I am, not by choice, a subject of the AT&T telecommunications monopoly.
For background: I live in a very rural area. I cannot get a usable mobile phone signal inside my home with any provider (However, with Verizon, if I stand in my driveway and hold my arm and ankle just right, I can usually make a call. That wasn't the case with AT&T. You lose, AT&T.). I cannot get DSL/Uverse. I cannot get cable internet.
For years I used an ISDN line to access the internet. For all you young'uns, ISDN is sort of like DSL-Lite. It's a digital line, like DSL, but lower speed and it doesn't inherently, by itself, provide any actual internet access (despite its high cost). It's just a special type of digital phone line. You can hook up a special ISDN router to it and use it as one or two phone lines, or connect to a dial up internet service that supports ISDN and bond both the lines for data speeds up to 128 kilobits/sec. Not fast. It operates at longer ranges than DSL, however, which is why it is available to me while DSL is not.
The thing is, ISDN technology was snazzy and high-tech back in the late 80s. It's a specialized service and the phone companies that have served me over the years -- Ohio Bell, Ameritech, SBC, AT&T, each swallowing the other like bigger fish swallowing smaller fish -- each had a specialized department to deal with it. The regular support department is absolutely flummoxed anytime they are forced to deal with anything relating to ISDN.
But, remember how I said ISDN was snazzy and high-tech back in the 80s? The ISDN teams aren't exactly centers of bustling activity. They're more like sleepy back offices in the sub-basement of the annex of the Des Moines extension office, or something. I suspect they assign people there who are guilty of especially heinous crimes against the AT&T corporate heirarchy. The standard customer service reps have a hard time even finding the ISDN team. It's entirely possible that I'm the last residential ISDN customer in the nation.
The dialup ISPs that still support ISDN customers view us like a particularly scabrous, contagious form of leper, because we use far more resources than a typical dial-up internet customer (a vanishing breed themselves). A dual-channel ISDN connection takes up two ports on a dialup remote access server (RAS). Dialup internet companies usually assume one dialup port will service about 10 customers. Me, I tie up two ports almost all day, every day. They hate me. My newly-former ISP showed it by starting to ruthlessly bandwidth-limit me, while refusing to admit they were doing so. When I investigated alternatives, the cost for the kind of access-time I wanted was hundreds of dollars per month. ISPs really don't want to deal with ISDN anymore, unless they're paid a ridiculous premium.
Thus, reluctantly, I recently switched to satellite internet. Satellite internet has decent bandwidth, but very poor latency. Shooting your packet 150 miles into orbit and back down again, and then another round for the return packet, does terrible things to your latency. It means anything you do takes a couple seconds to get a response back. This is very bad for highly-interactive applications, which I have to use extensively in my work. But I make do.
Back to AT&T. They've tried to sell me DSL or Uverse repeatedly. It got to be a joke, eventually. A sales rep calls me up "We have Uverse in your area! Would you like to try it?" I politely (and by politely, I actually mean in a tone of ridicule, with a side helping of sarcasm), explain, "No. You really don't. You think you do, but the left side of your company doesn't know what the right side is doing."
Sometimes they investigate and discover I'm right. Sometimes their investigation skills suck and they inform me that, no they really do have it available for me now! Awesome, I say! Bring it on!
A day later, like clockwork, they call me to inform me that there are "technical issues" with my order and they are working to resolve them as quickly as possible. A day or two after that, they call to cancel the order.
What they were doing last year was shipping the DSL modem as soon as they placed the order, regardless of the fact that they couldn't actually provide me the service. Once or twice they shipped it without return address stickers. Anyway, according to them, it became my problem to ship the modems back to them, after they failed to honor their commitment to me.
More than once, they failed to be able to find the modems I had shipped back to me and started sending me past due notices, on one occasions turning me over to a collection agency for the cost of a modem I didn't even have anymore.
I don't know if any of you are like me, but when a company actively solicits your business, then fails to be able to deliver on the business it talked you into signing up for, and ships you equipment that's useless to you -- that it should have known you wouldn't be able to use, then puts the burden on you to return the equipment, then sics a collection agent on you ... wow. My anger burned like the fires of hell. I couldn't be civil on the phone to any AT&T employee for more than about 10 seconds, no less the collection agent. There are probably special notations in my account file at AT&T: "Huge, flaming, foul-mouthed douche." Those notations are correct.
It was kind of like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football. Except, after the first couple times, I stopped believing them and just let them sign me up to screw with them. Sort of like if Charlie Brown started punting Lucy instead.
That kind of sets the tone for my relationship with AT&T. The company that can't even provide me with basic 768 kilobit/sec DSL service that people in the cities would turn up their nose at. They've left me in a data communications wasteland. I'd be thrilled if I could get crappy DSL service that was outdated back in 2000. Instead I'm stuck with 80s technology or the incredible suck of satellite internet.
Sucking satellite it is (expensive sucking, I might add).
So I try to disconnect my ISDN line (because it's effing expensive) and get the number assigned to a standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line, because that number has been my work number for more than a dozen years. It's on all my business cards and a prime contact with me for all kinds of customers and associates.
That's a bridge too far for AT&T customer service. I filed the first orders for disconnect and transfer of the number back on June 25. The weekend everything was supposed to be done, we had the massive storm-related and telephone and power outages and I was without power or phone for three days, so I decided to give them a few days grace before harassing them. A week goes by. No phone service. I call and try to get it resolved. I'm getting nowhere, shuffled around, but after about a half hour on hold, I have to be somewhere, so I have to simply hang up. I'm flying out of town on business the next day, so I have to let it go for another week.
I get back from my business trip. Still no phone service. No attempt from AT&T to contact me to explain to me why they aren't doing their job.
I've spent several hours on hold over the past two days. Going from person to person. First, nobody in regular customer service knows how to file an ISDN disconnect correctly. Nobody even seems to know that they needed to connect me with the ISDN center (my contact number for the ISDN center, 1-800-TEAMDATA, has been non-functional for years -- I had no way of contacting them on my own). Finally, late on the first day, they get me the number of the ISDN center and a rep. there seems to know how to do a disconnect (insert chorus of angels singing Handel's Messiah).
He then says I need to talk to customer service and make a brand new order for the new POTS service -- the old one can't be corrected. I contact customer service. This is apparently a gargantuan task, which for unknown reasons requires a credit check (Seriously? After 25 years as your customer for multiple lines?). After an hour on hold, they tell me they're having "problems with my order" (Some variation on "problems with your order" is by far the most common phrase I hear from AT&T reps.) and they'll call me back.
I just got off the phone a few minutes ago. An actual human tech is actually coming to my house! As we speak! He really doesn't know the area at all and is struggling with the directions (weird, because we have local telephone linemen), and I fully expect that when he arrives his visit will be a comedy of errors. "Um, what was I supposed to do?" "That hasn't been provisioned back at the main office, there's nothing I can do!" "AT&T will charge you $1,000 for my services!" or other such absurdities. Quick, efficient, sensible service is not something I expect from AT&T.
Once this whole ordeal is over, what am I, as a consumer to do? Normally, when a business is this egregiously, consistently incompetent, you stop doing business with them, the old "vote with your wallet" routine -- that's why I switched my mobile phone from AT&T to Verizon after my contract was up this past winter: almost entirely due to spite and anger at AT&T over the other ways they've failed me. If I had a mechanic who screwed up this bad "Dude! You took two weeks to change my muffler, you're charging me for head gaskets you didn't install and you sicced a collection agency on me for the price of the head gaskets I didn't need and you never installed!" I'd never do business with him again.
I don't have that option with AT&T. I can't exactly go to "the other landline telephone company." There isn't any. And I need a landline still, because I can't make or receive mobile calls in the house. AT&T refuses to take any responsibility for its serial failings beyond having hapless, powerless drones tell me how sorry they are. How about you pony up your remorse in cold, hard cash, AT&T?
Like that's going to happen. Seriously, the day I can get reliable mobile service in the house, I'll tell AT&T to take their landlines and shove them. I'll deal with the inconvenience to my business contacts -- they generally have my mobile number, too, anyway. I would love to be done with AT&T completely. What a friggin' joke of a company. Actually, they're a joke on their good days. On their bad days, they're arrogant bullies.
From what I understand, once they can offer me DSL, I can actually get some other company to provide and administer it, over their lines, and screw them out of that too. Which I'd do. In a heartbeat. Or some cable company could extend their digital cable out that far. Not likely, but I can hope. Either way, it's adios, AT&T, when that happens.
Update: *Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!* It's "That hasn't been provisioned back at the main office, there's nothing I can do!" for the WIN! To be fair, it that was only a partial response. He was able to do all the physical wiring, but, no, the line still hasn't been provisioned back at the data center and it was "too late" to have them do it today. (I thought they ran a 24/7 operation. Who knew?). I'm supposed to have phone service tomorrow. Then again, I was supposed to have phone service more than two weeks ago.
In other slight annoyances, my farm yard driveway has an 18-foot double gate that always remains shut and latched. He left and left it standing open without telling me. Asshole. It's a farm. See the horses there? The cattle? The goats? There was no livestock in the yard at the moment, true, nor even the dogs. I purposely kept the dogs inside because they get fat if they gorge on telephone repairmen. But that doesn't mean there can't be or won't be. The farmyard is kind of like an "air lock" area that serves as a gateway or access point to different pastures -- if I'd let the goats or cattle through without noticing the front gate was open and they dashed off that way, it could be a pain to herd them back (especially the goats, they're too smart to herd easily), and also, the dogs are usually allowed to freely run in the yard. If I hadn't checked before letting the dogs out, I could have ended up with one dead on the highway -- I have a couple that aren't very savvy that way. Thanks for the complete lack of consideration, jerk. It would have taken you 30 seconds to get out of your truck and fasten the gate behind you.
Update 2: I have to give the tech credit, my phone was up and running the next day as he said. That is probably due to him being a tech who's used to actually doing things and working for a living, instead of a phone drone. He still shoulda shut my gate.
I got an automated phone call that week from AT&T asking to participate in a survey to rate my experience. Unfortunately, the survey is entirely predicated on the idea that any problem you might have must be the fault of the individual customer service rep, not the company, structurally. The only way to get a response is to ruthlessly downrate the individual, even if they did a good job (I did this on one of my previous evaluations and actually got a call). Even then, on the call, they're not equipped to do anything but take complaints against the individual. AT&T as an entity refuses all guilt. You leave the conversation feeling confident that your complaints against how AT&T is structured and how they give such short shrift to rural customers on offered servicess will be filed away and never looked at again. This time, I didn't feel like going to the bother, so I just straight 5'd the survey questions (on a scale of 1-9, one being the worst), and left an abbreviated voice commentary excoriating the company as a whole.
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