Hello all!
Today will likely be the end of my saga to try to get AT&T Local and DSL service in my house. You all might remember me asking a few people about it a few months back, and I tried to establish services back in the middle of January. Aside from about 6 days of DSL service to my house I have nothing to show for it besides a lot of stress and frustration. I had a final talk with a supervisor in DSL sales today, and they saw fit to keep some charges on my bill that I don't feel I deserve, so I am giving them the boot.
I won't go into all of the details with what has happened, but here is a somewhat short chronology for the interested:
- I ordered DSL and Local service on the same call to AT&T on January 15th
- SWBell had a lock on my line, so the local order #1 didn't go through. The DSL order did go through.
- Got the lock removed, but now AT&T couldn't hook up local service because it had DSL on the line
- Got the DSL removed so local could be hooked up; hence the 6 days of DSL.
- Local service order #2 got lost, placed another one.
- Local service orders #3 and #4 got cancelled. I later found out this was because I was still in the system as having DSL even though it had been disconnected for 3 weeks by that time.
- Waited an additional 2 weeks for my account to update to show that DSL was actually disconnected. (I was told that the timeframe for this update to go through is generally 30 days following the end of the billing cycle you have it disconnected in, so in my case this was something on the order of 40 days.)
- Placed Local service order #5
- SWBell had replaced the lock on my line, so local service order #5 didn't go through.
- Removed the new SWBell lock, placed local service order #6
- Local service was finally connected last week. This meant that thanks to their screw-ups, I had to pay 3 extra months of SWBell phone bills.
- I called to order my DSL and was told that I would now have to wait until April 12th for the hookup because my old DSL email account was still in the system. Once again, I would have to wait for the end of a billing cycle.
- I opened my March phone bill last night and there was a $395 charge on it for early DSL account termination even though AT&T told me to do it in the first place.
- I called and was told that AT&T would get rid of some of the charges, but I would have to send back the DSL router to get back more of it.
- I shipped back the router, and my April phone bill did not reflect any of the charges being reduced. I was additionally being charged for some long distance phone calls that should never have been itemized under my "unlimited calling" plan, and I was getting socked for all of the fractions of a month that I had tried to get local service connected over the past 3 months. Total bill was over $500.
That was the proverbial last straw. I was getting rid of SWBell in the first place because I hate their poor customer service, and I got rewarded with a lesson in how bad AT&T's service really is. After logging over 15 hours on the phone, and conversations with almost 50 different customer service reps over the past four months, they tagged me with a whopping $500 bill for their mistakes. If I actually WANTED to stay with them, they say I'll still have to wait another 3+ weeks to get DSL service. I have talked to them again today and they now say they are "only" going to charge me $75 for those fractions of a month when I was unsuccessfully trying to get local service. I'm a patient guy, I tried to play by their rules, and I'm still getting screwed. Based on this fiasco, I would not recommend anyone out there even think about using AT&T's DSL or Local phone service.
My opinion: if you are thinking of switching, don't. Deal with the crap service from SWBell or whomever, it's the lesser of two evils.
Tell your friends. I'm telling all of mine.
Thanks for the time!
- Freed
Today will likely be the end of my saga to try to get AT&T Local and DSL service in my house. You all might remember me asking a few people about it a few months back, and I tried to establish services back in the middle of January. Aside from about 6 days of DSL service to my house I have nothing to show for it besides a lot of stress and frustration. I had a final talk with a supervisor in DSL sales today, and they saw fit to keep some charges on my bill that I don't feel I deserve, so I am giving them the boot.
I won't go into all of the details with what has happened, but here is a somewhat short chronology for the interested:
- I ordered DSL and Local service on the same call to AT&T on January 15th
- SWBell had a lock on my line, so the local order #1 didn't go through. The DSL order did go through.
- Got the lock removed, but now AT&T couldn't hook up local service because it had DSL on the line
- Got the DSL removed so local could be hooked up; hence the 6 days of DSL.
- Local service order #2 got lost, placed another one.
- Local service orders #3 and #4 got cancelled. I later found out this was because I was still in the system as having DSL even though it had been disconnected for 3 weeks by that time.
- Waited an additional 2 weeks for my account to update to show that DSL was actually disconnected. (I was told that the timeframe for this update to go through is generally 30 days following the end of the billing cycle you have it disconnected in, so in my case this was something on the order of 40 days.)
- Placed Local service order #5
- SWBell had replaced the lock on my line, so local service order #5 didn't go through.
- Removed the new SWBell lock, placed local service order #6
- Local service was finally connected last week. This meant that thanks to their screw-ups, I had to pay 3 extra months of SWBell phone bills.
- I called to order my DSL and was told that I would now have to wait until April 12th for the hookup because my old DSL email account was still in the system. Once again, I would have to wait for the end of a billing cycle.
- I opened my March phone bill last night and there was a $395 charge on it for early DSL account termination even though AT&T told me to do it in the first place.
- I called and was told that AT&T would get rid of some of the charges, but I would have to send back the DSL router to get back more of it.
- I shipped back the router, and my April phone bill did not reflect any of the charges being reduced. I was additionally being charged for some long distance phone calls that should never have been itemized under my "unlimited calling" plan, and I was getting socked for all of the fractions of a month that I had tried to get local service connected over the past 3 months. Total bill was over $500.
That was the proverbial last straw. I was getting rid of SWBell in the first place because I hate their poor customer service, and I got rewarded with a lesson in how bad AT&T's service really is. After logging over 15 hours on the phone, and conversations with almost 50 different customer service reps over the past four months, they tagged me with a whopping $500 bill for their mistakes. If I actually WANTED to stay with them, they say I'll still have to wait another 3+ weeks to get DSL service. I have talked to them again today and they now say they are "only" going to charge me $75 for those fractions of a month when I was unsuccessfully trying to get local service. I'm a patient guy, I tried to play by their rules, and I'm still getting screwed. Based on this fiasco, I would not recommend anyone out there even think about using AT&T's DSL or Local phone service.
My opinion: if you are thinking of switching, don't. Deal with the crap service from SWBell or whomever, it's the lesser of two evils.
Tell your friends. I'm telling all of mine.
Thanks for the time!
- Freed
