Milwaukee, WI

I have been misled by companies. I have been amazed at the utter incompetence of companies. But I can’t recall ever being a part of such a perfect storm of stupidity, disorganization and ridiculousness as I have witnessed with AT&T this week.

I have AT&T for my home telephone and DSL service. I don’t really want or need a home telephone, but it was the only way I could get my much-loved DSL, so I signed up for both at a cost of about $40.00 per month.

I thought I had scheduled an online payment on my AT&T bill, but somehow I hadn’t completed or confirmed the payment process, so the payment wasn’t made. Imagine my surprise on Tuesday, October 16 when I logged on to view my AT&T bill online and found that there was a past due amount! I immediately scheduled a payment for the following day and expected no problems.

That night a letter from AT&T arrived in my mailbox advising that my DSL service would be discontinued on 10/17/07 (the following day!) if I didn’t pay my bill. It further advised that if I had already paid my bill, I could disregard that notice. I disregarded the notice, as I had scheduled my payment and expected all to be hunky-dory.

On October 17, 2007 the payment was taken from my bank account, as planned, and applied to my account.

And my DSL was shut off that night.

Well, that must be some mistake. I called AT&T but there was no one available to assist me that time of night, so I was advised to call the following morning.

What transpired was a series of amazingly ridiculous events.

Call #1: Thursday morning, 9:00 a.m. The nice lady on the telephone acknowledged the payment, apologized for the interruption of service, and advised that we should be back online in about four hours.

Call #2: Thursday afternoon, 4:00 p.m. Seven hours had elapsed, and the internet was still not working. We called back and were advised that they could not determine the problem at that time, but would call us back shortly with more information.

Call #3: Thursday evening, 7:00 p.m. After three hours of no callback, we called again. This time the woman on the telephone advised that the order to reinstate the service was placed on October 16 and completed October 17, so we should have internet access at this time. But we don’t, so she transferred me to tech support.

Call #3, Continued: Tech support says everything on their end indicates that we have service running, so we must have a problem with our hardware or configuration. Wait a minute, our hardware was running just fine two days ago…how can that be? He assured me that everything was a-okay on AT&T’s end of things and that once we jiggle a few wires we should be good to go.

Call #4: Thursday night, 8:00 p.m. The guy from Call #2 calls back to advise that service will be back up and running on Monday. Wait, we were told that it was running now. Okay, he says, just disregard what I just said.

Call #5: Thursday night, 10:30 p.m. Still no internet, and another call to tech support. We are advised that everything we were told during the day was incorrect. In fact, no work order has been placed to reinstate service at all. And no, one can’t be placed now…we’ll have to call back in the morning. He has no idea why we were told that our service was up and running and has no idea why we were told that work orders were placed and processed.

Can someone please tell me why we should stick with AT&T at this point?

Call #6: Friday morning, 9:00 a.m. We call back to find out that our service will not be reinstated until we allow them to auto-debit their fees from our bank account every month. although we can immediately cancel the auto-debit service. Um…okay. Then, and only then, will a work order be placed and we may get internet again in the future, unless they are mistaken once again.

Forget it. Service canceled. This just isn’t worth it.

I already miss the internet at home, but what are the alternatives?