Hi David,
I have had a nightmare trying to get AT&T Voice installed. I am a current AT&T telephone, DSL and wireless subscriber with 5 iPhones on the account. I have been a customer of AT&T's phone service for 3 years, DSL for 2 and wireless for 2. All of my accounts are direct debit from my bank and are current.
My address is [edited]
My Name is David [edited]
My number to be ported is [edited]
My Uverse account # is [edited]
My contact # is [edited] or the number that we are trying to port above
Here are how the events occurred.
1.) Starting in the end of July I was getting bombarded with mailers advertising the service available in my neighborhood. I decided on the 22nd of August to call and order the voice and internet service.
2.) When I called, I had no problem ordering the service and setting up a date for the install, but the first available date was October 13th. It seemed ridiculously long to wait, but the savings each month would be worth it. I planned to take the morning off from work and meet the installer.
3.) I got a call from Uverse ordering on October 11th that they would not be able to install the Voice service as planned due to a number porting issue of my existing number that caused the line not to be released. The person asked who I currently had service with. I told them it was through their own company and they explained that it really was a different company within AT&T and not the same as Uverse. They told me they could go ahead and install the internet service with no problem, but that I would have to call back after it was completed to re-order the voice service. The first installer came to swith out the box on the outside of my house as planned, but the other technician didn't show up until 3:30PM, when he was supposed to have been there between 9 and 11. I ended up losing a whole day's work rather than the half day I planned for.
4.) On October 20th, I called to reschedule the voice install and was told that all was in order, but I would have to make a $100 deposit to place the order. I was informed that I would never see this money again and it was due to my credit rating. I complained that this was fraud, as this was never revealed to me when I originally placed the order and I would have never agreed to it. I demanded to speak to a supervisor to have some explanation as to how the rules of the game had changed midstream, as I had initially placed my order in August and this was not the policy then and it was not my fault that AT&T's different companies couldn't talk to each other properly to get the order right in the first place. Then the "Manager" researched it and found that it was not a deposit, but a prepayment for the first bill and it would be applied to the service. I reluctantly agreed to pay it and the order was placed for the following week, on the 27th.
5.) On the 26th, I got a call in the afternoon that the tech would be at my home the next day. Later that night, at around 8:30, I got a call from the Uverse order team in India (none of whom I could understand very well, due to the accents and problems with the connection which was to my AT&T iPhone, by the way) informing me that they did not have the number released because there was another provider involved. I again asked to speak to a supervisor and was assured that he would personally contact the AT&T land line department the following morning and get everything sorted out and then call me back to let me know the date and time for the installation. Guess what? No call ever came.
6.) On the 27th, I received a call from the installer in the morning that he was on his way and I had to be the one to tell him not to bother, as the line had not been released. Why ATA&T doesn't coordinate better between their departments was no surprise to me and I guess it happens a lot, but it should not ever happen that the customer has to tell the company there is an internal problem within this own company. Just another example of poor customer service by AT&T, and I thought Charter was bad! Around noon or so, I called the 288-2020 number again and spoke to a gentleman who had me on hold for 12 - 15 times while he called various departments to get everything ironed out. Finally he came back on the line and said that it was all taken care of and he could have the technician come to install the service on the 3rd of November.
7.) On November 2nd at around 3:30 I got a call to confirm the installation for the next day. Care to guess what happened next? You've got it, I got a call from Uverse India services not less than 15 minutes later telling me there was a problem and they could not do the install as the number was still not yet released. They told me it was due to the ringmaster line again which I was told was resolved 3 calls before. Needless to say, I was furious and demanded to speak to a supervisor. The Indian girl on the other end, whom I could not hear very well because of yet another poor connection to my existing land line, said she could give me a temporary number to have the install done and then switch my number back to the existing number when it was released. My wife was dead set against this and refused that option. I told the representative so and that I would call the 288-2020 number and see if anyone there could sort this out. This was the first time I had ever been offered this option and if it was that simple, I was wondering why it had never been mentioned before.
8.) I placed the call to AT&T customer service and got a very pleasant woman on the phone who said she would get to the bottom of the problem for me. She looked over everything pertaining to the account and could find no reason that the number should not be ported. She went further to call the Uverse order folks and get more info from them and they said it was due to the ringmaster issue again and that she should call AT&T Land to get it fixed. She explained that she handled both Uverse and land and saw no problems. The Uverse person told her that was the code that they had as to why the number was not released and that they knew nothing more. She then talked to her manager and they both tried to figure it out, but couldn't.
I am very frustrated and tempted to call Charter for service and throw the AT&T box in the trash and get rid of all AT&T service but my iPhones if something can't be done. The problem is that I have an alarm system and it needs a whole house connection to the outside box to make the system work with the monitoring service.
Is there anything that can be done to settle this and get the voice service set up? If not I will not recommend AT&T to anyone and will be writing to my Attorney General's Consumer Affairs division to get them to investigate Uverse for fraud in the fees and up front payments that were not disclosed when I ordered the service in August. I will further write the FCC and complain that AT&T refuses to port my number, when by law they have to do so when I request it.
Thanks in advance for your assistance with this,
David
Message Edited by TreyW on 11-03-2009 08:03 AM
