So, my wife decides to bundle our various AT&T accounts together. We have Uverse for the internet, ATT Wireless for the cellphones and we still have a land line. Because our land line is in her name and the rest are in my name, we were only able to bundle two out of the three.
Thank the gods of telephony.
The problem began when Uverse said that it'd take a couple of months to issue a combined bill. Why? I dunno, but we were just coming off of four months of unemployment so a little breathing room was appreciated. In June, a bill arrives for the months of February through July.
What in the name of Alexander Graham Bell?
It seems that Uverse – which is now the lead division through which all combined bills are to be paid – charges ahead for services.
Fine.
So, I go down to the AT&T Wireless store and use their little automagic kiosk to make a payment – a few days early. The kiosk told me to pay $400 USD which I did. This morning, both the internet and the wireless go down.
Interestingly enough, I found out about this when I attempted to make a cell phone call and it routed me directly to Accounts Receivable (hereinafter known as AR).
Now, those who haven't had to deal with AT&T will be pleasantly surprised to know that most of their people are based in the US and will at least pretend to be polite. They are also generally helpful. I think I have discovered where those who fail out of ATT customer service training camp wind up.
I've dealt with unimaginative drones before. I've also dealt with people who are physically not allowed to go off the script. These clowns were worse. Not only was the first person I reached not willing to explain the situation beyond "you didn't pay all of it" but she was downright rude about it. Her supervisor was borderline unprofessional but at least said that yes, I had paid, but there was still $101 USD on the bill and that it doesn't matter what the machine said as she can't verify it so pay up. Mind you, I had the receipt in hand. It turns out, that Uverse can only manage the other accounts bundled with it, but they can't actually access those other accounts, nor do they actually communicate with those divisions. When I asked to speak to her supervisor, I was told that there wasn't one.
After 30 minutes of fruitless "discussion," I called up the wireless division, and in 15 minutes, I had wireless restored and had some very pleasant interaction with the people on that side. They were pretty appalled by the actions of the AR department.
What happened, apparently, is that if you don't enter the combined account number, you don't get the whole bill – even though it says so on the kiosk screen that it is for the combined bill. I'd only paid the wireless portion (ok, so why'd they turn that off?)
I wound up talking to someone at Uverse (not the AR department) and she was similarly surprised by the snafu and general attitude but she wasn't able to handle billing and I was transferred to the local AR department (apparently, they have multiple departments in different time zones). It looks like the bad attitude is shared across the AR department no matter where it is because I wound up talking to yet another drone who's basic message was "you should've known you did it wrong, now pay up." I think I've had far better experiences with Bongolesian tech support. Complaining about the lousy level of customer to that person's supervisor basically resulted in "yeah, so? Pay up."
Instead of dealing with these twinkies any longer, I headed out to the local payment centers they recommended.
Wrong answer.
It turns out that you have to know the extra digit beyond your account number in order to do that. After talking to Uverse customer service again, they couldn't find the number, but the agent credited me not only for some of my troubles, but he also credited me the $5 USD "convenience fee" that I was going to get hit with for paying over the phone. Surprisingly, the last person I talked to at Uverse AR was polite, helpful and friendly.
After I get done with my report to AT&T corporate, I think she may wind up running the department. I've been keeping a list of names involved.
Wyatt
