Awful Service Even Before Installation

Question

Hello! I am a new customer of AT&T, and honestly wish I wasn't, but have not had good experiences ever since getting off the phone with sales. Is this a common occurrence? I signed up for the U300+Internet package and first was looking for some further information on an employee program that my employer has with AT&T and got a total runaround for about 2 hours being transferred between Customer Service and Outside Sales the entire time, to finally have both of them tell me they couldn't help me and didn't know who I should talk to. Then when it comes to installation, the service tech let me know on 7/7 that they weren't comfortable installing service without a TV (I had just gotten the keys to my new place and hadn't moved in). He helped me reschedule to 7/10 and confirmed my new appointment but after nobody called, nobody showed, and the original service tech didn't answer my calls until 6 hours after my arrival window, he gave me a "that's not good... that's really not that good" response and told to call the 1-800 help number to reschedule. Guess what? I supposedly never had an appointment on 7/10 and am now rescheduled for 7/18. I took vacation yesterday for the appointment, and didn't even talk to a human person until 6PM anyways. Now, I have to take another half day to accommodate AT&T's problems. I don't get how service like this passes. I feel like I get the generic "that definitely is not the kind of service we want our customers to receive" response every time I talk to someone but have yet to experience the type of service they actually do want us to experience.

Just curious, how normal is this? I had been with Google Fiber until my move and had no issues. If I had the choice at my new home, I would not be with AT&T at this point. But, here we are considering the choice of paying $70/mo more for Viasat to simply not deal with this sort of customer treatment.

Thanks,

Michael

Constructive · Answer

they are not allowed to install services without a tv being present in order to insure everything is working correctly, when i first started installing uvers 10 years ago i use to carry around a little watchman tv with an antenna adapter to hookup the boxes like in your situation or when there was a room that had not yet had a tv installed, i ended up getting reprimanded for that as well because alot of people werent sure the correct way to connect their tv which generated repeats for me  (a big no no ) also sometimes with extended waits on getting a tv the box will fall out of the system rendering it useless and again generating a repeat. As far as the dispatch and appointment issue i have no idea whats going on there as ive been out of the uvers side for 8 years, you may try chatting in by using the contact us link below

michaeltjones94 · Answer

Okay, so the installation concerns without a TV are understandable. However, it's definitely frustrating to have a tech confirm an appointment with you to find out after the fact that you were never even scheduled - I have the text to prove. After calling support, I get scheduled 10 days out by dispatch when this is not my problem. You'd think they could at least fit an appointment in ahead of time or something.

I know this is not your fault and you're just trying to help out. I get it, but my work depends on internet services, just as everyone else's does and I also don't have spare vacation laying around to compensate the local dispatch for their poor allocation of resources. Finally, being someone who utilizes cryptocurrency and mines it, this extra 11 days puts me out about $100 in revenue. I'd like to thank AT&T for making me waste $460 just to get services installed - 12 hours of vacation at $30/hr plus my lost mining potential.