Yeah, that one and "Your call is Important to Us!" Ri-i-i-ght.

If it was important to you, you'd have a human being answering the phone!

Dealing with AT&T customer service is the Olympic Gold Standard in Telephonic Annoyance (with Oak Leaf Cluster). Their policy is to view each and every non-automated customer contact as a sales pitch. (Of course the recordings have commercials built-in as well.) When you to talk to them, you have to start every SENTENCE --not just every conversation-- with "I'm not calling to buy services today, and..." This will not stop them, it will just give you a prayer of getting your account cancelled and your money back. (It still took me 10 months.)

Never, EVER, buy AT&T products or services. Thank you.

It's neat how this blog entry was listed three times. We imagine one pissed-off redhead slamming the POST ENTRY key over and over and over....

Sigh...500 errors while posting. My boyfriend sometimes describes the quirks of a shared server as "flushing the toilet in a tenement." The duplicates have been deleted. I have, however, been on a bit of a tear today. Next, I'll be making annoyance calls to my car thief to get my restitution. Already called the City Attorney's Office (no thanks to the paperwork with no phone number on it...which necessitated a half hour of detective work on the phone to figure out who to call)...anyway, going to get his unpaying ass thrown back in jail. Still, I'd really rather have the cash.

On an ATT note, I particularly loved the guy who repeated everything I said back to me.

My response: "I'm not retarded, and I know perfectly well what I just said, so there's no reason to tell me what I just told you!"

He actually thought that was kind of funny.

On these customer disservice calls, I think they either find me amusing, or their worst nightmare, or a little of both.

Seems like every company is using that "overwhelming response" line these days.

I get it from the guys who register my domains.
Others, too... but I try to put that stuff out of me head.

Just as a friendly note to all who read this, avoid Starband.net satellite internet service like the plague. They have basically been email down for two months now, and you literally have to wait 1/2 hour+ on hold to talk to anyone. After all that, I was told that email is a free service PROVIDED by starband, and that they do not guarantee it in any way. It cost me (out in the Idaho countryside) something like $1,500 for the equipment and $60.00 a month, which I have largely abandoned for dial up service.

PS- Netflix, which started out great, is starting to piss me off as well. I think word got out and now they are too busy...

I dunno, everybody makes fun of me for using AOL, but I've been on it since '92 or 93, no problems.

Oh, and that reminds me -- HP customer service should be called "customer disservice." I'll write the details someday soon. My favorite was the guy who told me he was going to hang up on me because I was being sarcastic. And I was...perhaps due to the fact that my experience in "customer service" mirrored that of the Israelis wandering for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, except without all the amenities.

Gotta sec? Can we talk?

Sprint. (They've just swallowed Nextel, too.)

When you call to complain about something, they'll say "To make this up to you, here's two from months of service X (forwarding or voicemail extras or who knows what)." And you say whatever, just fix the freakin' bill. And three months later you're being charged $17.50 for service X, which never never used, or you'd have paid for it to begin with. It's not as dishonest as it is VENAL.

One reason I don't have TV is that cable companies are a nightmare. Is a poorly delivered wisecrack from Jennifer Anniston in flat lighting, or a clucking remonstrance from whoever hosts PBS shows nowadays, worth the aggravation? ON TOP of the $50+ dollars a month?

Listen, the most powerful visual image of our generation was probably Flight 175 hitting the South Tower. But people without TV heard about it anyway, OK? Nobody needs a TV set.

It would be neat to think that the worst of customer service is concentrated in the most trivial industries, but medicine proves that this is not so.

If anyone has a GOOD experience with a DSL/cable modem vendor, please leave a comment.

"from months" is "free months." You knew that, because you followed your heart.

Oh, and the idiots at Verizon took three calls to anonymize my main line. They were supposed to anonymize that line only. I leave my fax line with my name reading out. Well, guess what, when I needed to call somebody during the brownout who has anonymous call rejection, and dial star-something-or-other, I discovered that they'd done both lines. And there's no star on my 1940s dial phone. Asswads. Well, being a bitch can get you some substantial discounts. I intend to call and have this fixed tomorrow...and get some cash knocked off my bill.

Monopoly is part of the problem. I can only get overpriced Comcast where I live. No competition.

Why can bitches only be married? Why can't they be rented for the handling of specific needs, as can other feminine powers?

There's this noisy neighbor who needs to be dealt with, but it will require someone with the reflex.

For the post about Netflix, I've had Netflix going on about 2 years now and my suggestion is when/if you receive an e-mail from them asking if such and such dvd has arrived, click on the link that says it arrived a day or two later than expected. Solved my problem, and now my dvd's arrive a day sooner than quoted. F.Y.I.

J-

"Phone turds"? Methinks someoone's been dipping a little too "liberallY' into the Chunky Monkee.

Amy, I've actually had customer service reps hang up on me because I asked to talk to their supervisor (either because they had an attitude problem, or because they couldn't fix the problem, but I'm not convinced that means it isn't fixable) or they didn't like my tone. Of course, you never have their name when that happens, and calling back to report such incompetance and rudeness wastes even MORE time....

At least you have a public forum to vent. Maybe someone should start a website listing companies that are pains in general to deal with, and specific problems, to try to shame them - like a Net Better Business Bureau.