AT&T

[spacefem]

I noticed that AT&T switched CEOs last week. Interesting time for new opportunities. I've had an AT&T phone forever... or at least since they bought Cingular, whenever that was. Remember when cell phone companies were young cool startups? Now they are definitely like utilities, except with shinier, tech-friendly, "this is still fun!" exteriors. But

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[coercedbynutmeg]

My husband signed us up for a landline years ago over the internet (this was like, 2005, and the cable company hooked us up faster than Verizon, the phone company). The bills were screwed up for 3 months, and they triple-billed everything that they didn't double-bill. We set it up in early April, maybe, and I think it was sorted out by mid-July. Those weren't the days. And I kept records of everything.

AT&T has been marginally better, but we use them for cell and nothing else, though they really really want us to get Directv. About six years ago, when we both had dumb phones, they kept sending data to our phones, even though we didn't have a data plan. I think I got a warning email that our bill was going to be high, and then it was nuts. I had to call customer service and told them to refund it and block data, and they did refund, but they pushed us out of our grandfathered Cingular plan into one with data. That was probably their plan all along. So we had a little bit of data, and texting, and more than 400 monthly rollover minutes.

Did you read "On the Clock" by Emily Guendelsberger? In one of her jobs, she worked at a call center for AT&T, and didn't even work for the company but a subcontractor. The computer interface was horrific, and probably like, running Windows XP. She had to adhere to scripts and had no leeway in doing anything, and most of the workforce lasted less than 3 months before leaving. I thought it was insightful as to why so many customer service calls take for damned ever and rarely produce the desired result.

[spacefem]

I'll check it out, it sounds awesome!

It makes me sad that answering customer calls has become a nightmare job in so many industries, because I'm getting to do it in a really great environment (highly technical, engineering) and it's a really rewarding job. I love talking to people and helping with their problems, finding creative ways to help them out, broadcasting what we learn back into the design process and being their voice. This can be a great job.