View Full Version : Still so incredibly frustrated with at&t!!
How can there be so many unhappy customers with at&t, and nothing gets done about it?
Last year, we got rid of our second line on our landline phone, which cut our bill by 1/3.........down to about $35/mo.
Now, this last bill was $46.00, and we haven't changed a thing. We use a different company for long distance, and make alot of our calls
on our cell phones. I refuse to call them because you have to be on hold for about an hour. I tried clicking on their "contact us" online and it doesn't work!
I don't want to get rid of our landline phone. I think its time to look for an alternative. I'm not sure there's any out there around here.
Its soooooooooooooooo damned frustrating to have to deal with businesses like this. Same thing happened to me on a PNC bank site yesterday. It forced me to change our Home Equity online to their Banking online, and then it wouldn't let me pay a bill. So I called them and wrestled with the automated voice operator. I ended up screaming obscenities and her and she kept saying in her electronic voice "I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that." ACCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I finally got through to a human, who didn't know what I was even talking about, so he transferred me to their online people.............who never did pick up. So I screamed some more and hung up.
Anyhow.........Let's just focus on at&t for now. What a rip-off. Seems like the only way to deal with them is to get rid of them. :devil:
ApatheticNoMore
6-12-12, 10:16am
They get away with it because they are still kind of a monopoly in the landline business.
Still there are alternatives:
1) You can get phone service through cable. The only thing is many people find the cable companies much worse to deal with than AT&T!!!! They mostly have terrible terrible reputations. And the pricing generally doesn't make sense unless your bundling (ideally phone, internet and cable but who has cable? well maybe you can bundle at least phone and internet, I don't know).
2) I think things like VOIP are still out there, they were supposed to be so big once and I think never really caught on. What happened to them? I guess they are still there, still for VOIP you need an internet connection which again means needing a landline, cable or satelite, and if your back to a landline for the internet connection even one without phone capabilities hello AT&T again. People use things like magic jack also.
3) This suggestion is out there: I think there are ways of rigging your landline up to another phone company. It involves changing the whole phone wiring and I don't think you're really supposed to do that (could even be illegal) - it's getting heavily into having an electrician do weird stuff .... so it's not a standard solution ... its out there.
Honestly personally, I always thought the alternatives were worse than AT&T, though I hates AT&T as well (and yes their prices do not so gradually rise month by month so by the next year your absolute bare bones phone line has risen in price by $10 from what it was last year). This is why I am so glad I have nothing but the most basic monthly utlities. I hate dealing with companies I hate (and I deliberately don't have internet service through AT&T). Why aren't you signed up for tons of monthly bills? Because I don't like to spend the money but not only that I HATE COMPANIES, YOU ALL SUCK, I HATE DEALING WITH YOU!!!! :) Still I hate AT&T the worst, the best is the city owned power company (city ownership - heck yea! that stuff really works amazingly well).
AT&T is the epitome of customer service from hell and I have ranted about them here before. We canceled our landline during the holidays and are still trying to "understand" the billing. It is different every month as they adjust our rates - all of which are now higher. I won't go into the unbelievable details but we finally gave up after spending hours on the phone. I think confusion must be one of their marketing and customer service strategies. It is one of the things about our convoluted modern life that I lament - excellent customer service is mostly something from the good old days.
I've never had AT&T.
We have Centurytel for our house phone/dsl. I at one time had two lines as well. I know people complain about Centurytel as well but to be honest everytime I've called them or they've called me they've been able to reduce our bill. Both at home and at church. And I can't remember ever having a customer service rep that wasn't stellar.
small & friendly
6-12-12, 5:54pm
How can there be so many unhappy customers with at&t, and nothing gets done about it?
Last year, we got rid of our second line on our landline phone, which cut our bill by 1/3.........down to about $35/mo.
Now, this last bill was $46.00, and we haven't changed a thing. We use a different company for long distance, and make alot of our calls
on our cell phones. I refuse to call them because you have to be on hold for about an hour. I tried clicking on their "contact us" online and it doesn't work!
I don't want to get rid of our landline phone. I think its time to look for an alternative. I'm not sure there's any out there around here.
Its soooooooooooooooo damned frustrating to have to deal with businesses like this. Same thing happened to me on a PNC bank site yesterday. It forced me to change our Home Equity online to their Banking online, and then it wouldn't let me pay a bill. So I called them and wrestled with the automated voice operator. I ended up screaming obscenities and her and she kept saying in her electronic voice "I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that." ACCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I finally got through to a human, who didn't know what I was even talking about, so he transferred me to their online people.............who never did pick up. So I screamed some more and hung up.
Anyhow.........Let's just focus on at&t for now. What a rip-off. Seems like the only way to deal with them is to get rid of them. :devil:
Run, don't walk from AT&T. Not only do they have horrible customer service, but their prices are too high. What other companies are people in your area using? Perhaps they could share their experiences and give you a recommendation. Around here Verizon is the big dog, but they're not too bad if you select your options carefully.
I have internet through my cable co. - and I'm using Vonage since cell phone reception (AT&T, as a matter of fact, but my work pays for it) at my house is "iffy" (5 bars to no bars and losing service and back to 5 bars all within about 5 seconds at random intervals, which makes it less than optimal for work calls). Luckily both just continue to work for a very long time so I haven't had to call anyone for service.
My cell service is not bad (not good, either), but it's free to me. I would not pay for it, though, I'd likely get another carrier.
I have AT&T. Twice when I've had my phone service go down, I have been unable to reach a live person. Once I stayed on hold for 2 hours and still never got a person. The second time I went through this I was without phone service for four days. When your service goes back up you get this automated call. When the automated person asked if I was satisfied with the repair service I received I said no and when they asked if I'd like someone to contact me I said yes. Two days later I got a call from the guy who actually did the repair. I asked him why a company that exists to facilitate people talking to each other will not allow you to talk to anyone at their company. It makes no sense and the guy couldn't explain it either. Instead he gave me his cell phone number and the number of his backup repair guy. I swear I could sell those numbers to my neighbors and earn enough to cover my phone bills for a year.
We don't talk on the phone much at home, and get decent cell service for the few times a month we actually call someone while at home. So we don't have a landline. We actually haven't had one for 6 years. At that time we had just moved into a brand new building and would need them to actually come out and finish the wiring from the phone board in the garage to the street. Making an appointment proved difficult and required wasting at least half a day. We had to cancel at the last minute and the next appointment available wasn't for 3 weeks (this after waiting 3 weeks for the first one). At that point we realized that we didn't really need a landline after all, and we've never had one since. We have a VOIP line that's part of our internet/tv/phone bundle, but I don't think we've ever actually called anyone on it.
AT&T does indeed stink. Well, their customer service. I had major issues - which I won't go into - when I moved into current place four years ago.
But it's not just AT&T residential. My company (my office is the North American HQ) merged with another late last summer. We moved into the other company's office in October. Our lease at old location was through the end of last month. Because AT&T dragged their feet about putting in the needed proper internet cables, the servers didn't get moved over to new location until the VERY end of May. It was originally supposed to be done in January!
small & friendly
6-16-12, 4:34pm
I'm not being snippy or disrespectful, but if you have such lousy service from AT&T why not find some other company? Even if you don't have a choice at your place of employment, at least ditch them as your home service.
Is it possible your phone bill was increased by one of those scam third party bills that Congress allowed the phone company to bill you for due to third party charges? It is wise to challenge any unexplained or unknown amount on landline or cell phone bills. The third party companies just think people will not notice amounts from $1 to $20 on their bills.
Millions are being caught in this fiasco. Call or write your congressman.
Our land line delivers rock solid gold service and for that reason alone, I've decided not to move from AT & T. For a couple of years, every time someone here would start a thread about cutting down on phone service, I followed along on the suggestions and felt guilty for not economizing.
But now, given the entirely crappy cell phone conversations that I have with just about everyone, I'm keeping this land line. And I don't want to spend any of my time shopping around for bargains, so AT & T it is.
We only have the privilage of having CenturyTel for our land line and internet. But we do have ATT for our cells and in our area there are not enough towers to get good service. It does suck and then you have the !@#$ contracts. When ours is up we are changing to Verizon as we have been told by a lot of people does get a much better signal. We can't use our cells at home at all.
I'm also very unhappy with A T & T. We signed a two year contract with them for Uverse and I got an Android smart phone. They are free to jack up the price all the time, which they keep doing, and yet I am stuck with this contract. If I break the contract, my penalty is the same than if I just keep the contract and pay each month. They did NOT tell me up front that they could up the prices. After I signed the contract, they sent me an email with many pages of fine print, in which this was deeply hidden. I think they are a very deceptive and greedy company. When the contract is over, we are canceling it, and going with netflix instead, and I'm hoping to revert back to a dumb phone. The only thing is, I want to keep our landline. With my central auditory processing disorder, I can understand speech over the land line much better. Maybe I'll only have ATT for the landline.
ToomuchStuff
6-26-12, 9:39pm
If it weren't for 50% taxes, and lack of pay phones, I would still have my land lines. The lack of pay phones drove me to a cell phone, which I today, started year three of. I dropped my home phone six months into it, when it looked like three months of service, covered one year of cell phone service, and I could use it when out picking stuff up for work (the reason I required a pay phone).
This year, my T mobile prepaid will cost me $50. (covers over 95% of the area I need to go) Lifeline phone service, would be closer to my home phone needs/wants.
ApatheticNoMore
6-27-12, 1:47pm
I'm not being snippy or disrespectful, but if you have such lousy service from AT&T why not find some other company? Even if you don't have a choice at your place of employment, at least ditch them as your home service.
There's the little problem of AT&T being a monopoly over landline phone service and so if you want a landline you're stuck. Or you can either deal with cable companies (even worse reputations - when I suggest switching from AT&T to them even as a suggestion people scream "NO!!!! DON"T DO IT!") or only having a cell.
If you want to keep your landline you're going to have to suck it up and call AT&T. Eleven bucks is 11 bucks.
ToomuchStuff
6-28-12, 12:30pm
If you want to keep your landline you're going to have to suck it up and call AT&T. Eleven bucks is 11 bucks.
More like $22 with taxes.
Just spent two hours on the phone trying to have our bill combined - wireless and internet only. I have been calling for six months now trying to get it straightened out. The onlines don't match the paper ones - different due dates and amounts which gets very confusing. I talked to three differents CSRs and then was sent to a fourth who turned out to be foreign - I could barely understand her accent and she repeatedly said "I cannot here you." Each one requires that you give them the same exact info to initiate any help. I basically gave up at that point, hung up in utter frustration and will just continue paying two bills. I am convinced they are evil by design - perhaps colluding with high blood pressure medication corporations.
These tales of customer service and two hours on the phone--this is why I don't mess with my phone service, don't try to sign up for cable or Dish, don't mess with my DSL service.
NO MESSING WITH ANYTHING is my motto until I retire and then I will have days to sit on the telephone, trying to get services up and running or reduced. But I expect those two day phone calls will cause my head to explode and I will be dead, unable to enjoy retirement.
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