AT&T Local Telephone Service is ROTTEN to the core They don't care about their customers So far I've had nothing but smoke blown up my you-know-what Dallas Texas *UPDATE
Okay! Here's the story... My mother recently moved from one house to another. Her new house is five minutes down the road. AT&T said she could keep her same number and that her service would be switched on 10/1/2002. Mom had given them ample notice to get everything done on time.
Now, here it is 10/11/2002 and still no phone. I have called and called and called. She has called and called and called (running up her poor cell phone bill). They have made no less than three promises to get her phone turned on and today was the date of their last promise. "We promise! it will be on today by 8pm!" LIARS!!
One of the first times I called I explained to the customer service idiots that a) they PROMISED to have the phone on by the 1st, then the 3rd and that Mom had to have her phone because she is the sole responsible party for my terminally ill brother. She has to be in continual contact with him or the hospital. Not having a phone is a real problem.
AT&T told me that there was a mixup and admitted it was their problem and that the phone would absolutely be on by the 11th. When I explained that that was unacceptable because of the situation with my dying brother the lady actually told me that there was nothing AT&T would do to fix THEIR ADMITTED MISTAKE and that if I didn't like it, then go get service from someone else.
Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I asked her if AT&T was in the habit of screwing customers over, then telling them to go get service elsewhere and she just repeated that if I didn't like the answers I got from them, then go call another telephone company.
I am shocked and dismayed that AT&T has so little regard for their customers. I have experienced similar problems with their broadband internet service myself, but didn't realize the whole company was stocked with bastards who don't give a rats hiney about the people that make their salaries possible.
Miracle
Lancaster, Texas
3 Updates & Rebuttals
Elvera
Carrollton,Texas,
Got great LD service from a consumer suggestion here at Ripoff Report
#4Consumer Suggestion
Wed, October 23, 2002
Forgot to mention that all the trouble I had with AT&T caused me to search the internet for a good LD company and guess what, I found it suggested by a consumer post right here on the Rip-off Report.
That person suggested Opex Communications and I have been extremely happy with them.
With AT&T there were always charges on the bill that no one could decipher much less any AT&T Reps could explain.
With Opex, your bill makes sense and is right.
I recommend them to anyone.
Elvera
Carrollton,Texas,
Local AT&T service, what a bad exerience
#4Consumer Comment
Tue, October 22, 2002
A few years back when AT&T started to offer local service in the area we were contacted by a door-to-door salesman named Luis. Oh, he made it sound so great. Switch for free and if not satisfied get 100 Dollars refunded to cover the cost to switchback to old provider, and the first 30 days free service, too.
We switched because I was tired of GTE.
It started with them connecting our downstairs neighbor to our phoneline and his to ours. We got calls from all over the world from people we didn't know and they got all our calls, people they didn't know. None of us knew what was happening for the first few days.
So we call AT&T, oh, no problem, we fix it. It will only take a week to get it done. Wonderful!
No phone service for a week. I was on the phone with AT&T to get a new phone number since the number that was given to us had now traveled all over the world by the people downstairs, when they made their calls.
Oh, no problem, ...well ...lets see...maybe there is a problem ..oh..the computer just won't generate one ....oh well, we'll call you with the new number and when it will go into effect.
Next day I have a VM with the new number and it will go into effect on (about a week later).
One day past that day I called my phone from my cell phone to check that new number was working and you guessed it, it's not in service!
I called the other number that went around the world through my downstairs neighbors and sure nuff, it is now MY number making MY phone ring.
Well one out of two...no I thought, this is NOT good.
I called again to get a new number, again none could be generated right then. But they would call and let me know when it would go into effect.
In the meantime, we also had AT&T for long distance. Unbeknownst to us, they completely wiped out our set up for international calls and were charging us now the regular rate. We, thinking we had special deals set up, made calls all over the place racking up a bill of over 300 Dollars, which should have been only about maybe 100 Dollars at the most.
Needless to say, the local service also was now digital. What this means is that my modem now connects at 14kbps from 50kbps. I called again and was told, sorry, not much we can do about that. They did do something though and it improved things by allowing me to connect at 33kbps. At that same time I called, I also started to ask how to get the refund according to the special that Luis had said.
I was given an address (not AT&T but an outside vendor) to send my request to. I did this well within the 30 days that I had. We were now about 20 days into this nightmare.
Again, unbeknowst to us, the AT&T rep put it upon himself to turn off our phone completely after I asked for the address to get our refund. He never mentioned it would be turned off right then and there.
Then, when we get our bill, they wanted us to pay for the free month of local service and the totally messed up long distance service at a total of about 400 Dollars.
Talk about your blood pressure going up.
It took me 6 months to get a refund of the LD charges. Eachtime I called we were promised an adjustment on our next bill but it never showed (we still kept the LD with AT&T) and eachtime we called there was no record of our previous call.
I did finally get the money credited after 6 months of calls to AT&T. But I never got the credit for the local service and had to switch back at my own cost. I called and called and got nothing but the run around.
Then one day, I also find my LD not working anymore. I try to contact someone with AT&T LD customer service. It seems that they had changed all the prompts by then. I am a very intelligent person able to figure out what the prompts mean and how to select the right one. I could not get a prompt to speak with a live person after 20 minutes of punching prompts.
That was it for me.
I canceled AT&T and I will never use them for ANYTHING.
Mercy!
#40
Fri, October 18, 2002
they finally turned the
phone on this Wednesday,
the 16th. While the supervisor
Mom spoke with offered
no apologies per se, they did
offer to take 10$ Off her bill
for the next six months. While
this does not make us really happy,
it is a step in a better direction.