AT&T: Employer of Aliens?

[Tomsguiderachel]

Help me figure out if AT&T's tech support is completely nuts, or means well but fails to communicate clearly.

AT&T: Employer of Aliens? : Read more

 

[Zorg]

Clearly she didn't understand your request and was trying to give you complete information, maybe a little too complete. What I would do is use your AT&T phone and call them. Sometimes you just need to reach out and touch someone. All jokes aside, you could have easily cleared up any misconceptions on the spot by having an interactive communication. Emails are fine for some things, but they will never be as efficient as the good old telephone call.

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

Agreed. For some people, though, waiting the 30 minutes on hold that his often required before you reach a human being is not an option during the work day. On the other hand--couldn't this tech support person have started out her email like this: "Unless one of the scenarios below apply to you, your transfer fee will be $18 per line."

 

[eddieroolz]

"The account balance will not transfer to the new account. The Transfer
of Service fee will be waived if the: ?Original account holder is
deceased"

I lol'ed.

 

[Guest]

Actually, I see the answer to your question. I also the 'dumas' add-on that she must put on every email so AT&T covers itself. Now, you can thank their attorneys for this crap so i suggest finding one and throwing him a couple of smacks. I'm sure you can use this blog post for an insanity plea.

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

Silly me. Ever heard the expression,"Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer"? Apparently the same does not hold true for, "Ask a simple question, get a simple answer."

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]"The account balance will not transfer to the new account. The Transferof Service fee will be waived if the: ?Original account holder isdeceased"I lol'ed.[/citation]
Me too!

 

[hellwig]

I think your question was too generic. You only wanted to know if you would incur fees for transferring, the short answer was a maybe. How you transfer opens up a whole can of worms.

30-minutes to talk to customer service? yikes, sounds like you need a better provider (oh, iPhone user, sorry).

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]I think your question was too generic. You only wanted to know if you would incur fees for transferring, the short answer was a maybe. How you transfer opens up a whole can of worms.30-minutes to talk to customer service? yikes, sounds like you need a better provider (oh, iPhone user, sorry).[/citation]
Ha ha ha. Yes, I do love my iPhone, so I am stuck with AT&T. But I put in 10 years with Sprint, and they are no better (in terms of customer support wait times).

 

[ravenware]

Paragraph 2 seemed like a sufficient answer.

This seems like something that was copied and pasted in from some library of responses.

Something a 5 minute phone call would have resolved.

 

[Guest]

It may sound odd to you people but as an ex CS operator -- WELL YES IT SOUNDS LIKE A VERY GOOD ANSWER!!!

maybe if the question was more specific the answer could be too...

 

[LionelHutz]

Rachel, I'm with you. I submit you have some proof that aliens are living among us. While they cannot speak our language, ATT is covering this obvious gap by teaching them how to cut-and-paste entire English paragraphs at their customers. This is coming from the same corporate culture that thought automated attendant is a good idea.

 

[Tomsguiderachel]

[citation][nom]Atherstone[/nom]It may sound odd to you people but as an ex CS operator -- WELL YES IT SOUNDS LIKE A VERY GOOD ANSWER!!!maybe if the question was more specific the answer could be too...[/citation]
For what sounds like 99.9% of all customers, the correct information was $18 per phone line. THAT is what they should have said up at the top, instead of making me dig for it. The response seems designed to befuddle.

 

[Guest]

The response sounded reasonable to me, albeit rather long. Of course, I've been dealt with so many CS reps in my lifetime that maybe I'm just used to it. As some have mentioned, the answer appears to be that you will need an account transfer with an $18/line fee.

I will agree with the others that suggested calling instead of using email. Email is one of the least productive means of obtaining CS-related information. I prefer online chat if it's available.

 

[RiotSniperX]

Wow, this was defenitly insane, can you imagine someone actually typing up all of that? I would thrash my head against the keyboard. I think they may have some special site for the tech support to copy and paste different stuff onto. But, honestly that was waaaay too much for a simple question, a "yes" or "no" would have sufficed for this simple question. Dang...

 

[Guest]

Hi Rachel,

Don't be surprise..I have the same situation like yours, but instead email them, I called...big mistake too!!!

I spent 15 minutes talking over the phone and explaining my concern to the person. Then at the last minute seem like my questions was being answered, the person suddenly asked me to wait for a second and when he came back, he told me he had to transfer me to another a/c department. Another 20 minutes answering to the new person questions and he mostly asked questions regards my other family members and me the reason for joining the lines, responsibility for using the same a/c. Then he started to explain the plan, rules, responsibility again, just like what you read in the replied. At this point, me and my family members had no ideal what he is doing and it starts to confuse us with those plan, jargon, and "switching to this and that will cause...". I can understand deep space sciences theory, but can't with ATT or any phone company email or reply...why make it so hard?

 

[michaelahess]

RiotSniperX, it's called boiler plates.

I think the answer was perfectly tailored for the inquiry. Sure it took a bit to get to the info you needed, but like previously mentioned, your question was rather vague. She simply provided all the details that could pertain to your question.

So as not to mislead you, a simple "it's 18 bucks per line" would not suffice as her interpretation of your question is not relevant. You could become an (even more) aggravated customer if what you wanted done would actually incur higher charges than she may have responded with.

Granted this reeks of CYA, but service providers these days unfortunately need to do this. Take Verizon for example, all the stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid people that ran up their data costs because of the $1.99 a MB billing they implemented caused such a mess that I'm now stuck with a $30 data plan on my Omnia; that I never use as it has WiFi. While my work cell, an i760 doesn't need the data plan because you couldn't get data on it unless you EXPRESSLY put that option on your plan.

If they don't cover themselves, they open the flood gates to stupid people, or people who simply don't pay attention, read contracts and rules, obey said contracts and rules, etc.

Sorry that was so long but I had to vent about Verizon after talking to about 5 of their managers.....simple data block, that's all they need to add.....

 

[andy_newton]

The reason and the only main reason why we jailbreak our iPhones is AT&T, not Apple, not App store, not the price, not the fees, and not anything else.

 

[Blessedman]

I just went through this mess and I can tell you AT&T has NOOOOO idea how to transfer service. It took me 30 minutes on the phone to convince these people that my father had passed away and that he was the only person that knew the account password. A supervisor gets on the phone and finally tells me that I need to go into an AT&T store. An hour drive later the people at the store are lost as to why I would have to come in. They get on the phone with their support and one HOUR! later we finally started the process of transferring service to my name (Which took about 30minutes total time). We had a super old plan that we just kept renewing, he paid 9.99$ a month (with no other phones attached) and .07$ a minute. They tell me they can't transfer the service with this plan because the plan no longer exist. So I asked them if this was a breach of contract (as I signed the contract with the intent of paying 9.99$ a month) she tells me know and I asked her could she verify that, she says yes and without any pause "it is not a breach of contract". So what choice did I have but agree to a new plan, but not a new contract... THANK GOD MY CONTACT IS UP IN 1 MONTH!!!!! Bellsouth and Cingular were amazing companies that would do just about anything to help their customers. I used to have DSL, Phone, Television and cell with Bellsouth/Cingular. I now have nothing to do with AT&T except my cell and not for long!

 

[my_name_is_earl]

You asked 2 simple question... They gave u a college essay to analyze. Oh man, it's back to school all over again. Or like me, I just go to an AT&T store and say "Can you explain this as humanly as possible?"