Sunshine wrote:
All my friends here do. Please feel free.
For what it’s worth, Sunshine, I used to work at a telecommunications company whose employees hated being there so much they would frequently piss off customers deliberately in hopes of causing them to cancel their service. (The fact that many of these customers were calling to complain because they had never actually authorized a switch to this company’s long distance — in other words, they were slammed — gives you an idea of this company’s disreputable nature.
The customer service reps would sometimes take pity on the customers, and, after verifying that a supervisor wasn’t listening in (we didn’t record calls; we just let the line supervisors eavesdrop randomly), would flat-out tell the customer to switch, the service sucks, it isn’t going to get better, I can’t even look up your account because the computers are broken, please just trust me and switch.
I don’t expect you to feel better about the treatment you received, but the galley-slave approach of many telecom call centers can drive the employees to some rather extreme behavior. It’s possible, I think, that this was the last day “Jacob” was on the job, even, and he was getting his stupid, petty revenge as best he could. Every customer he drives away makes the company look worse and reduces their profitability.
I used to work for an LD carrier. Probably 30% of the calls I got were people requesting charges taken off their bill because they didn’t ‘remember’ it. After denying the credit and getting screamed at it turns out the call was made by one of their kids, or their husband or their aunt sally or something. It was really bad with 900 number calls. The person would always say “No one in MY family would make such a call”. Eventually a system was put in place to where before the 900 call was connected, the person had to say their name. It was extremely satisfying after being yelled at by some woman, to play the recording of her husband or kid agreeing to the call. 30 seconds of silence and then ‘ohhh, sorry’ Or sometimes they would just hang up, realising they had been shown to be stupid.
Jakob wasn’t very nice though.
Thanks for the commiseration, gus. Not that I feel much better knowing there’s a bunch of other people also getting poor treatment by AT&T.
Thanks, Lib!
Ah, Cervaise, you make a good point. If that’s what he was intending, my pal Jacob sure did a good job! *P.S. When are you updating your movie reviews? I miss having your opinion. * 
Quintas, they told me there is absolutely no way anyone can make a collect call to our number unless someone at that number accepts it, either by “pressing 1” at the prompt or by saying yes into the phone. Supposedly a safeguard similar to the 900 concept. I am willing to admit the possibility that either hubby or I did in fact accept this 9 minute call from an unknown person at a payphone in Boulder at 11:04 p.m. on Dec 4 and we just don’t remember. I find it incredibly hard to believe, seeing as we don’t know anyone in Boulder and we don’t stay up that late on weeknights, but will accept that it was almost two months ago and might be difficult to recall.
It makes me very uneasy, I’ll tell you. Because I am POSITIVE I did not accept this call myself. That leaves hubby, who says it wasn’t him. Of course, I don’t have any proof beyond his word but I have no reason to believe he would lie. I trust him absolutely and I’m sure it wasn’t him either. The whole situation is weird–I really get a feeling of “something’s not right” about it. I am very worried that someone has found some way to “hack” the collect call process or something…I don’t know. And it’s not like the dang phone company is doing anything to reassure me.
Anyway, I sure wish I could hear a recording of one of us saying yes. If they did that, I would humbly pay my $6.12 and go my merry way. But even if I am wrong and we really did accept that call, I won’t apologize and I won’t ever use AT&T again. No matter how this plays out, they’ve still lost me for life, thanks to Jacob.
I’m kind of suprised they didn’t remove the charge for you even if they felt it was legit. The company I worked for would usually say to go ahead and remove the charge unless the person made a habit of disputing charges. I would tell you just to call back and speak to the next rep, but I imagine 6.00 isn’t really worth the 45+ minute hold time you’re likely to encounter.
Cervaise is correct, though. Galley-Slave is the best description of the work conditions for a telecom service rep. I did it for 3 years. I hated everyone when I worked there. My boss, the company, all the customers, even the nice ones. Just about everyone,EVERYONE eventually just snaps and walks out or gets fired for taking too long on a call, or being 3 minutes late from lunch too many times etc etc etc. Every action is monitored, the amount of time on a call, what you say on a call, how long you took AFTER the call to do what you actually said you would do, how much credit you gave. We also had to try and sell them something at the end of the call. Some guy calls me screaming bloody murder because a)his bill is wrong and b) he just sat on hold for 58 minutes. After denying his credit I had to ask him if he wanted to add any other phone lines to our service. If i didn’t ask, I got a poor score, too many of those and it was a written warning. There was a different number to call for the really high billers who would supposedly get more personalised service. Eventually you just realise the company doesn’t really give a crap about these callers so why should I? I was told that for customers that spend less than 25-30 dollars per month, it cost more to keep them than the company makes off of them. I believe the long hold times and poor service was just a way to get those people to quit.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the feeling I got…my $6.12 was insiginficant to them and they don’t really care if they keep me as a customer. Oh well.
I’m sending my letters off today anyway.