I have never encountered such unsatisfactory customer service until I became an AT&T customer. To begin, I have had an active smartphone plan will AT&T for the last seven years. I have paid an average of $110 a month during that time, putting me at over $9k in total payments. You would think that this would at least gain me the courtesy of good customer service? Nope… During recent years I have been disconnected, routed through multiple operators (spending over an hour on some calls), have had floor managers argue with me and most importantly, been misinformed by operators about services and fees. All of this due to a single instance of a misplaced phone and several inquiries regarding upgrade options. Needless to say, when I had the opportunity to port my number to another mobile carrier, I did. Unfortunately, I did this on the worst possible day; the day that my month-to-month contract rolled to a new month. When I realized that I was charged for a full $110 for less than 12 hours of service, I called AT&T to request that the invoice be prorated. I was informed at that time that AT&T has a policy against prorating an invoice. This seems absurd, so I requested that the call be directed to someone that could make this adjustment based on my payment history (ALWAYS on time and a long-term customer). At that point I was told that I had to speak to a floor manager and that “she will just tell you the same thing that I have” – This is where the unexpected attitude began. After speaking with the floor manager and being told that she would not make the adjustment… I requested a second escalation. This resulted in a callback scheduled within the following 24-72 hours. No call was ever received, so I called back again. This time, I requested that I receive a call back from thee third-party management that was already scheduled to call me. To this, I was told that there was never a scheduled callback and that I would need to talk to the floor manager first; this is again policy. Funny thing… The floor manager was not available and would have to call me back! Never received a call. This all seems like needless song-and-dance to avoid having to deal with the matter. The customer will eventually just give up.
The craziest thing about this situation is that when I spoke to the numerous operators to resolve this matter… The first one said that she would fix the payment issue. She did this by removing my auto-payment selection. Since I receive paperless billing, I had no access to my disabled online account and had no idea how to pay the bill that would be past due if this matter could not be resolved. This forced me to call in and deal with operator number two, who was more than happy to take my payment… “To avoid late fees.” When I called back in the third time, the operator had the nerve to tell me that my payment would prevent any sort of ability to prorate the invoice. Account credits are not applied to a deactivated account – again, this is against company policy!
With all the back-and-forth that I have had with AT&T operators (there were MANY more than I have identified above) and policy, it has become my mission to insure that other consumers know that they have options. Since I have become a smartphone user with the launch of the first iPhone, I have been with several other carriers. Most were ports required by employers as their preferred carriers. I have honestly NEVER encountered the substandard customer service that I have received from AT&T. They simply don’t care, and it is VERY obvious.
With all the Smartphone carries available... AVOID AT&T!