AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
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AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#2honestly, this is the BEST TC post I have read in a long while. Extremely well written / crafted and contains serious, sensible points.
I’m so pissed off that I kind of want to call AT&T and demand that they call each of the people I missed calls from and personally apologize. Instead, I’m writing them this very public condemnation.
I would do the former. I really would. Here in the UK phone companies have such a monopoly amongst themselves.
As a consumer I feel regularly screwed. At the moment I am stuck with a shit 18 month old phone because it is out of warranty and upgrading to a newer model (despite being a 10 yr long customer of my current company!) is too expensive outside of the limited free upgrade time.
I sympathize heavily. No one hacks together a phone startup because it is such a closed business. Look how much awesome stuff developed when starting up on the web becomes easy - I hope mobile networks go the same way.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#3I loathe AT&T. It mistreats employees and customers. It overcharges and delivers astonishingly poor service. It makes regular billing "mistakes". It willingly, almost gleefully, assists in the violation of its customers rights and privacy. It is a paragon of inefficiency. It fights against progress to keep its anachronistic business model relevant. It uses the legal system as a club. And it ensures that any actions brought against it can at best be Pyrrhic victories.
In short, it is truly every bad thing Microsoft has ever been alleged to be and worse. I don't own an iPhone solely because I want less to do with AT&T than I do now.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#4Wow, I just checked the voicemail on my iPhone and I had 12 (!) voicemails queued up with no indications that I had waiting messages.
AT&T service has been horrible since I got my iPhone (~ 1 year). I kept a blackberry on Verizon, which is my primary "phone" (the iPhone has been more for email/web). However, I have a VoIP # as my primary phone that rings my desk, vzw phone and att phone all at once. Apparently a good number of calls ended up in my att mailbox, with no indications.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#5honestly, this is the BEST TC post I have read in a long while. Extremely well written / crafted and contains serious, sensible points. I’m so pissed off that I kind of want to call AT&T and demand that they call each of the people I missed calls from and personally apologize. Instead, I’m writing them this very public condemnation. I would do the former. I really would. Here in the UK phone companies have such a mon…
What do you mean by "Here in the UK phone companies have such a monopoly amongst themselves."?
There's a choice between voda, orange, t, o2 and others and it doesn't seem so bad. Of course O2 seems to have the same problems like at&t - not good enough infrastructure and not enough coverage to handle iphones properly (and now they will get Pre as well, unfortunately). And there are crappy carriers like Three which should DIAF long ago. But otherwise, many offers are sensible.
You're forced to go the 18 months contract route mostly when you're buying the cheapest stuff, which is fair enough. Otherwise, I don't think the situation is bad at all.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#6I "cancelled" my AT&T account a few months ago. Somehow the account is still open, but accumulating monthly negative charges (credit.) No script from their customer support can resolve this issue. Technical glitches can be fascinating and this company has no shortage in my experiences with them.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#7I loathe AT&T. It mistreats employees and customers. It overcharges and delivers astonishingly poor service. It makes regular billing "mistakes". It willingly, almost gleefully, assists in the violation of its customers rights and privacy. It is a paragon of inefficiency. It fights against progress to keep its anachronistic business model relevant. It uses the legal system as a club. And it ensures that any actions b…
This is also the company whose sales reps swear up and down, to this day, that they don't offer dry loop DSL "because there is no demand".
Of course, if you know the magic phone number, you can call the dry loop division directly, and they are as helpful as can be. I asked one once why they were so hidden... she answered: politics.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#8How about one of us create a landing page with a bullet lists of AT&T complaints? I don't care enough but we could all link to the page at the bottom of our websites just with the word ATT[1] and soon enough when people search for AT&T's corporate page, they will find a list of complaints. People will take note and thus AT&T will be forced to take note as well. On top of that:
- Update your twitter with your AT&T complaint
and give it the hashtag #ATT.
- Contact The Consumerist Blog, try to
get their awareness (is anyone connected to them?).
- Any other ideas?
Stop complaining and start acting.
I already did my part, I'm no longer an ATT customer.
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[1] Based on http://www.google.com/trends?q=AT%26T%2C+AT+and+T%2C+ATT
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#9What I get out of this is that it's best to avoid doing business with Apple's customers. (Nobody has ever filed a class-action lawsuit against Dell for using 6-bit LCDs instead of 8-bit LCDs.)
They are much more demanding than the average customer -- Apple makes AT&T provide special exclusive features, and then their customers hold them to higher standards. "There isn't enough bandwidth." "Torrents download too slowly!" "Everything is too expensive."
Not to sound like an AT&T fanboi, but the other providers are just as bad. The pricing is the same, you get locked in, and the bandwidth isn't even as good. (At least AT&T lets me use any GSM phone. Try that with Verizon.) The US just doesn't have the infrastructure to provide exceptional cell-phone service (like, say, Japan does; with millions of people in a very tiny space). With people constantly demanding more bandwidth for less money, I can't imagine there is much room in the budget to upgrade the 3G network in the middle of nowhere. Sorry, it's the reality of living so spread apart.
Re: AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure
#10I loathe AT&T. It mistreats employees and customers. It overcharges and delivers astonishingly poor service. It makes regular billing "mistakes". It willingly, almost gleefully, assists in the violation of its customers rights and privacy. It is a paragon of inefficiency. It fights against progress to keep its anachronistic business model relevant. It uses the legal system as a club. And it ensures that any actions b…
Most of what you're saying also applies to the other carriers in the US.
Verizon has a history of crippling its phones. Sprint has horrible customer service. T-Mobile has very little coverage. There are no good carriers.