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AT&T — Is anyone else enjoying all these phone calls?
Is it just me??
We have for weeks now been getting phone calls from AT&T. Every day.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Without fail. Today, actually, we got two.
We are an AT&T customer. They have our phone lines going in and out of the building, and we also have AT&T internet service as a backup (in case the “real” high-speed service were to get dicey), and we have an AT&T Mobile hotspot that we use for laptops in the field, etc. So, they pretty much have everything, except our mobile phones.
The daily call we get is to tell us that we need to change our phone plan and make some additional arrangements as our area is migrating service from copper to fiber optic, and that requires some plan changing and arrangement/agreement on our end.
The thing is, WE’VE ALREADY DONE THIS.
I thought that these calls were first coming from some third party or reseller, since they have the distinct bad sound of some boiler-room phone bank (either that, or they are making calls from the lobby of the bus station at peak hours). But our calls directly to AT&T confirm that the calls are indeed coming from either them or AT&T contractees, but not third-party re-sellers or anything like that.
So, every day we have the same conversation and the same reply, much like “Yes, we understand, we’ve already done that, just like we told the person yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.”
Unfortunately for her, in a rare moment I answered the phone here myself a few minutes ago and unloaded on the poor gal. And when I asked if there was any way to put us on the “We’ve taken care of this” list and take us off the “Bother the crap out of these people every day” list, she said they’d be glad to do that… and it would take six months. SIX MONTHS??
How do these people run a Fortune 100 business?
Or is it just me? WTF???
I don’t expect any answers here… just ranting and you all are lucky enough to be the outlet.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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7 Replies
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The end of Net Neutrality can only help this….. 😛
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Email: Mr Randall L. Stephenson CEO – randall.stephenson@att.com
(Source: https://www.ceoemail.com/us-companies.php)
Let him know the cost to your business of having them interrupting you on a daily basis and whether they would like to make a financial contribution to cover your time?
That should do the trick 🙂
All the Best
Mads@madsvid, London, UK
Check out my other hangouts:
Twitter: @madsvid
https://mads-thinkingoutloud.blogspot.co.uk -
Unfortunately, ditto. However our calls just come weekly to bi-weekly from Verizon. Perhaps because our region may be larger than yours the people here have more businesses to pester.
We demanded fiber a couple of years ago when they finally admitted that my claims of excessive noise and hum on the line happened every time it rained were accurate and there were no more clean copper “pairs” available in our neighborhood.
And it’s not just phone companies. It’s freakin’ amazing to me that so many big companies can’t take the simple act of closing the loop on their outbound telemarketing so they’re not calling the same people over and over again. It’s costing THEM more money to be so stupid.
And don’t get me started on the so called Google calls. They’re not even Google, just some companies pitching their SEO services. These calls seem to come at least 3 times a week.
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Google Ad Word companies call most days with a close second to voice over artists. Polite responses are a variable.
Bob Gifford
Gifford Productions -
Registering on the Do Not Call List is useless. The worst telemarketers simply hide their numbers and refuse to identify themselves, in case you want to sue them. And I think that many org’s are exempt, including businesses with whom you do business.
It puzzles me why any company that makes money from telephony would make us avoid telephones.
Bob C
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Lets face it. We are no longer the customers. We’re the product. All any modern company is really concerned about is customer acquisition. Period.
I wrote elsewhere on my experience accidentally signing up for Adobe’s 9.95 Photoshop Lightroom bundle TWICE due to a maintenance shut down on their end during my first attempt. So I had two accounts and a double monthly hit to my bank account.
So all I wanted to do was drop ONE of the subscriptions.
Took me LITERALLY one hour and 17 minutes on the phone – 80% of that time listening to music on hold to get that simple thing accomplished.
BTW, on a related topic, I was talking to my bank branch manager about the modern practice of encouraging customers to auto pay regular bills via ACH withdrawals and she indicated that she advises customers to avoid the practice like the plague. It seems that the contractual terms of these pretty much destroy the traditional customer vendor relationship and instead, make each party an equal partner – which means the customers can’t even technically do something as simple as cancel payment to stop the service unless the other party AGREES. How weird is that?
I now think of these as “fishhook agreements” – easy to get into – but darn hard to stop.
Just a word to the wise. YMMV.
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[Bill Davis] “I now think of these as “fishhook agreements” – easy to get into – but darn hard to stop. “
Very true. I use direct withdrawals for credit cards, but not for Comcast. When my mother-in-law tried to end her Comcast service, they were very happy to cut the service immediately, but it took months to stop the withdrawals.
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