Complaint Review: AT&T

During our initial installation process of U-verse internet on 25 August 2015, we mentioned to the the technician that we originally requested U-verse TV but were informed during sign-up at the Snellville, GA store that this was unavailable leaving us with only 1 choice; Directv. The AT&T technician stated that this was not the case and that we had more than enough bandwidth to deliver both U-verse internet as well as U-verse TV. As such, we should have been given the choice of U-verse TV and not just Direct TV as our only option at sign-up. Now being informed of this we immediately tried to make the switch from Direct TV to U-verse TV as we originally asked for however we were informed that we would be forced to pay a Direct TV termination charge of $460.00 in order to make the switch to U-verse TV.

We contacted the Retention Department and spoke to a representative and were offered compensation for the cancellation fee in the form of a $150.00 credit to our U-verse account, a $150.00 VISA reward card in addition to a $100.00 "Closer Coupon Debit Card, " whatever that means. We also specifically asked the Retention Department if any additional fees would be billed to recapture the credits; both the representative and her manager said "no." In light of this promissed compensation we went ahead and canceled our Direct TV service and had U-verse TV installed that very same day. Although we received the $150.00 credit, we have never received the remaining compensation as agreed upon by AT&T U-verse.

We have attempted on several occasions to contact the Retention Department on 19 October 2015 but were put on hold for over 90 minutes only to be disconnected. We spoke on another occasion with their customer support representative, after being on hold for 88 minutes, and explained the matter. We were told someone would get back with us in 2 days; to date we are still waiting for that call. To add further damage, we were charged 3 one time equipment fees totaling $147.00 plus installation fees of $33.00 per month for 3 months totaling $99.00; we were never informed of these charges. As a result of all this we have expended $556.00 in net fees just to have AT&T provide us U-verse TV as we originally requested. Additionally, AT&T hit us with a rate hike from $60.00 to $75.00 per month without any prior notification. We are extremely dissatisfied customers with AT&T due to the initiated blunder made by their store employee(s) in Snellville, GA in addition to the undisclosed installation charges and now regret our decision to ever give AT&T U-verse a try. In our opinion AT&T really dropped the ball to acquire our trust and satisfaction as we went from bad Comcast service to horrible AT&T service. We deeply regret ever leaving Comcast; at least they did not burden us with the number of outrageous charges made by AT&T.