I am very disappointed with At&t's customer service. I spent well over an hour on the phone with them yesterday and I was totally disgusted. I was a former customer for many years, when my job required me to switch to Sprint. When we were instructed that we were able to switch to a carrier of our choice, I immediately chose to return to att. I went to the store, had a very pleasant and hassle free experience with the salesgirl, although the first salesman I dealt with was totally misinformed about their phones and options, the girl who opened my account was very nice, and helpful. I told her that I was a NYC public official, which I am. I am a Mayoral appointee who has to have his own service to run my business. While mine is a unique situation, I explained that I am a representative of the City Government, not just a city employee. They took a copy of my NYC government ID and I went on my way. That was approximately two months ago. As of yesterday, I have still not received a bill from Att. I had received many advertisements to my business address, and ultimately a collections notice two days ago. I had called customer support when I received a text message to my phone that my bill was not paid, and I made it very clear to the representative that I had not yet received a bill, I explained and made it very clear, that due to my job, and the constant review of the City, that I must have a paper bill to be paid with a paper check every month. She was very kind and told me that she would send me a re-print of my bill. I also asked if there would be a late fee assessed to my account, she told me that there might be, and if there was I could call back and they would waive it for me. I also asked if there was any chance that my service would be interrupted, she told me that she would note the account that I had not received the bill, and told me that my services would not be stopped. I made sure that I stressed this point because due to my job, I could not afford to have my services suspended. On Thursday, I received a collections notice stating that I would be turned off if I did not make a payment immediately, since this was a paper copy, i figured that I would use this to make my check payment, and I mailed it in the same day. Yesterday, Friday, one day after receiving that notice, and still, never having received an actual bill, my services were cut off in the middle of the business day. I did not realize that they were cut off until I got back to my office and they told me that they had been trying to reach me for over two hours. I immediately called customer service and explained that I had just made a payment the day before, and they told me that it takes 7 to 10 days for a check to post to my account when it is mailed in, and that my services would not be restored until the payment was posted. I'm sure you can guess that my reaction to that statement was less than graceful after being told that my services would not be interrupted. Then I got the standard responses like: you should have viewed a copy of your bill online, or you can pay over the phone, all generic responses. I asked to speak to a manager, which I did. She was of no help either, they both went over the timeline of when I first called customer service, when the re-print of my bill was done, and when the collections notice went out. I had given them all of this information, and probably less than politely informed them that I did not need a recap, but in needed some actual service. After going back and forth with that manager, and becoming more and more infuriated, I told her that if I was charged a late fee that I would take Att to small claims court and sue them for it. She said go ahead. I said that I did not want to do that if I didn't have to and that all I wanted was for my services to be restored immediately. She told me that there was no way that was going to happen, until a payment was posted to my account. I asked to speak to her manager, at which point she told me that it would be a "waste of time" because he was not going to do anything for me. I insisted and was finally picked up by a manager. I went through the whole story again, to a cold, unhelpful, rude manager. I even explained that I was receiving other printed correspondence from ATT like offers to open other lines, and a welcome to ATT pamphlet, so there was no problem receiving mail. He ultimately told me the same thing, however during the course of our conversation, I mentioned what the original customer service person told me about my services not being interrupted, and he told me that the notes on the account from the rep did not reflect that, and that is their legal record of the conversation. I questioned if the call he reviewed the recording of the call and he said that the call was not recorded, and even if it was, they do not have access to that information, that it is done through a third party company. He also went on to say that the service rep noted on my account that I was told that no fees would be waived, which is the exact opposite of what I was told. He repeated once again that the notes on the account were their legal record ad that is what they use in court. I remarked that how could a one sided set of notes, and not an actual recording or transcript of a conversation hold up in court, but I was told that they use it in court and have no problems. I made an off the cuff remark again that I wanted to sue ATT at which point the manager stated that since I had mentioned sueing that I had to write the legal department and he could no longer speak to me and he hung up. I am totally disgusted with the way I was literally "handled" on the phone, and the lack of care that was put in to the problem that I was having. I understand that ATT is a large company, and I'm sure that they hear stories like this from many deadbeat customers, and as a shareholder in the parent company, I can appreciate the rigidity that they have on their policies regarding the payment of bills. I do not agree however, that an account such as a NYC government account should be treated the same as your average non-paying Joe. I would think that a little more care could go into handling those types of customers. Especially when the customer contacts you stating that they never actually received a bill. I would advise any customers that are going to call with a problem that is somewhat serious to record the phone calls you make to ATT. Then you will have no problem contesting their "legal record" which is only notes written by the person you are on the phone with. Just make sure you disclose the fact that you are recording them so they can not hold that against you. I'm sorry for the lengthiness of this post, it was so frustrating and ultimately resolved by my making another payment from my personal credit card over the phone. The only way I would be permitted to continue working was to have my services restored immediately.
↧