My poor AT&T service experience

Dear AT&T,

I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to share with you our recent experience with your company when trying to get internet service.

First off, let me start by telling you that we've been AT&T customers for well over 10 years. We've had your cellular service since you bought out Cingular. We then made the switch over from Time Warner internet and TV to the AT&T bundle package consisting of TV, Internet, phone and cellular. During this time we had flawless service from your company.

Fast forward to July of this year. We sold our home and closed on our new home August 13th. So, my wife called you guys on July 15th to schedule service. You were supposed to arrive the day after we closed (Aug 14th) to install U-verse internet. We received a call on the Aug 13th that there was a problem with the line and they could not come out on the 14th. We then got a call on Aug 14th late in the evening from someone over seas who said AT&T couldn't provide us service and we're canceling our account. If we wanted further information we'd have to call back the next day during business hours.

We did call on Aug 15th and after a LONG phone call (well over an hour) we were told U-verse wasn't available but DSL was. We agreed to your terms and scheduled a install for Aug 20th.

On Aug 20th your installer never showed up after we waited the whole day. We did however receive the DSL modem by ups. We read the instructions and waited until 8 like it said before trying it. We followed all the instructions and there was no service. We called the tech support line and we were informed that the order was canceled. Not only was it canceled but we had to wait for the next business again to call and request service AGAIN.

So, we called again on Aug 21st and set up another instillation for Aug 26th. We were told that because of all our troubles all fees for instillation would be waived.

On Aug 26th your installer was supposed to be at our home between the hours of 9 am and 12 pm. The installer never showed up. I called around 1 pm and was told the installer was very busy and would be out before 8 pm. We waited the WHOLE day and no one ever showed up.

On the morning of the 27th my wife received a phone call from AT&T asking how our service was. She then spent over and hour on the phone with them explaining our situation. The tech documented everything and switched her over to billing to help the situation. When connected with billing, she was in awe and was trying to figure out how AT&T was billing all these accounts and which accounts were cancelled. She then tried to connect her with her lead supervisor and somehow phone call got dropped. My wife waited for a phone call back but never received one. In the meant time of being on phone with AT&T, she had a message on phone saying an installer would be out that afternoon. No one showed up AGAIN!

We then got a call on the 28th from the tech saying he would be out. A very nice tech named Steve came out and he was completely dumbfounded by what we had gone through. He then spent the next hour on the phone trying to figure out what happened. He discovered we had 5 different accounts opened in our names with the same address. These various accounts were all entered by your people each time we called because no one showed up.

13719****
085213****
085207****
085215****
085208****

Steve also informed me that our account was set up as a business account.

We now have service because of Steve. However, we have since received a letter from August 22 stating how we owe for a tech install of $149.00 and how the $34.95 we agreed to is only good for 6 months. We were NEVER told that the $34.95 a month was for only 6 months!

I'd like to say that during this whole crappy experience we racked up over 8 hours of actual phone time talking to various people from your company! We found 3 things very frustrating.

1) When we called we typically got connected with someone outside of the US. Their response seemed to be, based on all the account numbers, was just to open a new account each time. Which I believe pulled our credit each time. I know this because my credit monitoring sends me an email each time.

2) When we would call we would get shuffled from one department to another and no one really had all the answers.

3) The people we talked to on the phone failed us in many ways. The most frustrating was was when we'd be on the phone for over an hour and the call would get dropped (I remind you we have AT&T cellular service) no one would call us back. If we spend an hour on the phone you know who we are and our contact info. Why not call us right back? When we called you guys back we got a new person each and every time.

I also found it ridiculously hard to speak to a supervisor. Frankly, after we had 5 accounts set up I had zero confidence in speaking to anyone but a supervisor. When I did get one they weren't very helpful either. I just spent 1 hour and 21 one minutes on the phone trying to sort this out again and when I did get a supervisor (Elvis Almonte) she wouldn't provide me with her contact info (either phone or email). When I requested her supervisor she told me the name, Anny Santos, but would not tell me any contact info and said I could never talk to anyone higher than her, being Elvis.

My wife and I looked back at our cellular records and we have OVER 8 hours of phone calls to your company and we still don't have a clear understanding of our service and monthly bill.

I'm writing this email and plan on sending it to every AT&T representative I can find on the internet.

I can't recall ever having such a poor experience with a company before.

I plan on sending out this email/letter and after 2 weeks if I don't hear from someone who can resolve our service issues I will be canceling ALL service with AT&T. Nor will I EVER have AT&T service ever again.

Sincerely,

Seann

[edited for privacy-last name removed]