Them sneaky bastards!

[CA]

I've been an AT&T customer for over 10 years. I've never had issues with customer service until this year. West Kentucky is a place with very poor AT&T coverage. Just recently AT&T dropped 3G in areas here, and put 4G/HSPA+ overlay on top of the 3G this year. Ever since, the connection has been horrible.I begain emails to AT&T regarding this. Being employed at a CLEC [competitive local exchange carrier], I know that calling an ILEC carrier [incumbent local exchange carrier or "baby Bell'] on the phone is a bad idea, since there is no paper trail to prove a conversation existed. So all my emails between AT&T and myself are in my Gmail.
In March, AT&T issued a service credit to my account for poor service, as well as AT&T's customer service being horrible to boot. I was credited 86$ for the month of March. April billing came around, and I paid my 1.12 in taxes to AT&T.
Here in may, I started checking my account information, and noticed that my upgrade eligibility date has changed, from the 16 month to the 20 month timeframe.
AT&T has told me that because the "revenue stream" on my account has changed, (meaning AT&T paid for a month of my service) they can no longer honor the June early upgrade date. My upgrade is now in September, due to AT&T's crappy network, and I had the nerve to complain.
How many other customers has this happened to at AT&T? Do other carriers treat their customers like garbage? At this point, i'm still fighting AT&T on this. I've also sent this information to the FTC and Better Business Bureau, but doubt anything will be resolved.

http://consumerist.com/2012/06/get-s...d-forward.html

[DannyNY]

http://consumerist.com/2012/06/get-s...d-forward.html

Hahaha, there is no reason at all to involve the FCC or anyone else for this nonsense issue you have.
You're wasting time on something that can be rectified in one simple phone call.

You have to do is call AT&T and tell them that at the time you were issued the credit you had asked about your upgrade eligibility status and this is the timeframe you were given and at no point in time during your verbal agreement with their agent was it discussed that the upgrade eligibilty timeframe would be amended.

It's funny how customers feel cheated and bad about some automated system changing things on them when in reality - all one has to do is get a regular southern agent during peak hours to correct the issue... oh and believe me they would correct it, you just have to know how to talk to them - explain that you never agreed to any changes on your account and the courtesy credit was given as a one time credit for all the troubles you went through in dealing with AT&T's network and customer service.

You will definitely get your upgrade date back because they want you to stay and not leave... but then again I scratch my head thinking why does this guy care about his upgrade eligibilty when he's paying so much money for service and getting ripped off every month....when you can just switch to one of AT&T's sister companies and get a lot more for much less! If AT&T is poor in you area then go for a MVNO that offers another carrier's service perhaps.

[veriztd]

Danny,

The OP didn't experience this problem firsthand. "The Consumerist", the source of the article, is well known for it's crackpot stories.

[CA]

Amazing, a poster that doesn't read, and another one that misdirects by attempts to use a false absolute.

[veriztd]

Amazing, a poster that doesn't read, and another one that misdirects by attempts to use a false absolute.

Coming from someone who posts crackpot articles frequently.

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[Sam73065]

Crockpot articles are useful for those of us that like to prepare our lunch while we sleep.

Coming from someone who posts crackpot articles frequently.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[CA]

It's funny, the Consumerest is the Consumer Report of the net with 10's of thousands of viewers, completely overshadowing Hofo! The only true way to think of them is nothing or interesting, calling them crackpots is a sign of "Good old boys, lets hang em high insanity. Unless you are a perpetrator that is being discussed... then called crackpots!

[veriztd]

CA,

Whatever makes you happy. I stand by my opinion of the Consumerist. We don't have to agree on that and I can live with that. I won't even go into how I really feel about Consumer Reports and their biased articles, so that was not the best choice to compare to the Consumerist.

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[FormerRuling]

While the Consumerist will jump on any story that has some "drama" to it, I think there is a place for these types sites - I enjoy reading it

Steps for good Consumerist article - 1) Come up with a "problem" with the service provider like Walmart not selling your brand of bike 2) Call their Customer Service at 4 AM to insure you get someone that has a 10% chance of understanding the English language 3) Bombard them with confusing terms and situations until they get flustered and say something stupid 4) Write up a nice long summary and give it a title like "WALMART SAYS HUFFY BIKES ARE MADE BY UNICORNS" 5) ??? 6) Profit!

ON TOPIC: Sounds like the guy is talking about an early upgrade date, which does fluctuate based on some complex formula factoring in tenure, acct changes, revenue, etc. Even just changing one of your numbers can extend the date out...but like another poster said if you weren't specifically told the date could change when the acct change was made you have a good argument to have it submitted to be changed back.

[joako]

So in any case the renewal is still shorter than your contract duration of 24 months so what is the issue? I mean seriously AT&T is a business not a charity and quite frankly if you have poor service and have to call in and get credits for it they don't want you as a customer as there are plenty of customers who use the service and don't even call their customer service for months or even years at a time, much less demand any sort of credit.

Don't get me wrong despite what the contract might or might not say if you have poor service you should not put up with it and certainly should get credits in the short term to offset the issues.