaction is their number one priority”. After all they have more bars in more places than everyone, right? Let’s begin…
It started about a week ago, when I was looking over my phone bill and wondering why I was paying somewhere around 100$/month. I had a 550 Family Plan, which means 2 phone lines (50$ for the first line, 9$ for the second line!) and a Data Plan for one of those lines (45$!!! for PDA Enterprise plan). I remember that when I took the plan the 2 phone lines were around 50$ both, and the data plan was around 27$. Thinking about it, I reached the conclusion that I could live without the data plan. This is when funny things started to happen.
As an ‘educated’ customer, I tried to remove this option by going through their website. Turns out I could not do it through the web and thought it was a glitch. I called customer support and found out that I cannot remove it. (That’s right sucker, you cannot opt out on this). Why? Because you have a PDA and we REQUIRE everybody to have a data plan on those. Why? We just do, that’s out policy. Wait, wait, wait… when I bought the mobile device I requested the mobile data plan to be added. What if I wouldn’t have done that? You would have just added it after? We don’t know. After trying to talk some sense into them the verdict stayed the same. That just pissed me off.
Now, I started questioning if I needed the phone plan at all. To give you a reference, the plan is with rollover minutes, and in the 11 months that I had it I gathered around 4500 rollover minutes. 550 minutes/month and 4500 rollover minutes in11  months. So, if I cannot have only the options I want l will just drop this plan and switch to a prepay one.
Of course that would have been too easy, right? The story gets even more unreal.
Since I already had the phones I figured that switching to a prepaid plan from the same fabulous At&t would be a walk in the park.
Went to a shop that’s near me and explained to one of the nice persons over there what I wanted to do (after I confirmed, again, that I cannot remove the data plan). Sure! We can do that. But you know you’ll have to pay a cancellation fee of 125$ for each line right? I’m paying 100$/month for the plan. In 2-3 months I’ll be saving that much each month! Okay, let me just look you up in here… Clicky clicky… Oh, your account has a FAN number associated to it? A what number? FAN. So? So, we cannot switch you over until that thing is gone. Okay, remove it. No no no, we cannot do it in store, you’ll have to call 611 and have someone over there, in Customer Service, remove it. Mysterious are the ways of the At&t.
Called the uber Customer Service again, where I explained to a nice guy named Josh what I wanted to do and in order for me to do this I had to remove this damn number. Josh, did this right away. Now that I’m FAN-less I can get it done. NOT.
I went back to the nice people in the store, and explained, again, what I was trying to do and that I have removed the FAN number and now everything is cool. But you know you’ll have to pay a cancellation fee of 125$ for each line right? We’ve been through this already. Just do the switch so I can go on with my life. Of course. Can I see your id? Thank You Clicky Clicky. Asks another guy: Hey, how do you switch a business account? You cannot! What what what? I’m sorry we cannot switch your account to prepaid. Why? The “SYSTEM” won’t allow us that. Why? I don’t know, it just gives some errors. If you thought I was pissed off before, you should see me now.
2 minutes later, again on the line with the Customer Disservice. After patiently explaining the issue, Amy said: Okay, we can do that, I will put you on hold for 1 minute while I fix that. Guess what? After another couple of minutes:  I cannot fix that. Why? I cannot do it with the TOOLS I have. But I will be more than happy to get rid of you and transfer you to the support department which handles this kind of weird and totally inappropriate requests. You want to do that? Hell yeah.
After another 5 minutes of waiting someone in the almighty department made time to speak with me. Explained the problem again. Sure we can do that. Would you mind holding on for 2 minutes while I… okay thanks. Probably some Clicky Clicky going on remotely. We cannot do that. Why? You have a business account and we cannot switch it. Why? Our policy and our SYSTEM prevents us from doing that. But, based on your usage pattern I can tell that staying on this plan can save you money. No shit! I am a total moron, that sucks at math. Thank you for bringing the light to me. Seriously now, I just want to control what I get and what not, and want to pay for only the things that I use. Yes, but based on your usage pattern… I crunched some numbers and… Are you able to switch me over or not? I am not interested in staying on the current plan. Do you know you can get both two line for only 50$/month. It’s a great offer that isn’t available for the public, but we can make that offer to you? The ping pong went on for around 10 minutes and the guy wouldn’t back down. His attitude was: I’m doing you a favor, take it and don’t make it harder on any of us, okay? WTF? What ever happened to the “customer is always right”? What ever happened to “customer satisfaction is our number one priority”? Finally I said to him: If you cannot do what I want, you’re wasting my time. Okay, he replied, I will ask UPSTAIRS. I will put you on hold for a minute, mkay? Okay.
1 minute passes. 5 minutes pass. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. Nothing. Only thing I am getting out of this is the nice recorder voice that tells me the cool shit I can do with all this wonderful at&t services. For example, you know we have a service that you can dial into when a song is on the radio and we can identify that song? It’s really easy, and only cost 99 cents per song. How retarded does At&t think its customers are if they have such a service? Isn’t it easier just to punch in the lyrics in a search engine? Don’t mind me, I’m just being bitter.
After 35 minutes I hanged up. I don’t have to take this crap. It’s over with At&t. I’ll just switch to another carrier with a prepaid plan. Guess their customer satisfaction numbers will go up after I leave.
After another 15 minutes. I get a call. From the same guy, reiterating that he cannot switch me. Dude, it’s fine, there are plenty of fish in the sea. Now he goes bananas trying to make me take the ‘better’ offer. I gave him a piece of my mind, and suggested that At&t should let their customers decide what options they want (remember it started from the data plan) not to force everything they want on them. He than asks: So you just want the data plan removed? We can do that. No I don’t really care about your crappy plan any more, I am just making a point. BTW, I thought you cannot do that. No, no, no, that’s what we tell the suckers calling the inferior small support. I can actually do that. Hallelujah!!! Seriously, just leave me alone. Now he goes on a five minutes rant about how he is trying to help and how I really don’t want to be helped, etc. After thanking him for his time, for which he is paid for (I hope), I politely hanged up.
There you have it: wasting time trying to make the impossible happen.
After doing a bit of research turns out I can keep my number(s) and just move to another carrier. The best part about this is, that if you ever feel like you’re not satisfied you can simply stop reloading your account and walk on.
And to end up in a positive note, here is a nice poster from despair.com: http://despair.com/disservice.html This should be hanged up in all At&t stores