VFR update

Through a combination of AT&T’s staggering incompetence, and my being away from home over most of the last two days and not having the time to make the repeated efforts necessary to get through to them and straighten out the situation, my Internet service has remained non-functioning since Friday afternoon and no one has been able to e-mail me. I finally got an AT&T DSL agent on the phone today and he gave me the same run-around his colleagues had given me when I last talked with them on Friday, that he couldn’t help me because of what “the system” was saying, even though, as I pointed out to him, and as I had pointed out to his colleagues on Friday, what the system was saying was self-evidently wrong. He repeated that he could only do as the system directed him. At that point I became enraged and began yelling at him and cursing his company. After I yelled and cursed, the AT&T person put me on hold and consulted his supervisor, and within two minutes my Internet service was restored.

The outsourced Indian staff of AT&T customer service and tech support are mindless functionaries who do everything mechanically according to a script. Only under extreme and unusual pressure will they depart from that script and start acting like human beings with minds of their own.

Again, my apologies for my correspondents’ inability to get through to me or send a comment over the last two days.

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Adela G. writes:

I’m not surprised you got finally results from AT&T by resorting to yelling and cursing. My husband always instantly goes nuclear if he gets substandard service. It’s horrible to hear but very effective; unfortunately, it seems to be the only tactic that works.

Shrewsbury writes:

Glad you are back at the front and finally have AT&T dancing to your tune. After two days of VFR deprivation Shrewsbury was having severe withdrawal symptoms—confusion, seizures, etc.

Hannon writes:

I have made a mental note of a few companies that I have vowed will never get my business again. AT&T is numero uno on that list, though I never had to deal with the outsourcing problem.

Funny what you said about yelling and cursing. I can think of at least a couple of incidents where my frustration on the phone with a company rep led me to use a swear word. As a result I was strongly rebuked, implying the call would be ended if I did not snap back into polite dialogue! They use that “your call may be recorded” to cow people and I suppose it serves its purpose in the main.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2008 12:53 PM | Send