13 Jul 09 Why does AT&T suck so badly

Ah, yes…the question of our time. Why does one of the largest and most recognizable brands of our time have the worst possible customer service and policies of anyone out there, and yet we STILL continue to give them our money. I run an Internet Service provider and we pay over $150k per year in service fees to AT&T for a multitude of services and still get treated like shit by all levels of customer service within their company. It’s insane and should be criminal.

Here’s what sparked this rant: I finally got fed-up with the fact that I pay over $50/month for each of my office telephone lines whereas I pay $26/month for the same exact calling plans & features on my home number. I decided to cut some costs and port all but one of our office telephone lines over to Broadvoice SIP trunks and just connect my Asterisk box up to them. The move will save me over $600/year for our company. I had to leave a single POTS line with AT&T so we could still have DSL service into our office for testing modems and for our 24×7 Torrent box.

After all of the lines being moved were ported to Broadvoice, I called to AT&T’s Business Customer service at the telephone number they list on my bill in-case I need to reach them. I was calling to get the additional calling features (Caller ID, Call forward, etc…) dropped since it’s only going to be used for the DSL connection riding on it.

Here’s what happened when I called; keep in-mind that I had my customer number and gave it to each person so it’s not like they don’t know who’s calling:

1. The first person couldn’t find my account and said I must have dialed the wrong department so they transferred me somewhere else
2. The second person said she found my account but it’s an ‘Industrial Account’ and she’s not authorized to help me, transferred again.
3. The third person told me I’ll need to go into an AT&T retail store to make the change (What?! There’s no such thing as an AT&T ‘landline’ retail store)
4. The fourth person told me I would need to e-mail my request into them: “I’m sorry sir but we don’t take orders over the phone for those changes.” My response: Are you fucking kidding me?! You’re a PHONE COMPANY!!

I gave up and decided to leave it for another day….or when I can delegate it to an employee to deal with. I wish there were a decent and affordable alternative to AT&T. NOW I see why the FTC (supposedly) trys to prevent monopolys from forming. Fucking christ…