AT&T Broadband Internet ATT AT&T = 12+hours on hold, 10days without phone or internet, rude employees who have no power to help and continually transfer you to another department that they have to hold for. Internet, Texas

AT&T Nightmare

 

NOTE: In response to our BBB complaint.... On 9/10/2009 AT&T Rep Raya (ID#RV9168) Contacted me to tell me that waiting 10+ days for an install is perfectly normal.  That a business expecting new service is expected to sit without phone or internet for 10+ days.  They conveniently don't tell you that when you are signing up nor do they say that on the website.

Report Start:

My nightmare starts when I first called AT&T to order DSL & Phone package for my small business.  Internet is critical to my small business much like it is to most businesses these days.  Mine in particular revolves directly around the Internet therefore it is critical we have it.

 

I knew when I first called AT&T that it was going to be a horrible experience. 

 

Let me preface this by saying that AT&T is the ONLY option in my area.  There is no other option and they effectively have a monopoly on broadband Internet in my area.

 

So, I called to order DSL & Phone service and waited patiently for 45minutes on hold while a sales person could take the time to get to my call.  After my call was finally answered he took his sweet time in taking my order.  After another hour on the phone the order was complete.  I asked to speak with a supervisor to which he replied none were available and that they would have to call me back within 24-48hours.  I knew immediately that AT&T had some serious problems going on.  I asked them to call me back to discuss this ridiculously long process in taking my order and the fact that they couldnt get a tech out to install my order within less than 5 days.

 

Right off the bat my small business (that depends on the internet) is without Internet for 5days.  And, what do you know the supervisor never returned my call.

 

5days later

 

After 5days the tech (Charles) finally comes out and installs our phone jack.  After installing the jack he leaves a lovely mess of white dust & wires/cords everywhere.

 

I have pictures if youd like to see them.

 

He plugs a phone into the jack gets a dial tone and says job is complete.

I say job is not complete until you get the internet working.

He plugs the router in, DSL light goes solid green.

He says job complete

I say job is not complete until I see google.com

He plugs it into the computer and of course it doesnt work

He says job is complete that its not his job to get the internet working that I need to call technical support.

 

We call technical support and after talking to a dozen different reps absolutely nothing happens.  The tech leaves.

 

This is when the nightmare really starts to get ridiculous.

 

Various techs spend hours on the phone with us trying aimlessly to resolve the situation.  Each Tech has no power to help solve the situation and continually is transferring us to another department that they think can help.  The biggest problem here is that there is a 10+minute average hold time within the inter-company transferring phone lines to the next department.

 

Here is an example of one day in hell with AT&T reps:

 

9/2/2009:

 

We call Tech Support for the first time at 2PM PST.  We speak to various techs for approximately 1hour and nothing gets resolved.  From 3PM to 4:30PM PST spoke with Aminah (ID#AA8680) for a hour who transferred us to Chantel (ID#SH1276) who couldn't get a supervisor on the line.  Instead she transferred me to a supervisor's voice mail (Kim).  Which I left a voice mail and of course it hung up on me.  Again nothing being resolved.

 

Called again, spoke with Joe who transferred me to Ryan (ID#RH3206) who transferred me to Brandi Holguin (ID#BH3823) whom said she couldn't even see my phone line in the system and that she was surprised that I could even call her.  She then asked if I was sure I was with AT&T?

 

I then patiently waited on a call back from her.   She finally calls back around 5PM.  She promises that she will be able to get someone out tomorrow to finally install our service.

 

9/3/2009

 

No one comes.  Brandi tells us that she was unable to get anyone today that we have to again wait until tomorrow.  Being told this is our only option We again patiently wait without Internet, our business crumbling before our very eyes due to our inability to operate.  We went so far as to try and contact the office of the president

 

9/4/2009

No one appears to be coming (again).  I call & e-mail Brandi on the hour , every hour.  In addition I call the office of the president.  At 1:50PM Friday I speak with Irena @ 888-289-8116  who bs's with me for awhile says she can't even locate my phone number and doesn't believe I have  service with AT&T.  Finally she realizes that she is in the wrong region (she is Southeast)  she transfers me to Latonya (214-464-4185) whom is with the office of the president southwest region.  She puts me on hold for 30+ minutes.  In fact, I called her on the other line, and asked if she was ever going to get back to me.  She goes, oh sorry I forgot about you while I was on hold with someone else.  I go, Gee thanks, you didn't even want to come back for a minute and tell me to please keep holding?   So, she goes... I'll call you back.

Never called back the rest of the day.  I called her and left a message saying thank you for calling me back.  And, never of course called me back again.

Brandi finally gets back to me around 2:50PM.  She says she finally has a tech on the way.  Admittedly Brandi is the only person who actually helped this situation, in fact she is the only AT&T rep who returned a phone call.  Finally the Tech comes out at 4PM on Friday.  He tells us that the first tech Charles mis-installed some wires and he switches some cords around.  Then he spends an hour and a half on hold with his OWN COMPANY trying to get our line activated.  After that, he runs diagnostics and some install on his company computer and finally gets the internet working.

Story continued...

On 9/10/2009 AT&T Rep Raya (RV9168) calls me in response to my BBB complaint on the company.  She doesn't apologize.  In fact, she claims that we received superior advanced service by being able to get our services up and running within 10days.  That it's normal for service to take 10+days to get phone and internet running.  She was quite rude and short with us.