AT&T Broadband most hellish customer service experience, don't let them bully you *Consumer Suggestion
Rip-Off report, this is the most hellish customer service experience of my life: AT&T Broadband disconnected our cable. When we called to complain that our cable was out, the customer service rep told us that it had been voluntarily disconnected and that we would have to pay to reinstall. After further investigation, they said that I was dead (I am obviously not) and that is why our cable had been disconnected. We have finally bullied our way into getting free reinstallation (I'm not sure why that was a battle I had to fight).
However, I sat at home all day on Saturday waiting for a cable guy who, of course, never showed up. I have spent at least 5 hours on hold over the past week. Every time I ask to speak to a supervisor, the service rep puts me on hold and I either get disconnected or left on hold interminably.
If this should happen to anyone else, don't let them bully you into paying for reinstallation.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
If the supervisor does not call back, contact the cable franchise
#20
Mon, December 31, 2001
They filed the following rebuttal to the above Rip-Off Report:
Their email: bkc3@giant.net
Their name: B. Castillo
Their relationship to the company: Advocate
Rebuttal:
I spent several months working as a temp for a cable franchise in Iowa (started out as AT&T, was sold to Mediacom).
One important thing to know as far as cable tv goes is whether or not you are serviced by a local franchise.
This will significantly improve your customer service usually, but if you ask to talk to a supervisor, that person will either be the tech supervisor or the franchise manager.
In the first case, this person will normally be in the field except very early in the morning. In the later case, this person is also often in the field, traveling, or in meetings. Since both can normally eventually be reached in the field, a service rep may try to reach these people although it could take 15 minutes to an hour to reach them. You would be better off just talking to the rep, and at worst requesting for their supervisor to call you back.
If the supervisor does not call back, contact the cable franchise
comission for your city. As for what happened in this case, if you have no identifying information on file (ssn, birthday, password) pretty much anyone can call in with your address and have your service disconnected. Saying that you have died
will almost certainly guarantee no argument from the representative. I ran into this situation a few times, and it is very difficult to resolve.
Free reinstallation is -very- standard for a situation like this.
In many areas, saturday installs are done by a handful of techs covering primarily oncall repairs. One major outage, and the saturday installs will not be done. For this reason, saturday installs are not always guaranteed. Call early in the week and get a weekday install time if at all possible.