Does AT&T Have the Worst Customer Service? UPDATE

[David Emm]

"Customer service" is partially a victim of our high population numbers. Our unit value has plummeted. I once told an AT&T repairman I was ready to drop them. He laughed and said "A thousand angry people cancel every day and two thousand sign up." Come and get your cup of Karn Evil 9.

 

Its a dark cousin to the old joke... "If your perversion is one in a million, in a city of eight million, there are seven more just like you."

 

I'll also abrade the house rule a bit by pointing out that if every pandering politician and tel-com CEO who Screwed Unto Others casually for the bucks got punched in the mouth every time they did it, you wouldn't be reading this post, eh? No bully every stands down voluntarily.

 

I like KC and a few remaining stalwarts, but the noise floor is so bad now, I've gradually ditched most of my former streams, "services" and general memberships. It will never sit well with me that I have to protect myself from my tools. No one forces us to go online, but I dislike coming away from some sessions with a wrongfully chapped arse.

 

On many days, if I didn't need the Net for maintaining my music rig, I could chunk the SOB in the yard and pee on the Thunderbolt ports. Good thing I bought the extended warranty!

[Anderton]

I've gradually ditched most of my former streams, "services" and general memberships. It will never sit well with me that I have to protect myself from my tools. No one forces us to go online, but I dislike coming away from some sessions with a wrongfully chapped arse.

 

It's like going into a bar in the really bad part of town that doesn't have any bouncers. I really believe that online meeting places where people can leave comments or state opinions need moderation, in the form of virtual bouncers.

 

The Cakewalk forums had a pretty good rep, but I was merciless and arbitrary as a moderator. Although I'm not proud of it, in some cases I felt my only way to get people to go away was to humiliate then publicly in as brutal a way as possible.

 

There's an easy solution to all the ills of online: people have to use their real names. That would cut down on problems real fast.

[KuruPrionz]

I've gradually ditched most of my former streams, "services" and general memberships. It will never sit well with me that I have to protect myself from my tools. No one forces us to go online, but I dislike coming away from some sessions with a wrongfully chapped arse.

 

It's like going into a bar in the really bad part of town that doesn't have any bouncers. I really believe that online meeting places where people can leave comments or state opinions need moderation, in the form of virtual bouncers.

 

The Cakewalk forums had a pretty good rep, but I was merciless and arbitrary as a moderator. Although I'm not proud of it, in some cases I felt my only way to get people to go away was to humiliate then publicly in as brutal a way as possible.

 

There's an easy solution to all the ills of online: people have to use their real names. That would cut down on problems real fast.

 

I am skeptical, I could go all over the place and post as Craig Anderton, no? Not something I would consider doing but anybody could be somebody else online.

I'm with David Emm, I deleted my Fakebook account because the stupid could not be filtered without getting stupidity smeared on my nice shoes.

 

I don't miss it in the slightest. MPN is pretty much the only forums I visit at this point, too many become toxic waste-pits of pointless blatherspew. Beliefs vs beliefs and/or beliefs vs "facts" will never get anybody anywhere. There is less of that here than most places.

[Anderton]

I am skeptical, I could go all over the place and post as Craig Anderton, no?

 

I was envisioning some kind of proof, like a driver's license or notarized statement. Of course that would make people go ballistic, but then if someone did try to impersonate you, there would be legal recourse.

 

There's precedent. Anything that's society-wide and has the potential to cause harm requires identification, whether it's drinking, driving, buying cigarettes, cashing a check, picking up a prescription, etc. I think it's becoming clear that social media is the new cigarettes - an addictive health hazard, sold on the basis of being "cool." I'd like to see it more selective.

 

I think the reason why we participate here is because MPN is still flying under the radar, so we don't have the problems of something like GearMeta or other sites. As far as I can tell, whether a site is toxic or not depends on the moderation, desire for numbers, and tolerance of people who aren't all that wonderful.

[Notes_Norton]

The Band-in-a-Box forum is seldom toxic, perhaps because we are a niche of a niche. Same with the Parker Guitar forum. I think when the groups are smaller, with an 'in crowd' of people who are bound by something specific, the posts are friendlier and the members help each other more.

 

I also think moderation is very important. Toxic posts should be nuked, and the poster warned. A few warnings and the poster bounced.

 

I see our civilization getting less civil and more barbaric as time moves on. I blame it on the Fox effect, not that Fox is the only culprit, but one of the first to use fake news and an attitude of anger and fear to manipulate their viewership for profits. It and others set an example that if you disagree with someone, the proper reaction is rage.

 

In a civilized society, people still disagree, but do so without rage and/or violence. Example: If you disagree about wearing masks, you shouldn't taunt those who wear them or, worse than that, intentionally cough on them. What kind of society promotes that kind of behavior? It's like Kristallnacht light.

 

It's time we turn off all hate and anger media and strive to become a civilized society instead of a barbaric one.

 

That's just my opinion.

 

Notes â«

[Jazzmammal]

The weirdest part was that no one at AT&T in even the elevated customer service department knew how to resolve the issue, even though they could see there was clearly a problem. It had to go to their backend IT people.

 

I was mainly responding to this. A billing issue seemed like a one off to me, maybe it's your regional manager doing that but whatever, I even went to an ATT forum and didn't see much about it. Now, I'm that last one to defend a telecom company, they pretty much all suck in my experience hence my joking compared to what thing. I had Verizon FIOS since FIOS was first intruduced when I was living in LA. It had the best HD picture quality at the time, much better than DIRECTV which I specifically had becase they had the best HD picture until FIOS came out. I was a very early adopter of HD almost 20 years ago with a digital antenna in my living room before any broadcasters had it. But, Verizon had terrible customer service, long phone times, hard to get answers. Your comment about you had to get to their IT people is the exact point I was making in my answer to you. The front end people know nothing primarily because of what I said, the person you get probably got out of training yesterday. The turnover is very high and not just with them it's Amazon, Home Depot, Uber pick a name for the reasons I wrote about. But is the answer that simple, of course not it's a complex situation. The labor shortage, COVID and all that just adds to what was already a bad customer service situation. None of them were that great at any time.

 

Bob

[Anderton]

The weirdest part was that no one at AT&T in even the elevated customer service department knew how to resolve the issue, even though they could see there was clearly a problem. It had to go to their backend IT people.

 

I was mainly responding to this. A billing issue seemed like a one off to me, maybe it's your regional manager doing that but whatever, I even went to an ATT forum and didn't see much about it.

 

Actually I think it may be the other way around, where the IT issue was a one-off, and the billing issue is commonplace. I think the reason why there's not more of an outcry is because people don't know they're being signed up for things surreptitiously. As I said, it's not even a line item on a bill, it's buried. The way I found the comments I quoted was by doing a google search on Next Up, which took me to forum threads. There's no doubt in my mind that defaulting to charging for options, without informing the customer they're being charged for options, falls under the "because we can get away with it" category.

 

Incompetence I can understand. I have a much harder time with what looks to me like a policy of deliberate deception.