[arreskslarlig]

[RANT]
So there we were decently happy with our 6mb DSL from AT&T for $42 per month. It was the fastest we could get without having to switch over to that terrible company Comcast. One day a sales rep came to our door and told us our apartment complex now had U-Verse fiber optic internet. We could get 6mb internet for $35 per month, or go 8mb for $50, and all the equipment was free. We say definitely, I mean, we could get the same speed for less per month. Why not?

About a week later a man shows up and says he's going to hook us up with U-Verse. It's Wednesday. Yay, it's finally here. He begins working, testing, being a technician. About 15 minutes later he tells us that he's not getting a good signal with the box and a cable crew needs to be sent out. Ok, no biggie, so he tells us they'll be out within 3 days. After he leaves we notice that our DSL no longer works. He didn't hook it back up. Well, we can live without for a day or two, those guys will probably be out soon anyways.

5 days go by (3 business days as of a weekend) and no one has come out or called. It's Monday. I call up AT&T and explain the situation. They had no scheduled crew to come out. They still insist on having me jump through hoops like restart the modem (like I haven't tried already) before they finally tell me that a tech crew will be notifying me within 3 days. Okay, annoying, whatever.

Friday rolls by and I finally get a call. An automated voice message told us that someone will be arriving at some time the next Wednesday. I'm pissed. I call them up and ask what is going on. Why can't it just be done? The rep I talked to told me that AT&T internet actually doesn't deal with this stuff, and U-Verse has it's own office that I need to contact, and the crew scheduled to come out won't be able to fix my U-Verse, only reconnect my DSL. Well, keep them scheduled in case the U-Verse people can't come out until later.

I call up U-Verse and ask immediately for a supervisor. I get to speak with a woman with a thick Asian accent. She was nice but apparently couldn't grasp english well enough to have any idea of what I was talking about. She transferred me to someone who transferred me to the dispatch department. They told me that with a rush on the order the soonest they could get out would be next Wednesday, the same day the other crew is supposed to be out.

What I haven't mentioned to you is that I had a huge online physics assignment for school due by Monday. I can't exactly "do it at the library" as it was going to take in the tens of hours. I call back AT&T Internet to tell them about this and I had a supervisor pass me on to a manager. I told him I desperately needed my connection ASAP. I should be in the front of the line. He transferred himself with me to the Dispatch Dept. to see what could be done. Dispatch said they couldn't get it done that night but to stay in contact. The manager then promised me that he'd have someone out the next Monday which was labor day to fix my connection. He said If someone wasn't out Saturday, then Monday for sure. He knew it was a weekend and he said there's a 24/7 service crew for servers that could easily do the job, and they work weekends and holidays. He even said he'd call my cell Monday night personally to make sure it would be done. He even have me his name and employee number.

In the mean time I have that project. I now have to take all three of those days off from my job as a server at a restaurant to drive to my parent's for the weekend to do the physics project on the internet. Labor Day weekend is not a weekend you want to miss as a server money wise.

Well the weekend rolls by and no one ever came by or called. Tuesday morning I call AT&T up, livid. The first thing I do is demand to speak with that manager. A rep connects me with the service office he's located in and I get another rep. She tells me she see's him logged on but isn't answering her email to him. Let me add here that every time I'm transferred to a rep, which by now is reaching 20 times, I have to explain the entire situation as passed as they don't transfer adequate notes. I ask to speak to another manager, not supervisor, and I do. This man was terrible. Even knowing the whole situation he told me that everything that can be done is being done. I told him I was lied to by the other manager and basically he told me that that's between me and the other manager, and not his responsibility. I ask him if he can use that alleged 24/7 server repair crew and he says that isn't to be abused. I demand his Name and employee number for future reference.

I call up the billing department and demand a refund. They tell me that they should only be refunding for the time the service has been out but they'll be nice and refund me a month. Oh great, $42 bucks back. After I lost a tank of gas having to drive all the way, and the $400 I missed in tip money from taking the 3 days off because my service was out. Oh well, that's not entirely her responsibility, but it's damn inconvenient. I told her that too, she didn't care.

Well Wednesday arrives. The day both crews are supposed to come out. Around 6pm AT&T DSL arrives to fix my DSL. Thank god, I can't take it much longer without internet. He goes and works for a few minutes then comes back. Apparently he can't hook up my DSL as the original U-Verse tech left the U-Verse equipment in the box outside and he's not legally allowed or trained to touch it. Jesus. He leaves. The U-Verse crew never shows up.

The next morning I call U-Verse with indescribably rage. They told me the appointment was canceled by someone from the DSL department saying that I no longer wanted U-Verse service or something. Oh god... After a series of being transferred between endless amounts of people I finally got to talk to someone in the U-Verse cable crew department that seemed like he didn't have his head between his legs. He told me he would personally take control of the situation. He got my cell number and told me he was going to call the dispatch department and see what strings he can pull. In the mean time I call up the DSL department and complain some more and tell them how much I hate them. As a note I have another online project due the upcoming Monday so I need internet hooked up by Friday. This time it's an engineering project and even more time consuming.

A few minutes after getting off the phone with the DSL department the cable tech from U-Verse calls back and says that he might be able to get someone out by Friday or Monday. Apparently U-Verse is really short on drivers and is really backed up. He apologizes on behalf of the mass stupidity of the company. I really liked this guy. Friday comes and he calls me and says that Friday is literally impossible and Monday isn't looking good. He tells me how bad the dispatch department is and he hates them. He told me he'd call me Monday to give me an update. Great, another weekend I have to take off of work and drive to my parent's house for an online project. That's another $200 I'm down, and now I can't make rent and am forced to borrow from my parents. I don't think these guys know how important weekends are to servers.

Well I call up U-Verse and see if there's anything they can do. They tell me the soonest they can get out there is over two weeks from now, and they're extremely backed up. I call the DSL department up and ask for someone not retarded. They connect me with the Retention Department. I asked the man what exactly he does and he told me literally that he's "a man of many hats." He can do anything that anyone can from any department. He refunds another month for me. Ok, so far so good. Maybe I'll stay with AT&T if he can give me a good reason to. He looks up the dispatch schedule and tells me that at his ability, which is the best the company can do, he can get someone out to fix my internet in just under two weeks. He then told me that if I'm in school and that reliant on the internet, I shouldn't be with AT&T. He told me that it's obvious U-Verse and the DSL Department aren't prepared to offer good customer service and that they don't deserve my money. He said the only way they'll realize it is when they start losing customers because of it. He even said that he had been having to deal with cases like mine all day. He ended saying the most he could offer for me to stay with them is 3 free months but advised me not to take it. I didn't. I canceled my service.

It was about 6pm, Friday night. I call up Comcast and ask when the soonest they could come out would be. Wait, what? Since my apartment already has cable connected I can just drive to the Comcast store, pick up a free modem, and have broadband by that night? And the service for 8mb is only $35 per month!? Sign me up.

Here I am with Comcast and haven't had any problems since I've signed up. At any given times I usually get 12mbps. Nice.

The Monday after I canceled that guy called me and asked if I'm still interested when U-Verse can come out. I told him no. Not Ever.

In the end I had used 4 different cell phones to avoid overage fees. I tallied up my talk times with the various departments. I used just a hair over 600 minutes. That's over 10 hours of talking to AT&T in less than 3 weeks. I'll also add that I drive a truck and at the time gas was well over $4.00 per gallon. So the two trips I took each took a tank totaling $140. I missed out on easily over $400 from Labor Day weekend, and $200 from the weekend after that. Thanks AT&T for 10 hours of talk time, 3 weeks without internet, and $740 of opportunity cost. As far as I'm concerned, I'm never going to buy another AT&T product again, from any branch of theirs.
[/RANT]

I still have the names and employee numbers of a few managers that obviously didn't care about the customer. What do you say, Better Business Bureau time?

[appabessy]

tl;dr ..

[DF9sLGSU]

That's rediculous. BBB time!

[Retapleapse]

Can somebody offer a cliff notes version of this?

[Gymnarnemia]

Can somebody offer a cliff notes version of this?

Sure -

AT&T offers new fiber-optic service - "Sign me up"
AT&T screws him over for 3 weeks without any Internet service
- Durring this time he misses a full week of work and lots of money, with little compensation from AT&T
Finally gets fed up with AT&T and goes to Comcast, who has him hooked up by the end of the night.
In the end, realized Comcast isn't the anti-Christ.. its AT&T.


[thumbup]

[Retapleapse]

Sure -

AT&T offers new fiber-optic service - "Sign me up"
AT&T screws him over for 3 weeks without any Internet service
- Durring this time he misses a full week of work and lots of money, with little compensation from AT&T
Finally gets fed up with AT&T and goes to Comcast, who has him hooked up by the end of the night.
In the end, realized Comcast isn't the anti-Christ.. its AT&T.


[thumbup]

Ah thanks! Its late and my eye's are dilated from these eye drops im having to put in it for an "eroding cornea" that I found out I have today. (no big deal just gotta let it heal) Makes it difficult to read.

[arreskslarlig]

Yeah, nice summary. Sorry about the length, just I heard someone talking about U-Verse today and I got flashbacks from it all.