Horrible ATT / U-Verse Customer Service

Question

I spent 6 hours today with ATT / U-verse customer service representatives. I started with chat. I had a minor billing issue which I wanted ATT to get it fixed. It was regarding an unauthorized $6 video on demand charge. The rep, someone called Jack B, in the chat department was not able to adjust the charge so he proposed a good offer to reduce my bill. A new package. We discussed the package. We liked it so we decided to go with the package. By this time, it took 2 hours and he is still processing. Finally, he tells me that someone will call me right away to process it further. Waited for 15 minutes and no call yet. He escalated to some back office. I finally get a call. The back office rep tells me to close the chat window so that he can access the account. It makes no sense but whatever I went ahead and closed the chat window. Keep in mind that I lost 2 hours of my chat history now although I copied and pasted the transcripts in my word document for my records. The back office guy is able to access the account now, he tells me that he will call me back within 30 minutes to process the order. I wait for 45 minutes and still no call. So I call the customer service number and I finally after a long wait, I was transferred to an agent. I gave her the background. I was hoping that she would have all the history of my chat conversations with Jack B so that I don't have to rehash the whole thing. To my surprise she had no history regarding the pending order that the previous reps were trying to process. She also tells me that the offer they proposed to me is not valid. She can't see that offer. So she recommend me to chat again because the chat department may have a different offer that she does not have access to. By this time I have wasted close to 4 hours. I didn't want my time to be have wasted for nothing, so I started a new chat with someone named Kristen. I provided her the background. She got it. She said she can provide the same offer and worked on to process the order. Suddenly the chat is disconnected. By this time, I am close to 5 hours with ATT. I restarted the chat for the third time. This time the customer rep was Donald. Gave him the whole background and provided him the transcripts from the previous chats. After reviewing the chat transcripts, he tells me that no such offer exists and this offer is too good to be true. By this time I had it. ATT, are you kidding me? After close to 6 hours of wasting my time the last rep says the offer does not exists. You need to get your act together. There is absolutely no customer service here. You exist in business for customers so start showing some respect for them and stop wasting their valuable time.

The last rep said he is going to have his manager give me a call to discuss. The manager, Dan, he did call me to only say that he is having "trouble" accessing my account and that he will call me back in 5 minutes. It has been over an hour and here I am waiting for him to call back. I am pretty sure he is not going to call back. This is apparently how they operate. Just lies and false promises.

This is the worst customer service I had ever experienced.

roger_fen · Answer

I am sorry you had to go through this mess mrey999. I am not surprised at all with the ATT customer service. I had a similar experience a few months ago. It took me 2 weeks of follow up to fix my u-verse TV issue something that should not have taken more then 1 phone call.

ATT customer service is going down the toilet with passing time.

mrey999 · Answer

It seems ATT / U-verse is determined to make our lives miserable. After the original fiasco, I gave up on the whole "promotional" offer that ATT promised and wasted my 6 hours. I had no energy to deal with them. Low and behold, on Monday night the ATT DVR Receiver died with a big RED X on the TV screen. I called ATT support. Spent 1 hour with them on phone troubleshooting. I had to prove to them that the DVR is dead and there is nothing wrong with the Ethernet / internet and wiring. I connected the same DVR receiver in 3 different locations in the house where the other 3 cable boxes are working fine. The same RED X shows up. Finally, the support agent said we will ship you a new DVR receiver. I specifically asked the agent to send me the exact same DVR that I currently have (Cisco ISB7500 model number) and not to send me anything else. He confirmed that he would take a note of it and ensure that the same model DVR is sent. We have had more than 10+ technicians come in last year when we signed up for ATT to fix a simple issue. From that experience I know that other model DVRs had major buffering and screen freeze issues.

I got the new DVR today. Guess what? It is a different DVR from Pace. Two different companies. This is the exact same DVR I was trying to avoid because of the aforementioned issues. Anyways, since the DVR was already here, I thought let's give it a shot. Hooked in the DVR. The RED X error was gone and the TV guide etc. came up. But in less than 5 minutes we started noticing the screen freeze and buffering issues on the new DVR. Other 3 cable boxes in the house are working fine. Anything that is recorded in the DVR is also having issues in streaming to other cable boxes in the house. All in all it was another SUPER waste of time. I had to call ATT again. Be on the call for close to an hour.... The customer agent said that they can't "guarantee" that the exact same model DVR would be sent so she recommended a) to create a new DVR order and try my luck and see if I can get the exact replacement or B) to send a technician out tomorrow because there is a better chance of he / she having the same model DVR in stock and they should be able to quickly resolve the issue. So we will see tomorrow. I am dreading this. I have had more than 10+ technicians come in to fix a simple issue over a 6 weeks time period last year.

way to go ATT!