I’m sure there are many, many more stories today, but here is my experience with AT&T’s Horrible customer service. As many of you know I’m a fan of Apple products, so of course when the iPhone 4S was announced I was super excited. Pre-Orders for the new phone started on Friday October 7th. I decided I’d stick with AT&T as I’ve been with them for 8 or 9 years now. My pre-order was completed at 6:51am PST on Friday the 7th. Great! Website and e-mail both said to expect the phone on the initial release day Friday the 14th.
When my phone didn’t ship on Wednesday or Thursday of this week I knew I was in trouble and wasn’t going to have the phone on release day. That sucks, but ohh well I’d have it really soon, right? Wrong!!
The website sucks and all it says is status “BackOrdered” the little tool tip tells me to look at the anticipated shipping date, problem is it’s empty. So on Thursday night the 13th I decide to call AT&T to see what’s up. I’m disconnected from their automated phone system Three times.
Friday morning the 14th I call back. I’m on hold for almost 30 minutes prior to my call being answered. Man is it fun to hear 100 times how “Your call is very important to us, Please stay on the line for the next available representative”. The Rep looks up my order and says that it will be 21 – 28 days before my phone ships, from the date the order processed on October 9th. I ask why it took two days to process since I ordered on the 7th, no answer. The Rep then starts to tell me that many people ordered the phone on October 5th, two days prior to me. I question this as both Apple and AT&T said the phone went on pre-order Friday the 7th. Again Rep can’t clearly explain issue.
The big problem with this is I’m going to be out of the country during the new delivery time in 3 -4 weeks. I specifically pre-ordered this phone for the new 8 mega pixel camera to use on my European Adventure.
Rep then suggests that I go down to an Apple or AT&T store today and see if I can get my hands on a phone. She says if I get a phone today I can call back, cancel my order and have them reset my eligibility so that I can purchase it at a discounted price. I ask how can I be guaranteed to have this happen, as I no longer have faith in the company. I ask if I can call her back directly to have this happen, and of course the answer is “No” we only have one line, you’ll have to wait on hold again. I’m crazy enough that I start getting ready to go down to a store. But several things the Rep has told me just don’t make sense (orders on October 5th, etc) So I ask to speak with a supervisor. I’m on hold for close to another 30 minutes, although the rep did check in with me twice. And then finally I’m sent to the “escalation” team.
So when I finally speak with the Escalations manager Lynn B. she proceeds to tell me how their system was overwhelmed and couldn’t handle the number of pre-orders it was receiving. It was “like a tunnel with only one car getting through at a time, and other cars were placed in a waiting bin”. She then proceeds to tell me that despite my ordering at prior to 7am on Pre-Order day that others were allowed to “cut in line in front of me” to get the phone, as my order wasn’t processed “from the bin” until Sunday at 2am. Ohh great that makes me so happy to hear that others cut me in line, but it’s my fault.
I then ask this escalations manager about trying to get a phone from a store today as the first Rep suggested. She said this will not work as I’d have to pay full price for the phone. She said the rep should not have suggested that, as they can’t modify an order when it’s in process like mine is.
I ask the escalations manager again if there’s anything we can do to get me a phone prior to my trip, and she says no.
An hour and five minutes into the call and being made wrong at every turn, I say fine I would like to cancel my order as I’m sure I can work with Verizon or Sprint. The answer to that… “We’re under strict orders not to cancel any orders”. The call ends here as there’s obviously nothing productive that’s going to happen. That’s a nice hour and 11 minutes wasted in my life.
During this call I’ve driven to an AT&T store. I decide to leave and start heading to the nearest Verizon store. It’s then that I realize why they won’t cancel my order. If the order processes then I am bound to the new 2 year commitment. So if I sign up with Verizon today, I’m going to have to pay an early termination fee to AT&T, despite my not having been under contract prior to the pre-order.
So let’s recap here:
- Their Online System couldn’t handle the amount of pre-orders they received
- My order took two days to process while others got to “cut in front” of me in line
- Website says no helpful information about why it’s backordered or when I’ll receive it
- No e-mail, phone call, or any pro-active communication from AT&T explaining I won’t get my phone as expected
- I call on Thursday the 13th and get disconnected 3 times
- I’m on the phone on Friday the 14th for 71 minutes and only get told wrong information by the first rep, and second escalations manager that there’s nothing she can do
- Drive all the way to an AT&T store only to find it’s not going to help anything
- Try to cancel order and told that I can’t
- If I switch providers now I’m still locked into a 2 year contract with AT&T
- So all in all today I’ve wasted 2+ hours with AT&T, drove my car to a store for no reason, ended up being an hour late to work. All be cause I pre-ordered a phone as I was instructed. Ohh and the phone won’t get here before my vacation because of the 3 – 4 week delay.
I tell you they can make every mistake, but at the end of the day it’s the customer who gets screwed. And short of paying a termination fee I have absolutely zero recourse on their behavior. Awesome!
I do get that there are much more serious problems in the world, and this issue is not the end of the world. But the main thing is that this company has no loyalty to a long time client and the customer has no recourse for their bad behavior.
Update 10/15/11:
So last night at about 7:30 PM I received an email from AT&T saying that they had shipped my order, hmm imagine that. This morning I did in fact receive my iPhone 4S from FedEx at just prior to 10 AM.
So all of my time yesterday wasted over absolutely nothing. This makes me question AT&T’s response even more. I wish that they would’ve just responded yesterday when I first called in with something like “Sorry your phone did not go out in the first shipping batch, we do apologize for this, it was a system error. We have ordered more phones, and you will be in the very next batch of phones we ship. As always we ship all of our orders priority overnight. We hope to be receiving more phones from the manufacturer any day now, but worse case scenario it could be 3 – 4 weeks.”
Since it was clearly an error in their system not processing my order for two days I would have loved something for the inconvenience and showing they value me as a client. They charge an upgrade fee of $18, why not waive that. Or give me a $10 statement credit, or heck even some free text messages since I’m only on the 200 a month plan.
Instead they left me feeling like I was the one to blame, and they really didn’t give a darn about my business.
Plus they seemed pretty convinced my phone wouldn’t arrive in time for my trip. Ohh well I have my phone so this saga is over.
