Terrible experience with AT&T customer service GoPhone plan for iPhone
Around January 16, which happened to be approximately the release date of iPhone 1.1.3, in certain areas, EDGE access for GoPhone (prepaid) users became unusable.
Discussion of this widespread bug:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=415723
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1345931
http://www.howardforums.com/archive/topic/1288150-1.html
http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/message?board.id=apple&message.id=16591
http://www.iphonematters.com/article/gophone_edge_issue_ends_up_being_att_not_apple_389/
As it turns out, it had nothing to do with iPhone 1.1.3. Apparently there was some kind of server side bug that removed the plan from our accounts.
So I call and ask what’s going on, and the tech support guy says for some reason the plan was removed, and he added it back on. Then I noticed that it was charging me per kilobyte for EDGE usage, even though I was on the unlimited plan. No one ever mentioned that that would happen.
I called back and they said it was a known issue that would be fixed that night. It wasn’t fixed until a week and a half later. I called a few times during the week and each time they said it would be fixed that night.
Things that were constant the whole week and a half each time I called, which suggest an endemic incompetence at AT&T:
- Despite the fact that this had happened to hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people, most AT&T employees, even in the prepaid department, seemed to not even know that this was going on, until I got to a higher level employee.
- The tech support people would promise various things that didn’t come true. “It’s going to be fixed tonight”, each time I called. One tech support person told me I was going to get 2 months free and then transferred me to someone else in billing who told me that was impossible and no one could do that.
- On every call I was bounced through several layers of peons before I got to someone who knew what was going on. For each layer, I had to reauthenticate myself by giving my phone number and pin or zip code. And I had to explain everything that had happened so far. They should cache the authentication and story thus far when passing someone off, but that would make too much sense.
- I could call one time and get one answer, and then call right back, get a different person, and get a totally different answer. Obviously at least one of them was just making stuff up. This happened at least twice.
In the end, the issue was fixed, and they credited my account for all the wasted money I was charged per kilobyte for the EDGE service. I think they also added like 5 bucks to my account. However, that doesn’t compensate me at all for the aggravation, lost service, and time wasted on the phone(about 2 hours).
One major issue with the GoPhone plan for iPhone is, they have NO WAY to really compensate you if something goes wrong. They charge you 50 bucks every month. This deposits $30 in your account, and 20 was for unlimited EDGE. If something goes wrong, they can add more money into your account. But most people don’t need any more money in their account, because they accumulate money in the account, assuming they use less than 200 minutes per month. What they need is to be charged less or not at all for the next month. I was told by the customer service person that that is impossible, that no one is authorized to defer or reduce someone’s monthly bill for prepaid. This was after I had been promised by someone else that it was possible.
On the positive side, the reps were reasonably polite and I didn’t have to wait on hold that long. They were just totally incompetent. I don’t think it’s necessarily unacceptable that this technical problem happened, but their handling of it from the customer service side was the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had.
Lessons learned:
- For every person you get passed to, make sure to get their name and department and write it down.
- If they promise you anything, ask them to add it to the notes for your account. A few times I was promised something, then that person transferred me to another person, and the new person said they didn’t see anything in the notes about the promise.
- AT&T sucks. I strongly recommend avoiding AT&T/Cingular if possible. Also, they seem to treat the prepaid users like second class citizens. This outage only affected prepaid users, and there was a similar one in December 2007 which only affected prepaid users.
Thanks a lot AT&T. I would absolutely leave AT&T, if it wasn’t for the fact that that would leave me with an expensive useless phone. (Yes, I could try to unlock it, but that has its own hassles)
BTW getting the phone activated was a similarly Kafkaesque experience.
Tags: AT&T, customer service, iPhone