AT&T U Verse any good?

I recently had the WORST customer service experience I have EVER had, while asking AT&T to do some very simple things as part of closing out my father's house. Not impolite, it just took hours and hours of confusion, ineptness, and tedium on the phone to accomplish a few very simple things. I never did manage to get a final statement from them. Wherever there is an even halfway reasonable alternative, I'd avoid.

Excuse the rant,

John

I'm a AT&T retiree and there are support issues. The company is so large and has reduced headcount so much and service always suffers first. The philosophy has always been get a product to market, to get revenue flowing, and fix it later. It was the way we always did it. I still remember what a nightmare DSL was when initially rolled out. Beyond these problems I am not, yet, convinced that IP broadcast HD video is the platform of the future.

Thanks for the insight, Narrod. Present company excluded, of course. :) My perception is that a lot of the "phone help" service stuff is farmed out off shore, and this creates communication issues. For example, that I share my father's name was a source of great difficulty. Is that how AT&T does everything now?

John

I've been retired for three and a half years so I can't speak about current operation. I do know that all call center traffic was handled in-house (or stateside agents) due to problems with offshore support. It may have changed. The cost savings make it awfully attractive for large companies. AT&T and other large companies are pretty good at gauging customer tolerance before there is a significant drop in revenue. They will go right to the edge and a little over before backing off to protect revenue. I was a Sales VP so my perspective is from the customer's point of view. Service was never good enough and prices were never low enough. Factor this in when evaluating my opinion. I was not an engineer, strategic planner or in finance. They all have significantly different views than those of us in sales.

I am a Sr. Director at AT&T and if anybody has an issue that has not been resolved I would be happy to help getting it resolved.