As a consumer, I love the platform that a blog gives me. Although I'll never be viewed as much as a Consumer Reports website or maybe a CNET, I still get my share of readers. I absolutely hate the "service" given at AT&T. That, to me, is the most incompetent company I've ever dealt with in my life. Let me share with you an experience so new readers can understand why I hate AT&T...
I had crappy DSL speeds. Being a former Bellsouth customer, the maximum speeds for DSL was 3.0 mbps. That's not very fast. Even some of the shortest YouTube videos would buffer. After U-Verse arrived in my area, I figured I'd upgrade to a faster speed. After all, it's only $5 more per month to upgrade to 12.0 mbps. That's four times the speed that I currently have. My Hulu+ videos should pop off of my TV with that kind of speed!
So, I order the equipment. AT&T offers to install everything for you for $150, but I'm a nerd, so I don't need no stinkin' professional installation. I get an e-mail after placing my order (Wednesday) that states that my equipment will arrive on Monday. Alright, cool. Monday arrives and at 10 AM, The Mrs. calls me at work. "Hey."
"Hi, how are you?"
"I'm fine, but the internet is down."
"Down?"
"Yes."
The idiots at AT&T disconnected my internet service before I even received my new equipment. How dumb is that? Why not wait until the equipment arrives and the person calls in to activate it? Now my Furious Level is at an 8 (it pretty much stays on a 6 year around for AT&T). The Mrs. calls AT&T to see what's going on and she gets a recording. "If you're equipment has not arrived, please press 2," says the recording.
She presses 2 and the recording gives her the number to UPS. LOL! Really? You cut off our internet servive and then throw UPS under the bus? Anyhoo, the equipment arrives around 530 PM and The Mrs. takes everything out of the box. Keep in mind that AT&T "offered" professional installation for $150. We plugged in the DSL filter to the phone jack, plugged in the power to the modem, registered online and were up and running in 10-15 minutes. And they were going to charge $150 for that? A rip off! I know there are some non-confident or eldery people not capable of understanding how these things work, but to charge them $10 per minute for something that easy is criminal! That's easily a $40 job on the high end. I personally wouldn't charge a customer even that since AT&T had already charged me a $100 "activation fee" just for signing up for their upgrade.
I hate AT&T. I flat out hate the level of "service" they provide. Just like the government, they have so many divisions and branches that one doesn't know what the other is doing. I was told less than two months ago that I didn't have U-Verse in my area by a BellSouth agent. I went online and chatted with an AT&T rep last week and found out that it's been in my area for almost two years. This is what happens when you become so large of a company that you don't even know what the left hand is doing because it's too far gone from the right.
I use AT&T not because I want to, but because I have to. The only other provider in my area is Comcast and from what my co-workers tell me, their service goes down more than a Kardashian at a sporting event. So, I'm stuck with AT&T. (Sigh) And to top it all off, my internet download speeds that are supposed to be "up to 12 mbps" have yet to even cross 7.0 mbps. I'm not even getting 75% of the speeds that they promised! When I had 3.0 mbps, I consistently got between 2.5 and 2.8. Now I can't even get 8.0 mbps?
If I didn't still have friends working there who need their jobs, I'd go straight to my local news station with this.
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