Prepoceros

1. Purchase AT&T U-verse internet service for your new apartment.
2. Two weeks later, watch your puppy befriend the install technicians and try to steal all their stuff for his personal chewing purposes.
3. Wait for your internet to go out. In my case, this step took about a week, but YMMV.
4. Call your boyfriend/24-hour tech support. Establish that the problem is not your cranky computer, but your broadband connection.
5. Look through the brochures the techs left you for the U-verse tech support number. Find only the general AT&T customer service number.
6. Call the main number with some trepidation, remembering your previous experiences with incompetent/confused reps.
7. Wait on hold for six minutes, only to have the rep agree with you that she has nothing to do with U-verse and needs to transfer you. Wonder why they don’t print that number on the damn U-verse brochures.
8. Spend twenty minutes, most of it on hold, talking to a first-tier tech support lady, before she transfers you to advanced tech support.
9. Get a nice guy named Josh on the line, who immediately tells you that he’s figured out the problem, but it’s a doozy: your account has been cancelled, for no apparent reason. Give him five minutes, he says.
10. Okay, this is taking a little longer than he thought. He’ll be back in ten minutes. Thank goodness there’s no hold music with advanced tech support—only glorious silence. Set your phone to speaker and leave it on the table as you start getting out some homework to do.
11. Well, it’s worse than it looked. Somehow your entire internet order has been removed from their system, and he’ll have to go in and recreate everything. Ask if he can call you back. He can’t; there are 32 people waiting on hold for him, and if he hangs up with you, his phone will immediately pick up the next line. Feel sympathy for Josh.
12. Don’t pick up a call from John, for fear of accidentally hanging up on Josh and having to start all over again. Call John back on your other phone, turn down his invitation to dinner with friends because you have no idea how much longer you’ll be on the phone.
13. Look up from your homework some time later, notice that you’ve been on the phone for an hour. Chuckle.
14. Josh announces that you get the award for most difficult problem he’s solved today. Yippee. Accept his profuse apologies, and note the direct number he gives you and the secret codes for both this week and next week.
15. Remember how much free stuff Wendy gets by complaining to AT&T, and mention to Josh that gosh, you’ve been on the phone for an hour and fifteen minutes now, and that’s a quarter of your cell phone minutes for the month. When he asks how much your monthly cell phone bill is, tell him (truthfully) fifty bucks. Graciously accept his offer of a $25 credit on your account.
16. Hang up.
17. Wait thirty seconds for Josh to call you back on his other line to tell you that he felt bad as he hung up and is gonna give you $50 instead. Tell Josh he’s awesome.
18. Hang up again, noting the hour, 17 minutes, and 31 seconds you’ve spent on the call for the blog post you’re sure to write someday.

…

19. A week later, relish your good fortune to be chosen randomly by AT&T to participate in an email survey rating your experiences with their call center. Spend a good half hour relating your several painful encounters in the few short weeks you’ve been with AT&T. Praise Josh.

Tags: miscellany

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.