AT&T Consumer Reviews - Page 6

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN -- I was lied to, transferred 6 times and at the end I was told it was my fault so deal with it.

I switched from Verizon Wireless (another rip-off) in February of this year, transferring five lines. I called today to transfer a tablet to my plan that would add another $10 to my monthly plan. They told me that they needed to check my payment history, which I gladly authorized. Then I was told that "the system" requires a $150 deposit from me to add another line, that they would "return" in 12 months! AT&T apparently operates just like Verizon. I would rather have the tablet sit in a draw unused than let AT&T extort money from me.

DENVER, COLORADO -- EVERY single AT&T employee I spoke with misled me, diverted questions, transferred me back and forth and generally read ridiculous scripts that didn't even make sense. I tried to work with them to get the right plan for my usage - more lies, diversions, and transfers. NEVER AGAIN.

CAROL STREAM, ILLINOIS -- After receiving a mail out about AT&T internet service, my wife and I contacted AT&T. We were sold a bundle which was supposed to cost $105 per month. This bundle was to provide us with all distance unlimited long distance, wireless internet service, and DirecTV satellite service. We have yet to receive a bill for that amount. I have spent hours and hours on the phone (approx 5 hours total on July 3, yes a holiday weekend when I could have been spending time with my family). Each time I call in after hours on the phone I have the same results; I am told there is nothing they can do.

(But they will transfer to someone who can, which either disconnects the call meaning I get to start all over with a new representative, or I am transferred back and forth until the next person I need to speak with is in a department that has closed for the day, or the representative will offer to negotiate with me by offering free movie packages rather than lowering the satellite bill to what we were told it would be when we signed up for the bundle, or we can lower our service to reach the price we were told, and we also have the option to terminate the service [As long as I am willing to pay over $400 in termination fees to DirecTV].)

It is very obvious to me AT&T does not care about their customers, AT&T sales/service representatives will lie to make a sale and meet their quotas, DirecTV does not care how AT&T represents their service (after all they can always get $400 termination fee), and last but not least unless you want to lose your phone, your internet, your satellite $400 and/or have your credit damaged you will pay it, cause there is not a thing you can do about it. Thanks for choosing AT&T.

CALIFORNIA -- We have phone, fax and internet services with AT&T and have been customers since 1990 something... Recently we called to get some help with setting up a brand new laptop that was purchased and wanted to get it connected with our wireless router. The technician remotely logged in to our system and insisted that we had a wireless modem (which we kept telling him was not) and he ended up disconnecting our internet service for two days. I had to call back, be on the phone for 1 hour and 45 minutes and have someone walk me through how to reconnect the service. Ever since then, it has been very weak and sometimes it will work, and sometimes it won't.

We called again, and begged to have an ACTUAL PERSON come out to our business and try to repair it. We had an appointment set up and they were going to call us when they were on the way out. Well, we never got a phone call and no one ever showed up!

I called again today, only to be on the phone for 80 minutes and transferred 4 times before the 4th person told me I had been connected to the wrong department! I called the number she gave me and was on the phone for another 23 minutes and was told that sending out a technician would result in a charge on our bill! Can you believe that? They can see a record of how many phones call we have made to get help, then instead of offering a service free of charge, they are sending someone out to help us, for a fee... what poor poor customer service.

We are stuck using them because there are no other companies that we can locate to service North Highlands for phone and internet. If you can avoid using AT&T, I would strongly recommend it.

NORTH CAROLINA -- OK, so I've been reading over all the reviews, and I currently work for AT&T and I have made a promise to myself, if I ever lived in an area where AT&T was the only internet service provider I would MOVE!!! I've seen a lot of bad reviews on the agents. Well I'd like to clarify that yes you will get some bad agents who really couldn't care less about the customer, but honestly it's mostly the managers there, if one manager tells you to handle someone or something one way you can bet another manager will come along and tell you something else.

I really do not enjoy working for this company because their goal is to be #1 and it doesn't matter to them who or what is in their way to get there. If you get a crabby agent in tech support, please keep in mind, usually we have been treated like crap all day by a manager and we are made to feel intimidated and beneath someone else all day. Our work hours are horrible and we are just like you and get tired, we understand that the service sucks and that you are most likely getting ripped off, but we are there do try to soup up your issue for a few months.

I don't recommend this company to anyone because for one I take so many calls a night and it's usually all about the same thing. There are always an outage and it doesn't make no sense at all that there's never service in certain areas. Believe me when I say that certain agents such as my self do know the frustration you are going through, you're mad cause your service isn't working as it should and you're calling screaming at the agents so we are getting it from the customers and the managers, this is not a good company for service nor is it for employment.

I thought my ISP was horrible until I started working there, I've had my ISP for over 5 years and only had to call them twice, now I know to never be mean to them again...

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- I had a friend that was having car trouble, and was trying to direct a tow truck to his location. His cell battery was dead, so he called me collect from a pay phone (the tow driver was then calling me as he couldn't call the payphone). There were four calls made in about a 40-minute timespan. All were less than a minute long, and the payphone was in my area code, about 2-1/2 miles from my house. My AT&T bill stated them as 6.0 minutes each, and charged $31.56 PER CALL-THAT'S $126.12!!!

I called AT&T and was told it was not their charge, to take it up with the service carrier, "Zero Plus Dialing". I e-mailed them (through "Custom Teleconnect" and "NCIC", who I was "billed on behalf of") politely and got no response at all. I called them (Zero Plus) and got a trainee with an apparent script for calming down "irate callers" that only succeeded in making me irate. I could hear he had my call on speaker phone and his fellow employees were having trouble stifling snickers, as did he once or twice.

I didn't care about any of that at the time, in retrospect it seems rather amateurish and rude. And after repeatedly asking to speak to a supervisor, was transferred to a "we're sorry-out of service" dial tone. Nice. I called back, hopping mad, and demanded to speak to him again. This got me, instead, the floor supervisor, who eventually began offering me "one-time courtesy credits" starting at $12.00 and, after a long pause, increasing by $12.00 increments. Every time I responded by stating how much this still stuck me with.

She finally topped out at $72.00 (total), which I informed her was just over half of how much I'd been ripped off for, and she informed me that she'd be documenting my decline, and asked me if I wanted her to put in a statement from me. You can guess what I FELT like saying, but I said "ask your higher-ups if they feel right and fair charging a dollar per second for a call that would be 50 cents in coins deposited, without warning EITHER party of the impending thirty-dollar booby trap. How do they sleep?"

This company hides behind the skirts of AT&T, billing through them, causing my phone service to be cut off if I refuse to pay the WHOLE bill (normally about $28.00/month). I can't believe that AT&T would let a company do this. Once upon a time in this country, business practices like this would have been considered criminal.

JOHNSON COUNTY, KANSAS -- I received a message on my answering machine while I was out of town attending to my critically ill mother, saying that I needed to call AT&T at the number they left. Did so and got put on hold for 30 minutes with no answer ... twice! Logged onto their website and found that they had my account listed as delinquent (I had mailed a check through another overpaid and substandard "service provider"... the USPS), so I processed an on-line payment.

Their automated reply confirmed that the account was brought up to date. Another automated reply told me that my next bill would have a service restoration fee of $28.25 applied (Kansas' maximum is $18, according to one of the idiots who finally answered their phone). I called the number that notice listed and spoke to "Dana"... told her the situation and she argued that my phone had been disconnected, so the fee applied. I asked for the name and physical address of a supervisor, so she transferred my call to another idiot, Cheryl. Repeated the process and she, too, transferred me to a third, "Mrs. **" who said they would waive the fee as a "one time courtesy."

These people wouldn't know the meaning of courtesy if it slapped them in the face! Why is this awful company rearing its ugly head again?! Didn't they get broken up due to just this kind of crap? I'm starting my search for a replacement today and plan to have it in place by January 1. I HATE AT&T. Will NEVER get any other "service" from them and will work to keep others from making the mistake of becoming their customers.

This company really needs to be forced out of business... they don't care about their customers, their workers (if you can get through the multi-level automation to get to them) are incompetent and their automation is grossly overdone. Their physical address, should anyone else become exhausted before finally getting it is: AT&T Attention: Customer relations, P O Box 1530, Houston TX 77092. My next stop for complaint is the FCC. I plan to do whatever I can to irritate AT&T as much as they have irritated me.

LENEXA, KANSAS -- An AT&T sales person came by our house and sold us on switching from our current cable network to AT&T. We set up a date for installation. I made myself available from 9 to 11 for the tech to come and install our new cable, internet & phone. I had to get a family member to take my child to an appointment & turn down work so that I was available. At 11:10 no one from AT&T has shown up or Called.

I call AT&T and after 10 minutes of trying to talk to a human being, I am told that they were not coming out that day because of an issue with an outside box that was fixed, but my appointment was cancelled & needed to be rescheduled at the next available time they had, 2 weeks from now. They did not call to tell me they were not coming, did not rectify their mistake by coming out the day of scheduled appointment, instead I was put at the bottom of the list to again make myself available for 4 hours for them to come out 2 weeks later.

The customer service representative was of no help & I told them, "I do not want your service if this is how you do things," & they were completely fine with that & hoped my experience was satisfactory with AT&T and I would continue using them. What?!? I never had the chance to & I never will!! They never called to say they would not be at my home to install cable, phone & internet. I had to call them to find to out what was going on, which was not an easy task and frustrating.

They don't care if they lose new customers, I can't imagine they would care about the ones they have. I have never written a review before but I have had it with companies that want my money & it's OK to treat the people poorly that are giving them money. I won't & I don't have to. I will inform other consumers so they do not have to experience consumer abuse.

ATLANTA, FLORIDA -- Is AT&T a rogue company? Why it does not allow its customers to reach it to discuss their problems? Where does it earned its power of lawlessness? If you try to reach this company to dispute a charge, it does not provide you of any means for doing so. You cannot reach it by e-mail or by fax. Or if you call it by phone you are in for an agony of waiting for hours until you give up or get disconnected. Worse, you would be told someone will call you back which never happens.

If you send to them a regular mail you know where that goes. And if you by any chance or miraculously find someone to talk to there is no evidence of what you discussed or agreed upon, even though you are told that you are on a recorded line. The result always that you are screwed up. The irony is that this company specialized in communications. But they do not allow their customers to communicate with them. What kind of power does this company have? Do we live in the USA or in Somalia where there are pirates?

The sad part is that I worked for this company which was called Ma Bell at the time and I thought it was the most respectable, the most ideal and the most ethical company in the World. Today its CEO threaten to sue you if you talk to him. By that he is protecting the gang of pirates he is overseeing. It is not my first encounter with AT&T but I am sure it will be the last.

In short, during the month of August I requested a home phone and Internet connection which were never completed for over ten days from the scheduled date. Despite calling the company for over five hours everyday in no avail I decided to cancel. After long hours and wait I was successful to talk to someone and I was told it was cancelled. A bill came in the mail which was delivered by mistake to a neighbor, who thought it was her bill and paid it. After she realized her mistake she gave me the bill expecting me to pay, since it was my account.

AT&T since deleted the account but would never refund the money. There is no record of the account since it was deleted. Is this an act of theft? How can I dispute a charge of $137.29? It is incomprehensible how a respectable company can scam its customer this way. This is a rip off. I need to get my refund now. I am determined this time to teach AT&T a lesson in honesty.