Brand New Customer with the worst experience of her life

It all started a little over a month ago when I called AT&T to get pricing to set up a brand new account. I got pricing and then had to wait to talk it over with my husband. After we made the decision to move forward with a new company, I called again. At that time, i was given completely different pricing information. I once again had to discuss it over with my husband because it was a large difference, I got the green light and called back for a 3rd time. And again, I got conflicting information from the sales rep. I then explained to them that I had gotten different info each time I call and they transferred me to the “Customer Loyalty” dept. At that point, I spoke with a gentleman from Texas who assured me that the information that he was giving me WAS correct and that he would send over a confirmation email once the order was placed with all of the pricing and “perks” that he had offered me. These “perks” included a $200 visa gift card as a courtesy for switching from my previous provider, a minimum of $300 per phone for trading in our old cell phones (as long as the value of he phones were at least $20), a buy out of our old contract with Dish Network, a free wireless genie upgrade so we wouldn’t have to pay extra for 6 total receivers in our home— we have 4 children who like watching tv in their bedrooms—and a $300 credit from direct tv for switching to them. This sounded like an amazing deal so I proceeded with the order and gave my bank card info. The gentleman from the customer loyalty dept told me that I could go to the AT&T store the following day to pick up the Iphone 8 and IPhone 8 plus that I ordered. He even gave me the business hours and address for my local store and told me that they had the phones in stock. Later that evening, I checked my email and realized that I DID NOT receive anything with the information that he promised to send. It was late at night so I went online and chatted with a woman named Jennifer. I wanted to see if she could send the email so I would have the pricing info in writing and at least the account number for when I went into the store the next morning. Jennifer on chat said that my order was in the “processing” phase and that she could not send the confirmation email until I picked up the phones from the store, and at that time.. the system would automatically send the email to me. She also confirmed all of the pricing and “perks” that the sales rep with the loyalty dept had offered to me earlier when opening my account. She also gave me the address for my local AT&T store. I emailed the chat transcript to myself so that I could have it all documented. Upon arrival at the ATT store the following day, I was informed that we could NOT place an order over the phone and pick them up at the store. The store clerk also told me that my account was set up incorrectly and that my billing would not be correct. He said that he had to cancel my original accounts and set up a completely new account in order to correct it. But with doing so, I would have to pay for everything again. He assured me that I would get a refund for the original account within 48 hours. I then went ahead and gave him my debit card and he set up the new account. I got the 2 phones and my direct tv was scheduled to be installed the next day, after sitting for over 4 hours in the store and missing my sons first football game mind you.The clerk in the store informed me that a free upgrade to wireless genies was not possible and that the only dept that could honor that was to contact the loyalty dept again after I left and have them edit my account to reflect the free wireless upgrade. The cost for paying for the phones in store was much higher than what I had originally paid over the phone for the first account that was set up also. So once again, another pricing difference. He also informed me that there was no such thing as a contract buy out, no gift card and no credits on the account for switching. I was extremely frustrated and felt completely misled by the AT&T reps. But at that point, I had already cancelled my account with Dish so I went ahead and proceeded with setting things up with AT&T. Boy do I wish I would have listened to my gut and ran back to Dish begging for forgiveness now. After I left the AT&T store, I made another call to the loyalty dept and after almost 2 hours on the phone, I finally got someone to help me. They told me that they were going to make a special note on my installation ticket so that the tech would know to install the wireless receivers and they were at no charge. The next day when the tech arrived, they did in fact get the note and told me that they would not be able to proceed without collecting $99 for the wireless receivers. I explained to him that I had already been forced to pay for the phones and direct tv charges twice and hadnt received my refund yet.. therefore I did not have the extra money to pay him $99, plus I had been made a promise to get them free. He called his manager who then actually physically drove to my house to try to help out. He spent nearly 1.5 hours on the phone trying to get things corrected for me, without success. So at the end of the day, I ended up with 4 WIRED receivers installed... and 2 very unhappy children because my other 2 children got television installed in their rooms and they didn’t because of yet another broken promise from AT&T. The clerk at the AT&T store told me that I would have my refund from the original account back in my bank by no later than the following Monday (10/09/17). I checked with my bank that Monday morning and they told me they had not received any notifications from AT&T that they were refunding the money. I called AT&T and got a run around for 2 hours and 32 minutes. I finally gave up after the last rep told me that they couldn’t even find my original account and that I needed to wait and see if the system somehow fixed itself and refunded the money on its own. If it hadn’t completed the refund on its own after 14 business days, call back and see if someone can help me. The next day, 10-10-17, I called my bank once again and got the same answer. I called AT&T back once again and after spending a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes, and a total of 17 transfers between departments... I was told that there was nothing they could do to help me. Meanwhile, my 4 children are in the other room needing help with homework and hungry for dinner. By paying for my order twice, I had to take money out of my grocery budget for the week. I really needed AT&T to fulfill their promise so that I could buy food for my family for the rest of the week.. but I was told to call my local churches or visit a food pantry because there was nothing they could do to help me. AT&T has broken every promise they made to me. They have stolen so many precious hours of time with me from my children and my family. As a brand new customer, I expected to be treated with respect and to be valued as a paying customer. I was with my previous providers (Dish and Sprint) for almost 15 years. I switched because I felt like the grass might be greener on the AT&T side, and so far I have been proven wrong. My last hope is that someone from ATT with dignity and respect sees this post and decides to fulfill all of the promises that were made to me by ATT. And if that doesn’t happen, I will be cancelling my account the exact day that my contract is expired and never looking back. My mom has been a customer with ATT for 4 years and is not in contract. I will be cancelling her account next week and switching providers for her as well. I manage a business in my local area who also uses AT&t for wireless internet, tv and phone. I handle all of that for them and I will be cancelling the account for my employer next week as well and switching to Charter Business. I sincerely hope that I have just caught AT&T at a bad point in their merge with Direct Tv and this is just a fluke.. and that AT&T steps up to the plate and starts treating me like the valued customer that I should be and honors their promises to me. Sorry for the long post, but this is the entire story. I feel that I have been drug through the dirt by AT&T and their deceitful customer service representatives.