Gibbs is trying to get back on the ‘Net after moving house … AT&T isn’t making it easy
I started off this week’s Gearhead column lamenting my descent into communications hell, i.e. moving house and asking AT&T to move my DSL service and losing fast Internet access for more than a week.
If you read that column you’ll know I found an interesting solution in the form of using a Motorola Droid cell phone on the Verizon network to submit my column. Then I found a really cool application that allowed me to use the Droid as a gateway … I’ll be discussing this in next week’s Gearhead.
Anyway, in Gearhead I was pondering why AT&T couldn’t be more specific about when it would turn up to install my service. The best it could do was give me a 12 hour service window — from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It turns out that this service window was even more bizarre because no one ever showed up.
To explain what I was expecting we have to wind back time to just over a week ago: I called AT&T and told the customer service representative that I was moving and that I’d like an Internet connection at my new house. I thought I made it clear I wanted just the DSL service, but apparently not. In fact, it appears that the CSR I spoke to assumed, for whatever reason, that I only wanted my telephone service moved.
Of course, I didn’t find that out until the promised day for the service to be turned on. At 9:30 a.m. an AT&T van ambled past my house and when nothing had happened by 2 p.m. I decided to check in with customer service.
This was when I discovered things were not as I had hoped. It turned out that the CSR I had originally spoken to hadn’t told me that a) the phone service would be moved first, and then, b) three days later, the DSL service would be moved. He also didn’t tell me that no one would actually come out for either phase and also failed to tell me that if the phone service didn’t work and I didn’t inform them then the DSL service wouldn’t be enabled.
Of course, finding out this vital information wasn’t anything like straightforward. Oh no, I had to hang on hold listening to crap music, speak to a CSR in India, wait while he “researched” my account, determined that he knew less than nothing, demanded a supervisor, endured more music on hold, got the supervisor, waited while he also “researched” my account (or read “War and Peace”, it took about that long), got transferred to another department, listened to yet more execrable Muzak, got yet another CSR who “researched” my account while I listened to what sounded like Tom Jones with a serious head cold singing from the bottom of a well, and finally learned that if I was lucky, the stars would align, and I’d get DSL the next day. This took something in excess of one hour.
You will have noticed one prominent feature of all of my interactions with AT&T: Everyone I spoke to had to “research” my account. This boggles the mind. How on earth can their service records be so difficult to access that they can’t easily determine where in the process of doing something they are, what’s to be done, and when it is likely to be done?
What I found particularly annoying was that I was told to plug in my DSL modem and that when the indicator light went green I’d have service. Not so: I plugged in my DSL modem today and immediately got a green light but then I got an on-screen error message instructing me to call customer service. Of course, it gave me the wrong number to call and after speaking first to Mumbai then to two different groups, I found out that my service really would not start until the next day and the fact that the DSL link is up is irrelevant.
So, once again, it is demonstrated that competition in the Internet service market is non-existent because if there was any kind of competition then AT&T’s customer service would actually provide service.
Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me; I may, possibly, be back online tomorrow. Or not. Who knows? I don’t and neither, apparently, does AT&T.
Gibbs tries to think positively in Ventura, Calif. Your doubts to backspin@gibbs.com.
