AT&T sucks big time ...

AT&T is the worst telecom provider by a big margin

I owe an apology to Telecom NZ :(. AT&T makes Telecom NZ look real good. We wanted to get DSL at home to enable us to work from home. However AT&T's incompetence makes this fairly unlikely. After navigating through their fairly horrendous voice recognition system, you finally get put in line for an operator due to high call volumes. (on a weekday late evening!). When I do get the operator the call is mysteriously dropped and I get to repeat the whole process. I finally manage to get through, place the order and am assured that DSL will be turned on Saturday evening. Saturday comes and goes with no signs of DSL. Obviously their sales department does not work on the weekends, so I have to wait till Monday (since customer support informs me they have no records of an order)

I called back on Monday only to be informed by a super rude customer support personnel (gwen green) that the previous person did not know what she was talking about with regard to the Saturday date. She does the same thing and tells me it will be turned on Tuesday nite. Tuesday nite comes and goes and no DSL. We left for Seattle on Wednesday, so I just did not bother to call them. We came back Sunday nite, still no DSL :( Spoke to another customer service rep (after going through their crappy voice recognition software), and we tried trouble shooting with no luck. She told me that the line technician will check it tomorrow and they'll charge me if it is my fault. Will they refund me for the hours I wasted if it is their fault?

I'm not too hopeful that we'll get DSL turned on in the next week or so. I suspect I'll cancel the order later this week. What was Apple thinking when they chose AT&T/Cingular as their exclusive iPhone carrier. (bad reports are streaming in at a nice rate already!)

In general customer service across most large US companies have detiorated significantly over the past few years. Maybe its time companies started paying folks at the top a bit less and started improving their basic operations