Nine days. That's how long we went without a landline phone recently. Our troubles with AT&T date back 20 years in the house. There is always a new reason for not being able to get a dial tone..........someone accidentally cutting the wires on the street, a line in the house that the technician can't figure out where it goes, DSL issues...........When I called the automated repair line, and pressed '1' about a million times to report my outage (which would soon turn to 'outrage'), I was told that my issue 'would be resolved by Monday.' Unfortunately, it was a Wednesday when I called. Five days to come out and fix a dead phone line?? What sort of rinky dink operation has AT&T become?
Without being given a time window of when a repair person would arrive, I sat around the house all day Monday. By 5:30 pm, no one had called my cell or shown up. I called the automated repair line again and it took me about 20 minutes to get a human being on the line. She said that their technicians work until 8 pm, and that someone would be here shortly. Then, at 6:30 pm, I received an automated call saying that my 'issue would be resolved on Tuesday.' Seriously.
Tuesday came and went..........still no technician. My daughter had her senior photos scheduled for that evening, so I went through the headache of getting her hair ready, clothes ironed, etc. and we drove the half hour to the studio. Only to be met by photographer's husband, who apologized that his wife had tried calling us for days to reschedule but couldn't get through (she had a family emergency out of town). At this point, I'm livid with AT&T.
I get home and call the repair line again, waiting 40 minutes to get to a live person. I talked over the first person until she got me a 'manager.' All I heard was apologies for them not meeting their 'commitment' two days in a row. No promises of service immediately. No promises of service first thing in the morning, just that she would turn in a report to the field supervisor. I told her about 100 times that this was totally unacceptable. I also mentioned that I hoped AT&T never attempts to contact me again about U-Verse or any of their other services.
Wednesday came and went. I had basically given up and went to the grocery store Thursday morning. Wouldn't you know my cell rings while I'm in the car? I hurried back home and the technician fixed my problem in about 10 minutes (the whole house DSL filter had gone bad).
Can I just reiterate that AT&T sucks? And so much for deregulation.........it looks as though our choices are the local cable company, AT&T or Vonage (which I heard sucks as well) for phone service.
vonage bites, don't do it. Have you thought about going thru your cable company? We use Optonline and we've never had any problems.
ReplyDelete@M - Yes, that's about our only choice. I only hesitate because if all 3 went out at once (TV/phone/internet) I might not survive the teen angst that would take place!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as someone who hates talking on the phone, never answers it, and never have anybody to call, I guess if our landline when down, I probably wouldn't even realize it wasn't working. However, I can relate, just because I don't use it, doesn't meant I would tolerate it not working, for just the emergency you described!
ReplyDeleteMore and more of our friends are just pitching the land line altogether, and going cell-only. If it wasn't for our elderly parents, we'd probably do the same. . .
ReplyDeleteJC - I prefer e-mail contact over talking on the phone. I need to make three calls today for some tree services and I'm dreading it!
ReplyDeleteCraig - I hesitate to ditch the landline just because we all have a Sprint plan and if they have a major outage, we are stuck. But why can't your parents call your cell phone?
Oh, they could, if they had to, but it's kind-of an 'old-dog-new-tricks' thing, and we just don't want to give them that hassle. . .
ReplyDeleteAs it is, my sister changes her phone so often that we don't know how to call her anymore. . .
Stuff like this kind of customer service makes me just want to yell "Oh, HELL no!" I hate being held captive by the likes of this kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteThat sucks... but, I'll agree with M@; we went to cable for the phone (also Optonline), and haven't had any troubles that weren't something like neighborhood power outages, etc- which would kill the TV anyway :)
ReplyDeleteNo, I take that back, we did have one issue, where the internet became (suddenly) intermittent. But, the local area's service people were prompt, professional, and actually *fixed* the problem, and didn't try to make it an internal problem which would cost me- they just replaced the service cable from the fiber on the street into the house with a new one, and voila, we've been good since.
Oh my God, that would send me right on over the edge. I switched to cable, but not because of the phone line, I just HATED dish TV.
ReplyDeleteAT&T = Always Telephone Trouble
ReplyDeleteCall me!
ReplyDeleteoh yeah you can't
ha
We love our phone, TV, computer combo--we've had VERY little in the way of trouble.
ReplyDeleteOur AT&T cells have nearly always worked well but we got off AT&T's landline long ago 'cuz they always rot.
ReplyDeleteWe tried Vonage and they were cheap and mostly reliable unless the internet hiccuped, which happens to us more often than it should. We were never able to have a call go an hour without an interruption.
Magically RoadRunner is able to keep it all connected quite well for us but we're soon thinking of ditching it for purely cells.
The only calls we get at 'home' now are head-hunters, sales-freaks, and church folks who are in denial over our leaving (are you available to help with ...).
We did VOIP with Optonline which was very good, then switched to Ooma which is cheaper ($200 for the box - then that's it) and it has a few less features and quality is occasional off when talking to people on cell phones, but overall it is good.
ReplyDeleteFADKOG - The customer is always wrong! Didn't you know that?
ReplyDeleteSailor - Our cable TV has only gone out once in the past 17 years that we've had it. I guess that should tell me something.
Agent - My neighbor had Dish and it went out everytime there was a 5 mph wind!
Nick - I've never heard that; only the ones about car manufacturers.
JK - You prank phoned people a lot as a youngster, didn't you :)
Laggin - Good to know!
ReplyDeleteX- You need to tell the church people that Xavier doesn't live there anymore!
Cool - I think you EastCoasters are way ahead of us in the technology dept.
ATT is the devil. And they totally own us - cell phones and all home service is through them. The actual service is fine, but dealing with them on customer service issues is always a nightmare. I haven't been able to log in to my ATT uverse account online for 3 months, because they can't figure out how to reset my password.
ReplyDelete