Your Services...

[blas87]

I'm not exactly sure where this belongs, because it involves something I hate, but at the same time, I think it's something that happens a lot in society.

We hear all the time about people bitching about stupid things, namely when they go off the deep end bitching about their cell provider, cable provider, etc etc, and come to find out it's their own fault for not paying their bills and whatnot.

But in my experience, I have found that I truly DO have the suckiest cell phone provider (AT&T, who so far has "lost" two payments and shut off our phones, the rep refused to accept a fax copy of my mom's bank account showing that she DID pay it and they charged to reconnect both times and acted completely uninterested when mom told the reps that they needed to get their shit together and quit making mistakes like that) and the suckiest cable provider (Charter).

In fact, I think it's effing hilarious that AT&T got Luke Wilson to start doing commercials. Really needing a huge celebrity endorsement to get business? Oh, and AT&T, stop the lies about a huge coverage area. If I go 20 miles out of town, I'm out of bars until we get to Wisconsin Dells. My buddies with Verizon? Full bars almost all of the time.

[powerboy]

AT&T done that to me once. Would not except the fact that they screwed up. I hung up and called right back. Waited and then got someone who took care of it

[crashhelmet]

AT&T doesn't want to be in the wireless industry. They don't know HOW to operate in the wireless industry. 8 years ago, they ran their division into the ground and then sold it off to the company that became Cingular. The only reason they brought it back was because of the iPhone.

AT&T knew how successful the iPhone would be, hence the exclusive rights, and bought their company back from Cingular to get it. Their fuck up here is they didn't bother to stop and think about how much all of that traffic would impact their network, or their lack of one rather. There are now rumors circulating that AT&T will start charging iPhone users for excessive bandwidth as well as throttling their speeds and implementing bandwidth caps.

Cingular was a conglomeration of all of the Baby Bells that offered cell phone service in their respective markets. They did very little, if anything at all to build on it. AT&T hasn't changed much with it either. That's why almost their entire network is 2G instead of 3G. Companies like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have done nothing but build and expand upon their networks.

As for the problems you've had with them in billing and what not, my sister experienced the same thing with them. She canceled both her cell phone and Long Distance service with them. Now, she's got T-Mobile and is perfectly happy. I've been with Sprint for the last 10 years and have never had a single problem with their customer service, that people seem to complain about.

CH

[MaggieTheCat]

I've been with Sprint for the last 10 years and have never had a single problem with their customer service, that people seem to complain about.

My husband switched to Sprint 2 years ago and had an absolute nightmare of a time with their customer service, trying to get his phone and then activate it and then get his number transferred. It took almost a month after they said he would have service, for everything to be working right. Their phone customer service people were dreadful and could not (or would not) help him with any of his issues. Their in-store reps are better, and he has learned just to go directly to a retail location if he has any issues with his phone (which, thankfully, he has not had any major issues since he finally got through the initial SNAFU when he switched to Sprint.)

I, on the other hand, have been with AT&T for the last 2 years and have had no trouble with them whatsoever. Their customer service when I call has always been helpful. I've never been overbilled or had lost payments. I get good reception everywhere I've been. I think the bottom line is that every cell phone company sucks to some extent, you just gotta cross your fingers and hope you don't have issues, or, if you do, that you get a good CSR to help you...which is lame, I know, cell providers should have their shit together more than they do. I have heard good and bad things from various people about every single cellular provider that I know of.

[HYHYBT]

I've said this before, but I signed up with what was then known as Bellsouth Mobility ten years ago next month. They became Cingular, and then AT&T, but I've only ever had three problems:

*The account was set to charge automatically to my credit card. I lost the card and had it cancelled, and forgot to tell them. My own fault, and easily fixed.

*Had trouble activating a new phone because the account was still locked because I'd reported the old one lost. Fixed over the phone, once I called them from someone else's. No big deal.

*The worst one, because it's ongoing: 411 gives wrong numbers about half the time. For example, giving me the number for a Pizza Hut three hours away when I asked for the local one, pulling a random number out of a hat when there wasn't a listing for the person I was trying to call, etc. But even if the service worked well, I'd rarely use it anyway.

I figure that for ten years, that's pretty good. But apparently I'm one of the about six customers of theirs who don't have problems.

[Mr Slugger]

Honestly I think sometimes it's the luck of the draw. I've been with AT&T(cingular) for 10 years now and never had a problem. And the reason I went with them is because around here the only service that appears to work everywhere is AT&T. I've dealt with customer service with AT&T and never had a bad experience. Although I know people who have. But at the same time I know people who don't have problems calling verizon and I always have problems calling them.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I have T-Mobile, which works very well for me. However, I keep on getting people telling me I should switch to Vodaphone; mostly people who have that provider, and want to save money. -.- There's a good reason why I won't; Vodaphone has coverage all over the UK, cept in the village where I live. Why would I want a phone that doesn't work in my home?

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Having put in nearly a year and a half doing customer service for Sprint, let me give you some input from the other side of the phone:

Wireless services are very complex. The customer service calls I dealt with covered a wide range of issues from billing errors to plan corrections to technical support to coverage issues to porting problems to fraud issues.

I trained with a class of 24 other people. Within a month from graduating and working regular shifts, we were down to 12. Two months later there were four of us left. By three months I was the only one left standing (or rather, sitting and taking calls ). Here's the thing though: It took me six months to get pretty good at that job and around 9 months to become solidly trained and be able to handle most issues. There's a lot to learn and the training we received at the outset barely scratched the surface.

The customer service mentality was seriously messed up to. The supervisors (or "sups" as we called them) were all about policy policy policy. Issues were almost always approached from the point of view that the customer is wrong, stupid, trying to screw us over, etc.

I remember one prominent call where a woman had gotten some incorrect information from a store rep. Basically she had been told her contract was up and so after weighing her options she went to a competitor but ended getting nailed with an ETF from us because her contract was NOT up as she had been told but she in fact had 45 days left. She asked me to waive the ETF. She had been a good customer of ours for eight years and I thought we should do it. My sup however, refused to do it and got on the phone and in no uncertain terms told the lady "sorry but you'll have to pay up." Do you think that woman will ever do business with us again? Absolutely not.

That was another thing I noticed. We were insanely hardcore about ETFs and contracts. Bascially we could extend your contract with the push of a button and extend it on you whether you wanted to or not. When this happened a letter was supposed to be sent to you and if you received it, you could contest the contract. The notation about this letter being sent out was apparently all the proof we needed that yes you had agreed to a new contract and no we couldn't reverse the change. Oftentimes customers didn't pay much attention to their contract end date until they started thinking about a new phone. So by the time they called to dispute it, there was nothing that could be done.

Taking 50 calls a day dealing with upset customers with virtually no breaks in between calls is long, stressful work. But they didn't want logical, sensible thinkers, they wanted people who would just shut up and follow policy, not matter how stupid or unreasonable that policy was.

AT&T is an interesting case. They've built their wireless company around a data intense device that their network simply cannot support on a large scale. The iPhone would have been better off with Verizon, but as I understand AT&T was the only company that didn't balk at the conditions Apple attached to the rights.

Punishing people who got an iPhone and are using it regularly (Which by the way, is exactly what AT&T wanted them to do) is an extraordinarily stupid idea. Screwing over your best customers is no way to business.

[telecom_goddess]

Crazedclerkthe2nd....I'm curious. Did you work for Sprint or did you work for ACS contracting so sprint? My b/f works for the contractor doing workforce management. And what state was this in?

I'm just nosy

[KitterCat]

CrazedClerk, your time working with Sprint sounds just like my time working with Verizon Online. Exactly the same environment from high turn over rate to management only caring abut policy. Tell me did you grow to loath having to make “empathic statements” as much as me?