I have been a long time customer of AT&T and today I received the worst customer service ever from a manager who told me he had no manager, that there was no one above him, and that he didn't care if I took my business elsewhere. The issue was that I had just ordered new residential phone service for the house we just moved in to. I was told that service would be available by midnight. I called back a few minutes later to make a change to the order. The customer service rep the previous order wasn't taken correctly (good thing I called back) and she would retake it and that service would be available after midnight... Same as before. The next morning, I tried to make a call but was unable. I verified online, via the AT&T website, that my my order had been "cancelled", and the second order had been completed. I called AT&T to find out why I could not place a call. Customer service transferred me to repairs, but repairs said they could not help me because I did not have service. That's a catch22 because I was trying to get service. So they sent me back to customer service. This person indicated my order was in a pending state and she would change that and I would have service within 2 hours. 3 hours later I checked my phone line, still no service. I called AT&T customer service again and the customer service rep said that I did not have residential service and she would be happy to take my order. I indicated the order was already taken twice and even completed based on their system. I provided the order number. She indicated that service would be on midnight. I said that was unsatisfactory since the service was scheduled to be on by the previous night. I asked to speak to manager to see what could be done about getting my service turned on expeditiously. The manager told me the service was scheduled to be turned today and why did I check the night before. I explained I did not check the night before because I knew service wouldn't be on until today. I explained I was told the service would be on by midnight, the previous night and then again by 2PM (this was the 2hrs later conversation on the first call back). After a back and forth conversation about the scheduled time the service was to be available and being unable to assist me with getting service turned ASAP (I wanted within the hour, he said. "that's not going to happen" but then said he didn't know when it would be turned on but certainly by midnight.) I asked to speak to his boss. He said he had no boss and he was the highest person I was going to be able to speak to. After questioning that by explaining that if he was not the CEO, he had a boss, he said the next person was out of town on vacation. I explained that I have other choices of phone service. He said. "Go ahead, then." Now, I realize that my little $70/mo is not going to break AT&T, but how many other customers has he said that to? Or how many other managers, if they are all being trained the same, have they said that to? AT&T is a large company. I realize that. But where has customer service gone and the customer retention department they used to have? The attitude of, if you wanna go, go, seems to be the norm these days. Employees of service companies get paid no matter whether they let a customer go or try to keep them. What's 1 customer anyway?
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