LilyB23
Member
- Sep 7, 2012
- 113
- 0
Four years ago, my husband and I moved into our apartment. I like to call it “the oldest apartment in L.A.”: four townhouse style units in a rambling 1917 building. It has high ceilings, hardwood floors…and wiring issues. When we moved in, the most apparent of these was that none of the phone jacks inside worked. So we called ATT. They sent a repair tech out who informed us that the test box was working, so our jacks should be. Therefore, it was our landlord’s problem, and they needed to re-wire the apartment. If we wanted further testing, we could pay $50 to have a tech investigate further. So we told our landlord, and jury rigged our DSL through the test box line instead, running the phone cord in a window, down the hall, and to the wifi router. And four years later, we still had that temporary solution in place. This weekend, the DSL slowed to unacceptable speeds. I was working on a client project and had to be able to download and upload photos and video. Not exactly possible at 8kbps. Assuming the rain and possible ATT node failures were to blame, I called DSL customer service, and actually got a solid rep…who spoke English…and was in the USA! From Indianapolis, he checked our DSL, informed us it might be a bad line, and listened as I told him how we had rigged the line four years before. He then offered to send a rep to look at the line on a Sunday. When the rep showed up at 5pm last night, he went straight to work checking all the house jacks. He carefully went through and checked wiring on multiple inside jacks, and informed us the wiring WAS messed up…but he thought he could fix it! And he actually spent an hour with us that resulted in a dial tone on an inside jack! He took the time and care to find out what was wrong and fix it, instead of passing the problem on to us and our landlords. Maybe he was a better tech…but maybe ATT had changed their policy for the better to allow him to be a better rep. So. What does this say about ATT? It tells me they should be taking more credit for my experience. Reps in the US to handle customer service? Techs that come out on a Sunday to fix a line? I will pay extra to be able to work with their people, because they were empowered enough by the company to get the job done and fix my DSL. They weren’t hampered by policies that kept them from doing their job, and were allowed to take every step necessary. Maybe this is a fluke. But, if it isn’t, ATT, you should be telling more people about how you helped me.