Ridiculous experience with AT&T - is it always this bad?

Techs out 3 times and still no TV. Lazy and know nothing techs.

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It's my experience that it's always this bad. 

The dispatchers do not communicate properly with the techs.

I've been dealing with poor cable for THREE months now.   With no end in sight.

I have nothing good to say about ATT Uverse.

I'm still within my 30 day cancellation window - If I thought TWC would be any better, I'd cancel and move to them... 

This is the worst, most infuriating and frustrating experience I have had with any company in my life.

Major problems moving my service!!!!

- I moved my service to a new address and my rental agreement did not go through so i provided a new address and confirmed the installation date and time frame for which i missed work (5 hours)

- The day of the installation, i get a call from the technician saying he's at my door but he was at the wrong address (initial location i was moving to).  Spoke to a technician and customer service for 2 hours to fix the issue and get a new installation date and time.  I never got an answer and had to call them back myself after waiting another 2 hours.  

- The day of the installation, the technician informed me that the account has not been transfered which doesn't permit him to process with the installation without having the account established first.  The installation cost me an additional 5 hours of missed work but i got the service.  The customer service had to cancel my previous account and startup a new account for which AT&T was going to charge me initial installation fees. 

- The technician had to change the equipment i had because it wasn't registered under the new account and wasn't working.  He instruct me to return the equipment within a 3 weeks window otherwize I would be charged $200 per equpment (total of $600).

- I tried to return the equipment with the information provided but only 1 equipment was showing in the return documentation.  I called AT&T and spend another 2 hours on the phone being transfered from one department to another and again, and again...   Billing told me to keep the equipment and wait for the charges to show on my bill to handle it at that time!!!!  I refuse to do such STUPID thing and insist on speaking to the manager and he managed to transfer me to another department.  I finally got the information from who know which department at that point on how to return everything without any penalty or charges. 

- Now after 5 months of my initial account being closed by AT&T, i am still waiting on a refund of $145.  I decide to call them again and raise my blood pressure!!!!   The payment service is telling me they see the credit but the account is not closed.   They proceed to close it and tell me the billing department will take it from there.  I am once again transfered to billing (in Asia somewhere) and they tell me (after repeating everything again) that they will transfer the funds into my new AT&T account.  I refuse this transaction and transfered to his manager which informs me that only the payment department can do a refund and transfers me again to the payment department.  I explain everything again to the payment department and she tells me there is be a 6 to 8 weeks delay in processing the refund.  At this point, it's already been 5 months and she cannot confirm when the 6 to 8 weeks is starting. 

I HAD ENOUGH OF AT&T!!!  I spend over $350 a month on phone, internet and cable services and just cannot waste my time dealing with such incompetence and bad customer service!!! 

Well, after sending the content of my OP to the CEO of AT&T, I received a phone call from a manager in the CEO's office and by the end of the day the generator was gone and the equipment is being powered from the mains.

I'm glad I got it resolved, it's just a shame I had to go through this nightmare to get it done!

In my experiance yes.

They made me move to u-verse internet and when after a terrible time getting the tech out (showed at 8pm, 4 hours late) he tells me I'm so very on the edge of u-verse servicability that i am going to have issues.

Couldn't stay on DSL (he called it in, not even me), so now i have crappy internet and crapy cell servie.

Leave when you can, I am.

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@rchesterton wrote:

Here's the story of my experience with AT&T U-Verse so far.  Having moved from a FiOS area to an area where FiOS is unavailable, I had a choice between U-Verse or Time Warner Cable.  I had heard horror stories about TWC, so chose U-Verse.  

 

Having previously had FiOS and found their customer service to be fairly poor, I didn't realize just how amazing Verizon really are (by comparison)!

 

August 1st – Moved into new house. Noticed an AT&T generator next to the house, which can be heard INSIDE our house and is bothersome. Had U-Verse installed.  When installer left, only one of 3 boxes worked.

 

August 11th – Appointment scheduled for 12-4. Nobody showed up even though I had taken the day off of work, at a cost of $500 to myself.  Spent 3-4 hours on the phone with AT&T trying to get help. Finally got someone useful on web chat who promised me a call back from his manager within an hour and a call from the dispatch team within 2 hours to reschedule an appointment for later that night or the next day.  Neither person called back.

 

August 12th – Spent a further 3-4 hours on the phone trying to get the issue resolved.  Finally got through to someone in an escalation team who assured me that someone would come the same day.  Nobody showed up again, even though I had taken a further day off work at a cost of $500 to myself.

 

August 13th – had planned to work. Got a text telling me I had an appointment for the afternoon.  Took another day off work (at a cost of $500 to myself - $1500 total now!).  Engineer showed up and resolved the issues, got all boxes working (and I was told that I only had 2 STBs listed on my account, despite ordering and receiving 3!).

 

Between August 14th-17th (not sure of exact date) – All services went out.  Outside technician came to resolve.

 

August 21st – All services out AGAIN. Had to visit AT&T store to try to get resolved as phone and web support are useless.  Noticed the generator noise had stopped. Turns out the generator is powering the local AT&&T equipment and had run out of gas as nobody had come to refuel it.  This was also the cause of the previous outage!  Why is the equipment not being powered from the mains?  Was without services all day.  Engineer who finally came to restore it was almost as bemused and angered as I was that nobody had been out to refuel it or, more importantly, remove it and restore mains power (the box for the electricity is RIGHT THERE and labelled clearly – surely all it would take is for someone at AT&T to call the power company and have it reconnected?).

 

August 25th – Knowing that the generator was likely to run out of gas again, I contacted AT&T to prompt them to get someone to come out before I lose service.  After a long and frustrating web chat, a manager (Rachel) called me and booked an appointment for someone to come first thing the next day and said that they would work on ensuring the generator was removed and mains power restored.  Rachel promised to call me the next morning to check everything was ok and the generator had been refueled.  Received 3 different calls that evening from various people at AT&T all confirming the appointment, asking if my services were down and not knowing why the appointment was even booked.

 

August 26th (Today) – Technician calls, having picked up the ticket for the 8-12 appointment.  Asked what the problem was.  When I explained that the generator needed refueling, he said he cannot do that and asked if he could take my services down to run some tests (WHY??? Everything is working… until that generator runs out of gas!).  Called support - the agent said that she didn’t know if anyone would be coming and that she was putting me on hold to call the relevant team to find out if/when they could come.  I waited on hold for 35 mins before being cut off.  Then tried web chat and gave the name and ID of the person I spoke to on the 25th (Rachel RP919M), asking for a call back.  Was promised that this person would call me within an hour (by 1:30pm Central).  No call back.  Spoke to “Sunny” (ss002k) who assured me that an outside engineer would be coming before 8pm tonight, would call me 30 minutes before arriving and would be refueling the generator and restoring mains power (not sure why one would do both?). 

 

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Welcome to UVERSE.

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yes this is very normal Customer service for ATT..Dont expect any real service from them. no one at that company knows what there doing.. All they care about is profits and stock prices thast it.. They have a Monopoly in some areas.. Over charge all the time. Are dishonest about everything they tell you.. they just want you off the phone and for you to tell them they did a good job stop doing this ATT does not doo a good job has not donr so in years.

This works...

But you can also write the executives in charge of the various 

departments . For the names and information go to the investor relations page and 

find the names of the AT&T corporate executives under the title of corporate governance.