I’m so tired of AT&T. Why do we have to put up with monopolies? It just blows my mind. We broke them up because they provided horrible service, and now they’re almost completely back together again. And Wikipedia cites the Center for Responsive Politics when it says that AT&T is the second largest political contributer in the US since 1990. Is it any wonder we get the worst service money can buy? It’s easier to lobby than to treat your customers right.

So yesterday I tried to signup for Internet and Phone services from AT&T. They have a pretty good deal online. DSL and unlimited local and long distance for $60. Stacks up pretty well against everyone else out there.

So I went online and tried to buy the package. By default the website assumes you already have phone service with AT&T. My first attempt to get new phone service ended up with a 404 page from an SBC web site. With my confidence in the process bolstered, I pushed on.

I finally found a working link to sign up for new phone service. At one point I checked back at something I’d been looking at earlier in another tab, and the registration process decided to skip a few steps. Hitting the final signup button left me with an error page (error code 111) telling me to call AT&T. The first message you get when you call AT&T is that you should check online because there are better deals you can’t get by phone. That sounded ominous so I hung up.

I cleared my session and started over with just one tab. I went through the website again. Everything went smoothly. I even managed to get it to allow me to move our old phone number with us. Hitting the final signup button left me with an error page (error code 111) telling me to call AT&T. Have I mentioned that the first message you get when you call AT&T is that you should check online because they have better deals? I pushed on. Surely they could help you if their website is broken, right? Right?

The first person who talked to me condescendingly told me that I’d called the wrong department and said she’d transfer me. The next person to pick up also recognized that I needed someone competent on the other end of the phone and immediately forwarded me again. After listening to a jamming light jazz version of TLC’s Waterfalls my call was dropped. Yes, the phone company drops holding calls.

So I called back. This time I again had to be transferred. This time the second woman offered me a direct number in case I got disconnected again. What customer service! I said that would be wonderful, so she transferred me without giving me the phone number.

This time I waited on hold for 30 minutes before talking to a customer service representative. I explained how their website had crapped out on me. He said he could help me, and that sometimes the website went down and you had to try again later. As a side note, did I realize that he couldn’t give me the prices on the website? He could give me similar packages, but not those prices. I calmly explained that the only reason I would signup with an incompetent bunch of boobs like AT&T was if they were cheap. I then hungup the phone.

I hit refresh in my browser a few more times to see if the website would magically submit my form properly. No dice. At this point I was steamed, so I called in again and asked the woman on the other end of the phone if they had a tech support number that could be called to find out when their website would function since there was nothing their phone support could do for me. She said no, so I hung up. I’m not proud that I devolved to essentially prank calling the phone company. Why do I mess with support reps when I know what the answer will be?

I decided to give the process one more chance. This time I did not try to keep our old phone number. After 2.5 hours of fighting it went through. Thank God for the wonders of capitalism. I’m sure competition couldn’t make this system any more efficient!

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Comments

ashley

2007-12-05T02:05:24.000Z

Let me know how the DSL goes, I sure wouldn’t mind saving 30 bucks a month!