OMG not again

[Brewbirds]

I can't believe this! BB2 is, as I type this, online with AT&T tech support because they have screwed up our e-mail and internet again.

jpsherman regarding the RCE if I don't answer an e-mail try to send me a PM. I think they have screwed up our e-mail this time and not the internet access.

They have screwed up BB2's e-mail and it did something to mine so he is trying to get them to fix it but they usually just break something else instead so I am giving fair warning now while I can still type this.

Holy Cow these guys are broken worse than the gov't.

finger cross please.

[BlackDuck]

They aren't necessarily broken worse than the gov't...you see, they are broken because of the gov't. ATT is having problems because of their partnership with the NSA. They can't keep up with the NSA's demand to spy on everyone.

[BigPapaG]

Good luck with that...

I had AT&T for a while and cancelled them.

Funny thing is, they closed my account and kept sending me monthly bills/statements indicating that they owed me one penny!

I let them keep doing it, and they sent this monthly mailing for almost two years... Can't imagine the worth of that penny after all those mailings...

After that length of time, they ultimately reached me by phone and wanted to know where they could send the check for the penny.

I told them to keep it! LOL!

[T8rSalad]

Good luck with that...

I had AT&T for a while and cancelled them.

Funny thing is, they closed my account and kept sending me monthly bills/statements indicating that they owed me one penny!

I let them keep doing it, and they sent this monthly mailing for almost two years... Can't imagine the worth of that penny after all those mailings...

After that length of time, they ultimately reached me by phone and wanted to know where they could send the check for the penny.

I told them to keep it! LOL!

What were you thinking? Ida made them mail me the check. I can always use that penny somewhere, otherwise some clerk is gonna have to count out 99 cents change sometime somewhere....

[philm00x]

It would probably cost them like 3 bucks to print and mail the check, too. What a waste!

[duff]

Good luck with that...

I had AT&T for a while and cancelled them.

Funny thing is, they closed my account and kept sending me monthly bills/statements indicating that they owed me one penny!

I let them keep doing it, and they sent this monthly mailing for almost two years... Can't imagine the worth of that penny after all those mailings...

After that length of time, they ultimately reached me by phone and wanted to know where they could send the check for the penny.

I told them to keep it! LOL!

I had a car insurance company send me a check out of the blue for 1 cent. The teller at my bank couldn't stop laughing when she saw it.

[FedoraDave]

I have a customer who is in danger of going to Bad Debt, having her service terminated, and the issue being taken up by a Collection Service. Because she's behind one cent. Thing is, we can (and do) write that stuff off and just move on.

[jpsherman]

I can't believe this! BB2 is, as I type this, online with AT&T tech support because they have screwed up our e-mail and internet again.

jpsherman regarding the RCE if I don't answer an e-mail try to send me a PM. I think they have screwed up our e-mail this time and not the internet access.

They have screwed up BB2's e-mail and it did something to mine so he is trying to get them to fix it but they usually just break something else instead so I am giving fair warning now while I can still type this.

Holy Cow these guys are broken worse than the gov't.

finger cross please.

Ugh!

If you can't reply back by the time I get off work I will start PMing. I am not in a rush, good luck!

Hey, can you access email via smartphone?

Or is email totally messed up/ no smartphone?

[Brewbirds]

Well everything is up and working this morning though BB2 had to do something weird to get the internet up.

What p!@ses me off is that they are doing this intentionally hoping we will cancel the service because THEY won't put Uverse in our community and they want all the DSL users to go away.

And none of the regulating entities will do anything about it.

[haerbob3]

Sure is not Comcast/Xfinity??? It took 6 weeks to get their mess with us straightened out.

[duff]

Do you really think they are doing it on purpose or through incompetence?

Having spent a whole month with AT&T DSL tech support and their customer advocacy groups getting our internet connection fixed so that it worked for more than an hour at a time, I am convinced the only people you are able to speak to are people that don't know what they are doing. Unfortunately my choice of internet is AT&T or Satellite so I was on the phone with AT&T everyday until it got fixed. The people on the phones would keep doing the same thing over and over again no matter how many times they saw the steps had been performed in the case notes. Every time you spoke to a different department they couldn't access the case notes from the other group. Every time you talked to the same department but located in a different state they couldn't see the case notes either. Eventually they would all reset the DSL account password and reprofile the line, when that didn't work they would schedule a technician to come out however the system that schedules a line technician to do a home visit will automatically cancel any scheduled appointments if there is an outage anywhere in the state. They had scheduled a technician 7 times before one actually managed to not get cancelled. He had no idea what was going on. His ticket basically said DSL outage. After I explained everything that was going on and he called in to one of the secret groups he had us up and running in 20 minutes. All he had to do was reterminate the fiber connection coming into the distribution box.

I have long believed in Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It is possible though that they are trying to get rid of customers by making things painful for them.


Fedora Dave:
Is it actually possible to go into bad debt and collections over 1 cent? While I was in dispute with a hospital over a $15 copay they sent me to debt collection and the debt collector told me they couldn't put it on my credit report unless it was over $25 and they never did. Maybe that was just company policy. Mostly curious because it would be my luck to try to do something in the future and they wouldn't approve me because of a 1 cent debt.

[RickBeer]

I've dealt with both AT&T and Comcast on issues like this. The biggest problem is what duff said - incompetence.

AT&T came through our neighborhood and checked terminals on EVERY post. Redid them, put new stickers on them, all in preparation of UVerse. Guess what? We're hundreds of feet too far for UVerse - the ENTIRE neighborhood of 130 homes. Totally wasted time and money. When I discontinued my AT&T phone service they didn't even try to save me. Never got a letter. Just a refund of prepaid that they owed me.

Comcast used to contract a good amount of work out. Many of the contractors were incompetent. The easy answer was "bad cable" so they wanted to run a new one. I made them do it over the ground to prove that WASN'T the issue. Happened both in our prior house in another state and here. Here we had many issues. Ultimately went through the "Ask Rick" (Great Name!) form on their site that goes to head of service which really just puts you in a special queue locally. The regional maintenance guy called, put his best techs on several issues and resolved them eventually. And we got top of the line equipment, i.e. DVRs with 500gb of space (until we cut the cord earlier this year). One issue was intermittent, they couldn't find it, so the tech gave me his home number and told me to call 24/7. One night at 10:30 problem happened, he came in his PJs (I kid you not) and found the problem - it was a part that was expanding during the day in the warm weather and contracting at night in the cold, which is why the issues were in the late evening. They went through the entire neighborhood the next day, testing Box A to Box B, then Box B to Box C until they found the bad part.

So, most of it is incompetence. All of these firms have too many customers and too poor infrastructure and training and basically just walk on the knife's edge most of the time. When you have one phone company and one cable company to pick from, what are you going to do, leave? Well, in the past few years people are actually doing that. A huge number of people have cut their landlines. Many are getting rid of cable. If I had a choice of internet providers (other than AT&T at a absurdly slow speed and Comcast) I would probably switch.

[John Sand]

I've had a slew of problems with big corporations. After I closed my accounts at Bank of America, they started deducting fees for being below minimum balance. I went to the bank to straighten it out, a snippy lady told me it was overdrawn. I had to be firm with her before she "fixed" the problem. Of course, it continued. I ignored it until I got a collection notice. Then I called their 800 number, and finally some-one fixed it. ATT made me crazy too. Now I know why they closed their local service offices: fear.

[jimjohson]

why not just get another account with somebody else for email? i.e. yahoo that's what i had to do. (i also use at&t)

[RickBeer]

Very good point Jim. We have our own domain with email, not Comcast's.