AT&T Hell

You know that thing that Elton John said about shutting down the Internet for five years? I was not connected for 8 hours and lemme tell you. It was hell.

No, I wasn’t trying to nurture my creativity.

Our T1 at work was disconnected.

It was just gone. Poof. No Internet.

It all started at around 8:30 yesterday. We called AT&T tech support and were connected to India to some tech support person 1) we can barely understand due to the heavy heavy heavy accent 2) had to put us on hold for 30 minutes each time we asked a question. Can you dispatch a tech?

Where’s our account manager, you ask? We contacted him, except he was no help at all. The guy didn’t even know any of our information. I’ve been an account manager before and my accounts were my babies. You can’t treat them any less. They’re my bread and butter. So I don’t think I was wrong to expect any less from an account manager with a big name like AT&T. Our so-called account manager didn’t even know our address. Doesn’t AT&T have a CRM tool? If not, hey, CRM sales folks. Here’s a lead for you. AT&T account managers do not know who their customers are. Call ‘em. Please. They need your solution.

So. On the phone with our account manager. Who didn’t know our address. Or the contact name for our account. Or the type of account we had. Nor does he know how to ask for all this information in one phone call. It took half an hour to tell this guy our name and address and the type of account we had and what was the problem again?

To say that he was useless would be an understatement.

So while we were on the phone with our Account Manager we had another person calling India every half hour: “so when are you going to dispatch someone?” And with each person, we had to tell the same story. Over. And over. And over.

12:00 came. Then 1pm. Then 2pm. Same story. “Who are you and why are you calling us?”

We finally called our own techs to figure out the problem. Looks like our jack was accidentally disconnected. And it looks like a tech was there installing new service and accidentally unplugged it and put another tenant’s thing on our slot.

Yeah. It was that simple. And stupid. So stupid you just don’t expect some so-called certified tech with a big name like AT&T would be so stupid to make.

A tech was finally dispatched at 9pm. To replace the jack.

For a recruiting firm that relies on the internet to receive requisitions, send out resumes, receive resumes from candidates. coordinate interviews and hires with our clients and since yesterday was payroll, how do you put a monetary value to what that stupid mistake cost us?

So this morning I’m trying to find out who to complain to. Obviously not our account manager, so I call one of my contacts at AT&T to see who that person might be.

Not sure how he could’ve helped the situation, but everytime I see or talk to this person they’re going through a reorg. I mentioned that we are thinking about claiming some damages from what happened yesterday and he just laughed it off, saying “yeah, well, do you know how many customers tell us that every single day?”

No, I don’t.

But at that moment I understood why the company he works for is in a constant state of reorg.