A glimpse for new customers, in how AT&T support might (not) work.

Well I fell for it. At&t fiber just became available in my neighborhood and came in a bit cheaper for the same speeds. I switched one week ago today and some issue arised with either the fiber or the modem itself (tech support can't tell) and I have lost internet access. Not the worst thing ever. Honestly it gives me a chance to see what future support will be like.

1. My internet goes out and I try try rebooting the modem. The internet comes back in intermittent a few times for maybe a minute or two but continues to have issues. With the modem itself saying it's having trouble connecting (fiber).

2. I Open the app and the only option I have is to let the computer schedule a time for somebody to come to my house. I am not available at any of these times due to my job which of course I cannot request time off last minute to deal with. So I decide to call customer support to maybe try and figure something else out.

3. Spend 10 minutes trying different methods of getting to a real human through the phone system and I finally get through. Total sign so far trying to figure this out. It's about 30 minutes.

4. Tech support literally would just keep repeating that they only get to select between the 4-Hour windows that are available. I let them know that because of my job, I would only be available the first hour of their first 4-Hour window or the last hour of the last 4-Hour window at best for the next two weeks. As they said somebody has to be available to let them in and nobody else would be available.

5. I asked if they can give me to their supervisor to see if they might be able to do something about working with me on their window of availability. Mind you not expanding their availability window. Just trying to pinpoint it down so I can be there. At one point the supervisor told me that they can add a "note" to the ticket but that the support team would " Read it but not care." And telling me that " That's just how it works. You need to find a way to be there. It's not our responsibility. That's how our system works" Wow what service. I run a business. I run a business that does deliveries and we have a system in place similar with time windows, but as a business if we are the reason that there's an issue I myself will make sure to go out of my way to work with the customer.

6. When I started the call I was told there was available window at 8:00 a.m. the next day according to the automated system. 30 minutes into the call when I gave up and told them to just schedule appointment for tomorrow and if I'm not there I will just have to keep canceling and rescheduling appointments. I was told that there's no more 8:00 a.m. window and now the earliest end of day. Great.

7. I have Wi-Fi at home and I have Wi-Fi at work so my phone plan I pay by the GB for data. That means when I don't have Wi-Fi at home. I literally have to pay more to stream any content or just browse the web during the time that I don't have internet. They sounded like they hated it but they were at least not going to make me pay for the internet service that I wasn't receiving, but according to their policy, the fact that I now have to physically pay another service since their service no longer works " That's just how it is". Awesome.

8. Issues come up, I only called to see if they work with me with their appointment schedules so I can be here so they can fix my internet. I didn't ask for compensation at all, up until they started telling me that my internet might just stay down because I can't be here and they can't guarantee/ make a note to put me at the start of the route on their 8:00 to noon route or the end of the route on their 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. route. So here I am stuck paying my phone carrier (luckily not att) extra money.

Solid first week of service huh.

Positives:

They were quick to run the fiber and install it and the guy who did my install was very nice and friendly and chatted about the service and the process he was doing.

Extra Con:

Some AT&t salesman came by while the Guy was installing stuff and was trying to sell me on phone service and buying new phones under the guise of teaching me how to use the app? Odd.

AT&t intern that reads these and replies please unless there is some actual way to work with your customer and your tech support within their 4-hour windows to narrow down any sort of shorter window don't bother telling me to call back customer support since based on their responses on how little your physical tech support cares I'm just going to get frustrated dealing with them and I've already wasted too much time. I just want potential people to get a glimpse of what saving a couple bucks by switching to AT&t fiber might look like.

I was with my previous provider for 3 years and did have a couple outages and not once did I feel the need to ask to be compensated for the day or even couple days that my internet was out because of their support's ability to make me feel like they were actually trying to work with me to get things figured out.