just wanted to share my awful experience in the last 3 weeks of trying to switch my high speed internet service from Comcast to AT&T. My account of this whole experience is not 100% accurate because I've made so many calls to AT&T that I can't remember how many times I called and exactly what was said in every call. I also won't elaborate on the long hold times, countless transfers, numerous dead end transfers and all the misinformation that I also experienced. Sorry if this is too long to read.
Some time end of August: I saw a good deal on AT&T for DSL and decided to switch from Comcast. I set up the service for September 9th (might have been the 8th, I can't remember) because that's the last day of my Comcast service. Then, I called Comcast to see if I can get my current month pro-rated if I cancel early. They said it was fine, so I call AT&T to reschedule my activation date as soon as possible, which would be on September 3rd. In hindsight, that was a HUGE mistake.
September 3rd: I called AT&T to make sure activation was going to be on schedule. They said I should be able to go online by 8pm. When 8pm came along.....no internet!! I called technical support and they told me that it hasn't been activated yet and I needed to talk to a different department about it. I called the number that he/she gave me only to discover that this department only works from Mondays to Fridays. I spent the whole Labor Day weekend without internet access. Yay!
September 7th: I called AT&T and they told me that after I rescheduled the activation date, somehow I had two accounts and therefore, they couldn't activate my service due to the conflict of information. The rep told me that he/she would fix the problem and gave me a new account number (my third one) and said that my activation was still scheduled on Sept 9th. Between this date and Sept 9th, I called AT&T several more times to confirm my activation on Sept 9th. They kept telling me that everything was fine.
September 9th: No internet by 8pm!! I called AT&T tech support again. They told me that my account was already active and should be working. They diagnosed the problem to my third party DSL modem which I bought online, saying that they don't support that model and I needed to reconfigure it to receive their signal. The rep then transferred me to another department where another rep tried REALLY HARD to sell me a technical support service for $15 a month so that I wouldn't face so much trouble the next time I needed help. I had to decline MANY TIMES. She then offered to guide me on the phone to configure my modem to work with AT&T for a one-time fee of "ONE TWENTY NINE". I asked why I should be paying $15 a month when I can get this done for a one time fee of $1.29? She then corrects me that it wasn't $1.29.....but $129!!! I was furious and declined and asked for an alternative. She then told me that I could try to configure it myself. Before I hung up, she "spoke to her manager" and managed to get the one time tech support fee cut down all the way to $50! What a deal!! Too bad I declined it yet again. I stayed up until about 3am in the morning and leeched off my neighbor's unsecure Wi-Fi (sorry!) to find instructions to configure my third party modem. Sadly, I couldn't figure it out. Before I gave up, I tried to do an online chat with AT&T tech support. Long story short.....I found out that I still wasn't getting a signal from AT&T. The nerve!!! How dare they try to "help me" configure my modem for $129 when they still haven't activated my service? It wouldn't have worked anyway!
September 10th: I called AT&T and found out that all three of my accounts still exist!!! That was causing the pending status for my activation. This time I made sure all the accounts were canceled except for one....which would be activated on Sept 14th. Between this date and Sept 14th, I again called AT&T many times to make sure my activation was going to happen.
September 14th: I received an automated phone call from AT&T telling me to go to their website to get instructions on how to register my account once it's activated. I looked up the website and downloaded the manual. Within the manual were instructions on how to configure third party modems.....FOR FREE!!! I got home again that day and.... surprise surprise....no internet access!!
September 15th: I called AT&T again and this time was told that there may be wiring issues that's causing the problem and they would send a technician out on Friday to take a look at the problem and activate my account. Why wasn't I told of this problem the other hundred times I called AT&T?
September 17th: The technician didn't show up and I still didn't have internet access by 8pm. I decided to cancel AT&T even though it would mean that I have to go back to Comcast.
September 20th: I called AT&T several times and was told different things every time. Some would say my status is still pending while others say it's active. When I questioned them about their inconsistency, the rep did more research and told me that my account was still pending and there was no order in the system to have a technician come over last Friday. Awesome! I told him I wanted to cancel my order. He told me to let them send a technician over on Tuesday to fix the problem before considering to cancel. Fine. This time he gave me a case number for the technician visit.
September 21st: A technician did show up today and I assume he fixed some wiring outside the house. When he was done, I spend about 5 minutes configuring the modem WITH FREE INSTRUCTIONS. When I was done, I could go online...just like that! By my calculations, their tech would have cost me up to about $1,550/hour if they charged by the hour!!
When I wanted to switch from Comcast to AT&T, I thought I could take my business away
from a horrible company to a better place. Little did I know that I was jumping out of a lion's mouth into the jaws of a crocodile. Thank you, AT&T for a great start to our new business relationship!
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