Manual Reset - An Adventure with AT&T
DAY 1: We have two phone lines dating back to the early days of AOL and telephone modems and a child living in the house. With our use of mobile phones and only the two of us here, we decided to drop one of our lines. It’s the one that had DSL on it.
I spent some time on the phone with AT&T talking to a service representative that I needed DSL and didn’t want to be without it during this switch. She assured me that would not happen. So we scheduled a date to stop service on the line we were dropping, activate DSL on the other line, and a service call by a technician who would switch over the DSL modem’s jack line from the old number to the one we are retaining. All this happened over two weeks ago. You know where this is going, right?
It’s the day when the switchover is supposed to happen. The technician is scheduled to be here between noon and 4:00. About 2:00, Dave from AT&T Broadband Delivery calls. Seems like the order to change service to add DSL to our existing line choked in the system and got thrown out. Not sure why, says Dave, but it happened and it just came up with their office. And there is no way we can get this corrected until at least tomorrow. He has to manually feed all new information into the system to get things perking. I tell him this is exactly what I feared, and the number we wanted disconnected was, in fact, cut off last midnight, so we have zero DSL service and now would have none for two days. Dave commiserates with me and tells me they should never have scheduled the cut off of the old service until the night after the new service was activated. Gee, I had asked that when all this was scheduled and told it would be no problem for us.
Yes, I know in the scheme of things this isn’t a biggie. I mean it’s not whirled peas or health and human services. But it still rankles. Oh, and I’m still waiting to see if the technician shows up today. Dave says that was on a separate order and there will be no problem. Yeh, you betcha.
Well, it’s now 5:00 and no one has shown up. I spent the last 30 minutes talking to people in customer service, who at first had no real answers for me, as well as listening to music while on hold. Their ticket still shows technician pending. Or maybe it doesn’t. And did you know that even when they give you a four-hour window for service (noon to 4:00 in my case) that they can come any time between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM? I wasn’t told this. Be warned.
Finally back on the line, the customer service rep tells me the technician who was supposed to come and do the installation had previous jobs that took longer than expected and that AT&T was not allowing any overtime. Thus, if a service person had torn your walls and system apart and it was the end of his/her shift, it’s bye bye until manana. At this point, the rep told me, since I was stiffed today, I will be first on the list tomorrow morning. Should I hold my breath?
Everyone is very sorry about this. But, as our old German housekeeper used to say: Sorry don’t mean a hill of beans. The only good thing to come out of this is AT&T is waiving any charges for the installation given the aggravation. But we’ll wait for the statement to see if that happens.
DAY 2: Yesterday, some of the villagers were getting restless. There was murmuring, muted cries, something about pitchforks and boiling oil. One departed and parked by a dumpster at an elementary school down the road, unsheathed her laptop, and camped onto an unprotected WiFi from some nearby house. Hours later, sated, she returned home for dinner.
The morning dawns with my not being able to access my email. Sure, you say, you’re not connected to the Internet. Ah, I reply, but I have my trusty iPhone available. After a not-so-pleasant phone call with DSL services, where I was told I would have no access until my new DSL line was up and registered, it somehow all cleared up and I could communicate again.
Around 9:00, a person from AT&T DSL calls me to say that there had been an error on my request (what I had been told yesterday), that it had been forward to the group that deals with such errors, and that they have not heard back from that group. So, while I might get my DSL back today, odds were it would be no sooner than tomorrow. Ah, same song, second verse. I ask for a supervisor to call me. Steve called back around 10:00 to tell me we’re on today’s schedule to be wired. Hey, I’m wired already!
About now, I wonder when/if the AT&T tech will come. I call “Telco.” I’m now adept in knowing what keys to press to get to someone who can tell me something. I am told that several jobs were not done yesterday due to the no overtime rule. A technician has my order and we are next. However, what he/she is doing is going to take a long time. They expect him/her here by about 1:15. Well, there goes another day. Need to cancel, reschedule, scream.
At 3:00, Keith from AT&T showed up … his last call of the day. He quickly did what was needed and used his laptop to login to change what needed to be changed on our DSL modem. So, we’re live again … as the posting of this rant attests.
“Thank you for choosing AT&T”
I spent some time on the phone with AT&T talking to a service representative that I needed DSL and didn’t want to be without it during this switch. She assured me that would not happen. So we scheduled a date to stop service on the line we were dropping, activate DSL on the other line, and a service call by a technician who would switch over the DSL modem’s jack line from the old number to the one we are retaining. All this happened over two weeks ago. You know where this is going, right?
It’s the day when the switchover is supposed to happen. The technician is scheduled to be here between noon and 4:00. About 2:00, Dave from AT&T Broadband Delivery calls. Seems like the order to change service to add DSL to our existing line choked in the system and got thrown out. Not sure why, says Dave, but it happened and it just came up with their office. And there is no way we can get this corrected until at least tomorrow. He has to manually feed all new information into the system to get things perking. I tell him this is exactly what I feared, and the number we wanted disconnected was, in fact, cut off last midnight, so we have zero DSL service and now would have none for two days. Dave commiserates with me and tells me they should never have scheduled the cut off of the old service until the night after the new service was activated. Gee, I had asked that when all this was scheduled and told it would be no problem for us.
Yes, I know in the scheme of things this isn’t a biggie. I mean it’s not whirled peas or health and human services. But it still rankles. Oh, and I’m still waiting to see if the technician shows up today. Dave says that was on a separate order and there will be no problem. Yeh, you betcha.
Well, it’s now 5:00 and no one has shown up. I spent the last 30 minutes talking to people in customer service, who at first had no real answers for me, as well as listening to music while on hold. Their ticket still shows technician pending. Or maybe it doesn’t. And did you know that even when they give you a four-hour window for service (noon to 4:00 in my case) that they can come any time between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM? I wasn’t told this. Be warned.
Finally back on the line, the customer service rep tells me the technician who was supposed to come and do the installation had previous jobs that took longer than expected and that AT&T was not allowing any overtime. Thus, if a service person had torn your walls and system apart and it was the end of his/her shift, it’s bye bye until manana. At this point, the rep told me, since I was stiffed today, I will be first on the list tomorrow morning. Should I hold my breath?
Everyone is very sorry about this. But, as our old German housekeeper used to say: Sorry don’t mean a hill of beans. The only good thing to come out of this is AT&T is waiving any charges for the installation given the aggravation. But we’ll wait for the statement to see if that happens.
DAY 2: Yesterday, some of the villagers were getting restless. There was murmuring, muted cries, something about pitchforks and boiling oil. One departed and parked by a dumpster at an elementary school down the road, unsheathed her laptop, and camped onto an unprotected WiFi from some nearby house. Hours later, sated, she returned home for dinner.
The morning dawns with my not being able to access my email. Sure, you say, you’re not connected to the Internet. Ah, I reply, but I have my trusty iPhone available. After a not-so-pleasant phone call with DSL services, where I was told I would have no access until my new DSL line was up and registered, it somehow all cleared up and I could communicate again.
Around 9:00, a person from AT&T DSL calls me to say that there had been an error on my request (what I had been told yesterday), that it had been forward to the group that deals with such errors, and that they have not heard back from that group. So, while I might get my DSL back today, odds were it would be no sooner than tomorrow. Ah, same song, second verse. I ask for a supervisor to call me. Steve called back around 10:00 to tell me we’re on today’s schedule to be wired. Hey, I’m wired already!
About now, I wonder when/if the AT&T tech will come. I call “Telco.” I’m now adept in knowing what keys to press to get to someone who can tell me something. I am told that several jobs were not done yesterday due to the no overtime rule. A technician has my order and we are next. However, what he/she is doing is going to take a long time. They expect him/her here by about 1:15. Well, there goes another day. Need to cancel, reschedule, scream.
At 3:00, Keith from AT&T showed up … his last call of the day. He quickly did what was needed and used his laptop to login to change what needed to be changed on our DSL modem. So, we’re live again … as the posting of this rant attests.
“Thank you for choosing AT&T”
posted by Bud Hirsch at 3:55 PM
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