Ineffective Forum?

[CSULA21]

Are any of these questions actually answered?

[wilcre ACE - Expert]

99% of them are which is pretty good for a peer to peer forum, is there a specific question you have that you would like to ask?.

[CSULA21]

And yet 99% of them remain unanswered. To answer your question, yes. It's in this forum, which is STILL unanswered.

[wilcre ACE - Expert]

And you do realize that this is a peer to peer run forum, so we are fellow customers, there are very few AT&T reps here which even still can not give an official answer to anything, then there are 1 or 2 AT&T managers here but they are not available 24/7. All the users here do there best to help out, but even still not everyone knows all the answers, unfortunately there are quite a few times that people are referred to calling customer care to have their question answered or issue resolved.

[gregzoll_1]

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CSULA21 wrote:
And yet 99% of them remain unanswered. To answer your question, yes. It's in this forum, which is STILL unanswered.

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There are a lot that gets looked at as just a person venting, or a troll making a poor attempt to FUD up the forums, and those questions that are valid get answered.  At times some do get buried in the noise, especially if it is a busy forum.  I look for those topics that are of interest and look at them, and then make an answer.  Then the OP never comes back to reply as to what they want, so I write those mostly off as a trolling/venting post.

[Max69 ACE - Wizard]

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CSULA21 wrote:
And yet 99% of them remain unanswered. To answer your question, yes. It's in this forum, which is STILL unanswered.

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Just because a question isn't marked as solved, doesn't mean it isn't. If the OP doesn't mark it, there isn't much we can do about it. And a lot of posters come in, ask a question, then never come back and respond to any solutions.

[harryspar]

The forum was created by ATT for a few reasons, as far as I can tell. 1. It saves them a few calls to customer service which saves them money. 2. It ensures that the discussions take place under thier control rather than an independent website, which lets them censor the conversation. They generally tolerate people who just come here to vent, but if there's a real serious mess up the thread will abruptly end with an intervention by a moderator saying to send a private message. This removes the discussion fom the public eye, and you never find out if they ever stopped harassing the poor guy whose son died in Afghanistan with collections notices, or whatever. Also, if you anything about lawyers, suing, or any legal advice, you are out.

[wingrider01 ACE - Geek]

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harryspar wrote:
The forum was created by ATT for a few reasons, as far as I can tell. 1. It saves them a few calls to customer service which saves them money. 2. It ensures that the discussions take place under thier control rather than an independent website, which lets them censor the conversation. They generally tolerate people who just come here to vent, but if there's a real serious mess up the thread will abruptly end with an intervention by a moderator saying to send a private message. This removes the discussion fom the public eye, and you never find out if they ever stopped harassing the poor guy whose son died in Afghanistan with collections notices, or whatever. Also, if you anything about lawyers, suing, or any legal advice, you are out.

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1. take the time to look at exactly what is "censored" - personal information, vulgarity, personal attacks on other socially unacceptable comments - rarely, if ever has any "complaints" been censored or removed, unless you have proof of this - which would be interesting to see. If the OP never comes back to respond then you seem to be assuming that the reponses are being removed - a lot of teh "complaints" are one hit wonders, they post once and never come back. You still have the right to take it to a independant forum to post or even the right to create your own independant forum - no one is stopping you. Not sure if you where aware of this, but this is not a ATT help forum, it is a peer to peer forum, the majority of people that lend assistance are not att employees, and if they are they are not posting as one - hence the disclaimer on their signature block

2. the discussion that take place here are peer to peer, there is rarely any "official response" becasue, after all this is a peer to peer forum, hence the disclaimer that is at the bottom of ever true ATT employee.

3. to be of any help on issues that are posted it is totally logical that a Private Message would be required, to efectively work on and resolve any issue dealing with a cell phone service information is required that the majority of people would not really want put in a public form - DOB, SSN/TID, ATT account number, Mail to address, IMEI number, little things like that. Don;t know about you but I would not post any of that information on a public forum that is visible to the world - IMEI cloners are in 7th heaven when people post their IMEI numbers, gives them a whole nw opening into theft. The conversation is not "removing it from the public eye" just to hide something, it is "removing it from the public eye" because information is needed that you have no requirement to see if required - basic Need to know and you don;t need to know. 99 percent of the time you never hear back from those posters becuas they rarely come back and report how the issue was handled.

4. Maybe you would take "legal advice" from a anon poster, but personally that is why I pay the professional to give me the advice, you are safe in the long run, not to mention making smarter, well informed decisions based on accurate and professional advice.

Bottom line - there is some things that cannot be discussed, and like any corporation they tend to watch over what is posted on forums that are sponsored by the corporation, anyone corporation that does not do this is run by unprofessional exectutives. The concept of "free speech" does not apply as most people that claim that have not actually understood the text. You want a totally open forum where you can bash anyone you want or post any personal information that ID theives / IMEI cloners would love to get their hands on go to a free discusion board site and start your own forums, or one of the social sites.

Sad to say, but personal hardship does not remove the requirements of financial and legal rsponsibilities - this is true in eery corporation that deals with services - credit cards, TV service, cell service, car loans, morgages, bank loans - you name it, if it is a financial responsiblity it has to be handled. As far as lawyers - read you terms of service - it is documented there.

[harryspar]

There are open sites available, I believe the most prominent one is HowardForums. The ATT forum has been very effective at diverting traffic and thus reducing the influence of HowardForums, which is just as effective at policing offensive and illegal posts while maintaining freedom of expression in general.