AT&T -- No Longer a Monopoly, But Still Crap

At this moment, I'm 31 minutes into a call to AT&T's support line. Why? Because when AT&T Uverse was installed last month they managed to knock out all of my upstairs phone jacks.

Now, don't you reckon that they'd want to immediately come over and fix what they broke? Oh, noooooo. They won't do anything unless I have the $7.50-per-month in-house wiring warranty. That's right. They broke it, but they won't fix it unless I pay them either an exorbitant service-call fee or start their warranty.

So, I waited about 20 mins to talk to a repair person about this. She said she couldn't do anything about the fee and referred me to a "customer service" person. Then the customer service person gave me the crap about starting the warranty service. Or, she said, I could dispute any charges later if I wanted to.

I said to her, "Let me be clear about this. AT&T is going to charge me to come to my house to fix the phone lines that they broke." Yes, she said, that's correct. Or I can dispute charges later.

I told her I would accept the warranty, but I asked her to tell her supervisor that I was not happy with how AT&T was handling this.

Then, at the end of the conversation she told me that AT&T might call to check on her and asked if I were "very satisfied" with her (and "not the company's") handling of my situation. I told her I thought she had done all she could do. She pressed: "But are you very satisfied with how I handled your situation?" Essentially, she wouldn't end the call until I said I was.

But of course she couldn't then schedule a service call for me. Oh no, that would be too easy. She transferred me back to the repair service -- where I've now been on hold an additional 10 minutes.

41 minutes into this repair call and still no resolution...

Finally resolved after 45 minutes on the line.

Update, 24 July 2010:

AT&T had the gall to send me an email confirming their extortion fee for in-house wiring that contains this hunk of crap:

Your satisfaction is our #1 priority.

Thanks again for choosing AT&T – setting the standard for a new era of integrated communications and entertainment services.

Oh, yeah, they set a "standard" alright. A very low standard.