Dear AT&T U-verse: I fucking hate you

The BBQ Pit
21

I moved not long ago, and the only service I could get at the new place was U-verse. At the former place, I had been stuck with AT&T DSL and phone. They couldn’t just change the account, they had to close the old one and open a new one. Eh, whatever. I wasn’t happy still being stuck with AT&T, but this didn’t seem unreasonably.

A few months later, I found that they had screwed up processing my last payment on the old account, and it was still open. There’s no magic “Fix This Particular Stupidity” button on the website, so I called the only customer service number I can find. It asked for my phone number, and I entered the number for the relevant account. It gave me the runaround for a while, then connected me to an allegedly live person. This person fumbled for a while, then figured out he couldn’t actually do anything about the account, because it wasn’t a U-verse account. Apparently phone accounts are handled elsewhere. He politely offered to transfer me there, and I accepted.

“Elsewhere” is a previously undiscovered circle of Hell, populated by demons that take the form of phone menus.

After I got transferred, the phone rang a few times, then…belched, more or less. Then the chipper voice that had originally asked for my number returned and asked for it again, only it was a bit less chipper. Distant. More scratchy and distorted. I patiently entered my number again, and got a familiar runaround, then spoke to a live person. After some tail-chasing, I asked her if she was U-verse service. Yes, she was. I informed her that the last U-verse person said they couldn’t help and transferred me. She agreed that was proper procedure and transferred me again.

The phone rang a few times, then…gagged on a frog that was belching. The chipper voice returned, now a horror-movie shadow of its former self, whispering through a wall of static. At this point, I had learned to circumvent most of the runaround, and was soon speaking to–well, shouting at–a live person. Who couldn’t hear me, and whom I could barely hear. I could make out just enough to tell that this person was–shock–U-verse support.

I gave up. But hey, it’s just a few glitches in their IVR. It’s not like they’re a telecom company, which would surely be competent enough to manage its own communications setup*.

Oh, wait.

*I’m in telecom myself, and understand what was wrong. The IVR (Integrated Voice Response) system was set to route calls to the default customer service number if it they weren’t answered quickly enough, but that number had been set to automatically forward to U-verse support. Every time I went through the loop, I got two calls deeper in a literal game of Telephone, as U-verse “support” kept forwarding me to themselves.

tl;dr: Preach it, Inter Alia.

22

This OP made me laugh, but not for the right reason.

It is truly amazing how little we expect from customer service from any company because to unravel the mess simply takes too much of our own time to do it.

I believe this could easily be a corporate strategy, simply because 1) these types of stories are always very similar, 2) most people are too damn lazy to change their current service, and 3) we’ve all spoken to that same idiot on the other end of the line, refusing to hear what we are telling them. I think my guy’s name was “Peggy”.

Drop the service. It’s your only option at this point. You will never get your bill rectified, but you will never have to deal with them again.

I love the Spanish bill. That’s taking it up a notch. Time for you to take them for a ride to show them your house in the Hamptons, with your two horses… Snoopy and Prickly Pete.

Just to throw my own personal story, freecreditreport.com (which is anything but) screwed me for about 6 months of payments. I discovered the charge on my credit card bill, and after a number of phone calls, I finally called my credit card company and they agreed to withdraw 6 months charges, but I’d have to fight to get the rest of the charges removed. The CC company would take the charges off, but they weren’t going to do any investigating. After talking to Peggy at FCR.com, I got them to remove the last 6 months of charges and close the account. I chalked it up as a small victory, even though they got about $120 from me. To get the rest would have taken hours and hours of my time, which I weighed and decided it wasn’t worth it.

The best part of this? I signed up for FCR.com and got my credit scores, and immediately cancelled my subscription. I even had a confirmation note confirming the cancellation. Peggy couldn’t find any evidence of my account, but since I misplaced the cancellation confirmation, they couldn’t delete all the charges. Wait. You have no record of me enrolled in your service, but you are still billing me and there is nothing I can do about it unless I find that confirmation?

I took the 6 months. It was like a plea bargain with corporate America. Fuckers.

23

I have questions about this, maybe you could answer, Balance. I have AT&T voice land line with DSL, and they have been threatening for a while to convert me to U-verse, which I think I would rather not have happen.

(1) If that happens, does it also entail some major “improvement” in my monthly rates? Will I suddenly be getting – and paying for – a whole bunch of extra services beyond what I have now, whether I want them or not?

(2) Can I continue to use the same DSL modem I have, or do I have to get some new kind of modem or other such device to work with U-verse? And even if I can use the same DSL modem, do I have to reconfigure it substantially? (My DSL modem is more than just a modem, it’s also a router, and I don’t want to have to buy some new one to replace it.)

Did you have to get a new modem of some kind, to work with U-verse?

24

A general pattern can be seen in the all the above posts: When working with any big bureaucratic organization – especially a heavily computerized one, which today is all of them – whether governmental or corporate, this seems to be true: Most people, most of the time, will get good service (or at least satisfactory service). Most things will go reasonably right, most of the time. When you pick up the phone, there will be a dial tone. When somebody calls you, your phone will ring. When you get the bill, the numbers will be right.

Usually.

Most of the time.

But og help you if you’re the one who gets your account somehow messed up one damnable day. It is typical of these big organizations, that once something somehow gets messed up, it is hellatiously difficult to get things fixed. All of the horror stories above follow this pattern. There is just nobody who can fix it, nobody knows how, nobody can get write-access to the data fields they need to tweak in the database, or whatever like that. It just seems to take nothing less than an act of og to get it taken care of.

25

I just glanced at it and tossed it, but I recollect that it was in Spanish. The text of the letter, I mean. It wasn’t addressed to Nabo de Vinilo or anything.

The follow-up letter in English urging me to make up my goddamned mind has yet to arrive.

26

foolsguinea, I’ve seen people on other message boards grumbling about getting a class action together. I won’t bore y’all with what I think the legal issues would be, but I imagine someone will put a suit together eventually.

I think what bothers me more than U-verse’s absolute inability to get my bill right is the fact that at certain points, they’ve actively made things worse by changing my service when I haven’t asked for it. It’s not just having to make the same phone call month after month that angers me, it’s that I then have to go behind them and talk them into fixing their screw-ups with my service as well as begging them to get my bill right.

I’m planning on calling them sometime this week and canceling my service, assuming they haven’t sneakily put me under contract somewhere in all this nonsense. I just know I can’t call today because I wouldn’t be able to be civil.

27

I had to fight with them to get them to not include TV or phone in mine. They will try to make you take the whole bundle, and charge you a bundle for it. If you’re stubborn enough, though, you can get your way. Mostly. You’re likely to end up paying at least a little more, but you’d have to compare the rates for the services you want with what you’re paying now to be sure.

It’s different tech, so you won’t be using your DSL modem at all. It comes in on your cable line, and they’ll install a router that hooks up to it.

28

I gave up on AT&T after this summer when they moved my service 2 weeks early and couldn’t tell me how they were going to get service back on at my old apartment for those two weeks - this caused serious problems with my side consulting because I cannot do consulting work for pay at my full time job. I finally got a Virgin Mobile wireless broadband device.

THEN, I got notified in August (with a seriously overdue bill) that they had not shut off my service as I’d requested after they fucked up moving it. And it took me until late September to finally get a final bill from them and pay them off. Every time I called I got transferred from department to department, usually cut off at least once. It was ridiculous. I dealt with rude people - and admittedly, i wasn’t always not-rude myself, but I tried to start each conversation civilly.

Never again will I do business with AT&T. If they buy a company I’m currently doing business with, I will change that service provider.

29

I have Internet & voice (no TV) and it actually doesn’t use the cable line— it uses the existing phone wiring with a wireless router/home gateway connected to a phone jack. Not sure how it works if you have the IPTV service also.

30

So… Internet with U-verse does not involve my land-line phone at all?

Will I still have the option to have DSL on my land-line instead of U-verse? Or are they discontinuing this service altogether?

A year or so ago, I had DSL service via a third-party ISP (sonic, to be specific) which provided DSL service over my AT&T land line phone – so AT&T at least provided the DSL carrier. Will this still be possible? I don’t have any specific complaint with AT&T (yet) and the price is about the same as sonic (just a bit cheaper) – but if I ever start to get flak from AT&T, I would hope to have the option of going back to sonic.

31

I discontinued my land line when I had U-Verse with VoIP installed, and I’m not sure whether keeping the land line was an option (or if it’s physically possible, without adding new wiring).

I suspect that AT&T does plan to phase out regular DSL, but it probably won’t be possible in the near future. I previously had 6 Mbps DSL and was fairly satisfied with it, until the speed began dropping below 1 Mbps every night. AT&T claimed they couldn’t figure out why, and offered to move me to U-Verse as an alternative. I was skeptical, but the Internet service has actually worked really well for almost a year. I get download speeds of 10-11 Mbps (advertised as 12 Mbps max) consistently at all times, with almost no hiccups, and for around the same price I was paying for 6 Mbps DSL. Netflix now streams on my Xbox flawlessly in HD, whereas before it would often stop and rebuffer during playback. Overall I think the U-Verse Internet platform is a lot more robust than their legacy DSL, if you have a choice.