My situation? I want a cable modem with them. Why? Because lucky for them they’re the only choice for decent broadband in my area. So far I have called them no less than 20 times, faxed them twice, visited two of their offices, and emailed their escalation department 4 times.
The calls have been fruitless. No one can help me, and when I ask for a supervisor I’m routinely told that they’re all in a meeting. The supervisors there have a lot of fucking meeting apparently.
The faxes and emails? No response to either.
The office visits? No help there either. They tell me I need to call and ask for a supervisor. Fuck.
So what is my collosal problem? The person who lived in my house before I moved in (6 weeks ago) never canceled his service. So when they look up my address, it shows an active account, and they cannot disconnect it! Heaven forfend!
Is it because they don’t think I really live there? I would assume not, since they happily hooked up my cable TV service and sent me a bill for it already.
Could it be possible that these fuckballs are such slaves to their computers that there’s not a single person there that can override the machine and hook up my damn service? I’ve never begged a company so hard to take my money in my life!
So anyway, now I wait. Eventually I suppose they’ll cut the previous owners account off for non-payment, so maybe I’ll be online within 6 months or so.
My cable company was also bought out by AT&T Broadband. I had Internet outages of 2 and 3 days in August, and 5 days in September. Eat shit and die, AT&T.
We had at one point decided to go to a cable modem. We did the research, and discovered that there were two cable companies that serviced our area. Only one of them offered a cable modem service. So we called them up, and over the phone started working out arrangements to have them come out and hook up the service. Then they discovered our address. It seems that the two companies had an agreement concerning our area that one of the companies would only take odd numbered addresses and the other only even numbered. Guess which company can service us. So the fuckers across the street can have cable modem service until the cows come home, but we’re screwed.
Slacker, I believe I can solve your problem, having had my own share of AT&T problems. Your problem is that you are complaining the way AT&T wants you to, from the bottom up, where they have hundreds of people devoted to deflecting your complaint. Instead, you must complain from the top down.
Cable TV (and its related services) is a publicly regulated utility. Thus, AT&T’s services are overseen by government officials. If you make a complaint to the state Public Utilities Commission, or perhaps to a local City Cable TV officer, your complaint will immediately land on the desk of the top person in the company for your region. Statistics on customer complaints through regulators are tracked closely, and the PUC can levy fines on AT&T if they do not resolve complaints. See what happens when your complaint comes through the tech guy’s boss, rather than from you.
I’ve got AT&T for TV, Internet, and telephone. It was supposed to be a “deal” to get all from one, but my rates seem to go up every month. The company has been in big trouble in the city of Jacksonville for poor customer service - crap like leaving people to die on hold. Threats were made by the powers that be, but as far as I can tell, nothing has ever happened. I’m giving serious consideration to changing to Bell South and DSL.
This type of service (that and jacking up the price of cable every other month, or so it seemed, with no change in channels, etc.) is why I left AT&T cable and went to a dish!
Warning SBC Global networks isn’t exactly the most dazzling ISP either but they try. I went through 6 hours over several days with tech support before they bothered to run a line check and found out that was a problem, truck came out next day, problem was on the pole not my puter. The first person I talked to Claimed he had never heard of my DSL modem (Alcatel 4060 Speedstream) and was questioning if I got it from them :rolleyes:
They also at one point told me to uninstall the drivers for my DSL modem and reinstall them, the reinstall routine asked me for info about my modem I didn’t know. They told me they could not help me, that I needed to contact the modem manufacturer. I asked for a supervisor who as it turns out knew the info in question and I got set up (that was the last 35 min of the 6 hours)
So there are people there with a clue, you just might not get them first. If they are asking you to do the same things over and over, ask for a supervisor.
One of the nice things I ran into was that Pac Bell has excellent billing support and if you call in to them because of a billing problem it gets fixed quickly. I got my DSL on a promotional program, when it hooked up I was given the regular rate. One call and it was fixed.
In case you don’t know my situation - I’m trying to sign up for a cable modem, but AT&T won’t let me because the person that lived there before never cancelled his service. It turns out that this is the single most heinous problem you can present to AT&T, because not a single person in their company could fix it. The only person who could disconnect the old service, is the customer.
I talked to the previous owner of my house today. He told me that they had moved their service to their new house, and just found out last week that AT&T hadn’t cancelled their old service. So his wife called today and told them again that they needed to cancel their account for their old (and my current) address.
AT&T told them that Excite (the company that handles the installs) is having bankruptcy problems, and they will not be able to complete the final disconnect order until Nov. 6th when the bankruptcy case will be decided in court. She (the previous owner) told them that I was waiting to connect my service and couldn’t until she disconnect the current service. They told her what they’ve told me dozens of times already. Their hands are tied. This time they say that they cannot do anything until Nov 6th but on the 6th they will complete the order. Yeah right.
And so it goes…
Bonus!!
My online “chat” I had with one of their “techs.”
Rosario: Thank you for contacting AT&T @Home Online Acquisition. (blah blah blah) How may I help you? Slacker: Hi, I want to sign up for your service… Rosario:https://securebb.att.com/services/s...viceCheck.ihtml Rosario: Please call 1-800-267-0064 for assistance. The voice message will instruct you which number to select for your area. Slacker: but the system says that there is already an account set up for my address Rosario: I apologize for this inconvenience. Rosario: Please call the 800 number above and they will assist you. Rosario: Please take a moment to review the information listed at this link. It explains in detail the features offered with our service. If you should have additional questions after reviewing this information, feel free to visit us again. http://www.attbroadband.com/service...nternetFAQ.html Rosario: Thank you for contacting AT&T @Home Online Acquisition. Have a wonderful day. Rosario has left this session!
