I know AT&T sucked, but this merger is sucking even more. I honestly think I’m about to lose my mind dealing with this crap.
Scenario: I made a payment to my cell phone company (even though I’m supposed to be on automatic payment) and I cannot make any outgoing phone calls because it says I need to make a payment. I, amazingly enough, can receive phone calls.
I contact AT&T to get this resolved, the “overseas outsourced representative” gave me a set of instructions to follow at which time, “I should be able to make outgoing phone calls with no trouble because it shows that I don’t owe any money”. I follow her instructions, yet, I’m still not able to make any outgoing phone calls because “I need to make a payment.”
Now, here I am, 7 days and 10 different customer service reps later, and $50 poorer still unable to make outgoing phone calls. I’ve even been hung up on twice by their customer service reps after they called me (and no, I wasn’t cursing at anyone yet, all I managed to get out was “hello, this is she…”).
Back in my day, life was simple: you paid for a service, you got the service. Maybe something got lost in the big conglomerate translation.
UPDATE: 11th customer service representative. I can make outgoing calls now, however, AT&T doesn’t want to compensate me for the 7 days that I didn’t have phone service, citing that “I was able to receive phone calls and I received two phone calls during peak hours which is why my balance was reflecting those charges”. Well, isn’t it funny because those two calls were their customer service representatives calling me to “resolve the problem” (that wasn’t resolved).
I’m now grasping at reasons to stay with AT&T (or is that Cingular now) besides their being the only carrier which supports my Nokia phone…
UPDATE 2: Well, after the situation was resolved and I was fairly compensated (they gave me 8 days and credited me for their service calls), and all was right with the world once again — I checked my email to find this:
Dear Mike Hawkins:
Before you ask - no, I have no idea who Mike Hawkins is and the 9 previous emails attached to it make no mention of a Mike Hawkins.
I thought about what my response should be, and was really tempted to go with “Dear Verizon Wireless…” but instead it went more like “You know what would be great? If my name was Mike Hawkins…”.
Not only could they not resolve my issues in a prompt and courteous manner, this just proves that they don’t even read the emails that are sent to them. Cingular/AT&T email support is disorganized and ridiculous at best.
March 30th, 2005 at 5:55 am
thats odd… very odd. I’ve been with cingular since they were Bellsouth Mobility (~6 years now) and I seldom have problems with them. I just upgraded our phones to new motorola camera phones as well and had nary a problem.
That being said, I’ve found that where ever there is any kind of a merge going on, there are going to be issues with the side that’s being taken in (in this case, the AT&T wireless side) for a bit. I would stick with it….
March 30th, 2005 at 11:45 am
Yep - it’s called “The New Cingular”…
As for this situation, it’s disconcerting at best. While their CS response time has increased, the quality has somehow decreased from that of AT&T.
They explained that some “payments made in March” got lost in the shuffle and were floating around in Cingular/AT&T limbo.
What got me was the “supervisor” not wanting to compensate me for their calls to me to fix the problem, that’s when I just about lost it.
They finally folded and that 11th CS rep was awesome:
It’s all fixed up now, but if it happens again, I can’t make any guarantees of remaining a loyal customer.
March 30th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
I hate crappy customer service. We’ve been with Verizon for about 6 years now and haven’t had too many problems with them. We had a slight incident this weekend where they tried to tell the Hubby that he didn’t qualify for the “New every two” cellphone upgrade until 2007 even thought he hasn’t bought a new cellphone in YEARS. They apparently counted my old phone, which he got when I got a new one, as a new phone. Dumbasses.
But we got it resolved and he’s now completely geeked out with the new LGVX6100. His phone is now better than mine!
Stick with your company and see if it gets better and if not, move on. You deserve better service than what they’re giving you.
March 30th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Your husband is sooo lucky, that phone looks cool - but I’m such a Nokia geek it’s not even funny.
And my cell phone has a radio - it’s not a new top of the line Nokia or anything, but it has a radio and I can change the face plate and it’s tiny
- all the qualities I look for in a phone.
I’m going to stick with them for now, and hopefully they work out these issues with the merger that’s taking place, but it’s just so frustrating! Grr…
March 30th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
[...] -so-new phone? I was just over at Teli’s reading about her recent customer service fiasco with her cell p [...]
March 30th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
Oh.My.God. I have cingular/AT&T also. While my situation wasn’t QUITE as bad as yours, I called them Friday of last week, because a strange number had been repeatedly called (like 10 time a day) from both of my cell phones. I called to find out what the number was, since it’s not a number either I or my fiancee knew. CSR #1 argued with me that I obviously knew the number since both my phones were calling it. Uh…? No. SO, after arguing with him for over 15 minutes, he puts me on hold to try something else. 20 minutes later, when he hadn’t come back, I began to wonder if he’d put me on hold assuming I’d just drop off the line. 25 minutes later, I picked up another phone in the office and called the customer service number again, asked for a Supervisor, and CSR #2 - after telling me in under a minute that the number being called was my new voicemail number (it’s auto-programmed, so I never see it), gave me to a Supervisor. The supervisor was on the phone with me 10 minutes later (now 45 minutes after the guy put me on hold) when the original CSR came back on the line. Yeah, she had me get his ID, and told me she’d handle it - but of course, I get no compensation for the hour I spent on the phone with them trying to get a 1 minute question answered. {sigh}
March 30th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Tracy: ouch…
It’s nice to know I’m not alone though {sigh}
March 30th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
I’m glad I don’t have to manage all this phone stuff. My parents do it all
And I thought it was kind of funny when I saw the “****,” then hovered over it, and it said “crap.” I was seriously expecting some other vulgar word to pop up.
March 30th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
You lucky devil…but one day William, you too will need to endure the pains of poor customer service…beware
And I’m trying to keep this blog somewhat “family friendly” - I may need to drop the level of protection though - I really don’t consider ass, bitch, and crap to be curse words
March 30th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Aw, what a nightmare! Glad to see you finally resolved it. But your time, at $50/hour, should be recompensed, too, for all it took.
March 31st, 2005 at 8:36 pm
boston, you raise a very good point.
I only asked for “fair” compensation - that which would “make me whole” (essentially an extra 7 days to cover what I missed) and they gave me grief - can you just imagine my asking them to pay me $200+ for the lost time?
Gosh, I wouldn’t have the mental stamina to deal…
April 7th, 2005 at 1:08 am
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April 9th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
you think cingular is best? you should try having a Sprint customer service bitch tell you that you haven’t been paying your bills for 3 months!! even though you have, and putting your account on “highrisk”. All this while being rude to you and cutting you off the line the minute you tell them you wanna SWITCH TO CINGULAR!!!!