I have been a fan of Apple for a while. I don’t consider myself a fan boy as while I do get wrapped up when Steve Jobs is pitching new wares, I easily see through the RDF after his presentations. But one of the reasons I like Apple so much is that when something goes wrong they are ready and willing to help fix it. I haven’t had any major calamities requiring losing a computer for weeks to a repair facility, but I have had a number of issues requiring Genius Bar attention and it has been easy to deal with.
AT&T has never been there for me at all, until now. I have been a customer of AT&T for five years through there various incarnations. First of AT&T Wireless, then Cingular, and now AT&T. The service has always left something to be desired in both customer service and their wireless system, but my entire family and closest friends are on AT&T so I rarely use my anytime minutes to begin with. I have also been with the other major carriers in the past and found they were no better.
Over the course of the five years, I have had a total of 5 defective phones. The first was not diagnosed as being defective until 6 months after the warranty was up, but 5 months before I was eligible for an upgrade even though I brought it into AT&T 6 times complaining. Eventually I signed a new contract and upgraded the phone, but that upgrade was replaced 4 times in 4 months. AT&T tried to charge me for the phone twice. Each time I had to replace it I spent an hour on the phone being bounced around to 3 or 4 customer service agents to get the transaction completed.
When the original iPhone price was cut, I decided to buy one and change my plan again because I knew if there was a hardware issue I would be working with Apple and not AT&T. Approximately two months ago I changed my plan again to a family plan and gave my kids a phone. Since this was before the change in pricing and plans with the 3G iPhone, the whole process was a little bit of an ordeal. AT&T at the time couldn’t have the iPhone be a primary phone on a family plan. So I set my kids phone up as the primary, but I couldn’t set it up as a family plan with the iPhone yet. I had to first assign it a standalone plan (450 Anytime minutes, my previous plan) and then call in and have them change the plan to a family plan and add the iPhone. Well this is where things fell apart. Due to all the prorating going on I didn’t notice that they screwed up the first month’s bill. I certainly did when I went to pay my June bill though.
AT&T ended up signing my kids’ phone up for the 450 Nationwide Anytime minute plan, the iPhone for the Family Plan, iPhone data package, Extra line, and the Smart Manager so I can limit the text messages and downloads my kids use. Yesterday I called to correct this error and spoke to someone in billing, which for some reason was the wrong department so she transfered me to sales. I did have to wait for a total of 10 minutes to get into the problem. Once I explained my problem to the rep, she put me on hold again to investigate. When she came back on the line she told me that I did indeed overpay and she had issued credits to my account and set up an alert because another credit would be needed in the next billing cycle. Looking on the website to pay my account at that moment I saw the new balance immediately reflected. Before this incident I would have to repeatedly argue my case to get resolution which was usually a compromise. When I did get a result I was satisfied with I was always told it wouldn’t show up on the website until my next billing cycle. Clearly things are changing. I am not saying AT&T is the best cell phone provider, but they are hearing people complain and it appears they are taking action.
Tags: Apple, AT&T, Cell Phone, Cellular, Customer Service, iPhone, Satisfaction