AT&T. Wireless? Maybe.Maybe not.
From the last couple of blogs it may come out that I'm a big whiner and really like to complain. Not exactly true, just ignorance and stupidity on large scale can drive me crazy.
Here's the scoop: for the past couple of days I've been trying to order a cell phone from AT&T (Wireless?). To start with, the online web site dead-ended with the option to select a state to find the nearest store. Guys, do you think if I wanted to go to the nearest store I was going to click on the "order online" button? Moreover, going to the "Wireless store" and suffering the service there puts (unnecessary) strain on my patience, but that's a completely different story. So, I went back to the beginning and tried a different route. First, I could not "find" the 1-year contract term plans. Don't believe it - check this out. After fiddling for about an hour with AT&T's web site I finally got to the page with a drop-down menu, where I could finally select what I wanted - "1 year GSM America National Plan". What a relief! Then - read the contract. Of course, small print, the important stuff is somewhere right in the middle, and (as an added benefit of the web), in a REALLY tiny text box - just a couple of lines. Who reads this legal crap anyways?
Finally I got the sense that we are getting somewhere. Enter your this, that, billing, shipping, credit, debit, check "I agree" and click on a big orange button "Continue". Next to it it reads "You will have the chance to review your order again". Click! Oops, went too far too fast -- "Your order has been received, would you like to order something else?". Shortly after that I received the infamous "you are in trouble" email - " Thank you for your recent purchase at attwireless.com , our biggest store. We're pleased that you have chosen AT&T Wireless as your service provider". Call customer support. Enter this, that, "hello, thank you for calling AT&T Wireless, my name is, how can I help you". At this point I just want to scream until I splat my lungs in bloody ecume all over the screen. Impulse control, move on. Asked the rep, "can you verify my order". After logging in for five minutes into her computer (why don't you keep the application open?), which seemed like an eternity, the rep found out that she cannot do anything for me. She gave me a number to call in the morning and wished me a good night. Almighty lord, if I really was concerned it wouldn't have been a good night. I decided to look around that web site for more information. There is a FAQ and it states "if you want to change your wen order, you will need to cancel it and order again". Good, but how do I cancel. Hmm, we ain't tellin... you that! After another five minutes of digging I found the phone number, hidden in a post on the Customer Care Forums.
Next day, 7am PST. With a smile on my face (I gotcha), I punched the secred code on my phone. This time, the spell was "the system is down, call back in one hour". After one hour, "call back in two". 11am PST, the system came back up. If they had kept some of the IT staff (including some of my friends), your system may have never gone down. The rep informs me that my order was placed "incorrectly" and I didn't order a phone. My heart started pumping blood, the adrenaline level skyrocketed. How is this possible? The web application wouldn't let you do that. Whatever, canceled the order. The rep tells me that I need to place another order on the web to get the "web deals". B/S BINGO! (see my previous post). Let's talk to another person ... "welcome to AT&T Wireless". This time, the person sounded like someone with some common sense. Took the order, booked it, made sure it's all correct. In retrospect, if you need to have a problem resolved and the rep that takes your call has a "funky" southern name and a nice drool (nothing against accents, I got one too), just hang up and call again. "How ya'll doing, this is Chaaris" is going to cause only hypertension.
Bottom line, I phone-ordered it anyways. Poorly developed web applications and business processes just do not work. Period. They need to be fixed and the customers are not supposed to suffer from someone's negligent desire to meet the project deadline for an action item he took pursuing a valuable spot in the fragile office ecosystem of the company. I am not sure what the customers have to do with this and why I had to invest about two hours of my life, one hour of customer service reps' time and several million bits transferred back and forth. Fellow executives and managers, wouldn't it be better if we all made responsible decisions and put out well-developed and tested (why bother, we got customers for it, huh) applications out there. If we hired and trained better (i.e. paid more than minimum wage) customer service representatives. There are people who care about this kind of stuff and do not mind paying for it. People who refuse to live a beta-version of their lives. Aren't we all following the footsteps of Wal-Mart? At least, their processes work. The customer service doesn't exist, but it's by design, not by accident. It's all about cheap there.
Fellas, if I may quote Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" - "Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. (We also pay the bills -ib). Do not **** with us."
Here's the scoop: for the past couple of days I've been trying to order a cell phone from AT&T (Wireless?). To start with, the online web site dead-ended with the option to select a state to find the nearest store. Guys, do you think if I wanted to go to the nearest store I was going to click on the "order online" button? Moreover, going to the "Wireless store" and suffering the service there puts (unnecessary) strain on my patience, but that's a completely different story. So, I went back to the beginning and tried a different route. First, I could not "find" the 1-year contract term plans. Don't believe it - check this out. After fiddling for about an hour with AT&T's web site I finally got to the page with a drop-down menu, where I could finally select what I wanted - "1 year GSM America National Plan". What a relief! Then - read the contract. Of course, small print, the important stuff is somewhere right in the middle, and (as an added benefit of the web), in a REALLY tiny text box - just a couple of lines. Who reads this legal crap anyways?
Finally I got the sense that we are getting somewhere. Enter your this, that, billing, shipping, credit, debit, check "I agree" and click on a big orange button "Continue". Next to it it reads "You will have the chance to review your order again". Click! Oops, went too far too fast -- "Your order has been received, would you like to order something else?". Shortly after that I received the infamous "you are in trouble" email - " Thank you for your recent purchase at attwireless.com , our biggest store. We're pleased that you have chosen AT&T Wireless as your service provider". Call customer support. Enter this, that, "hello, thank you for calling AT&T Wireless, my name is
Next day, 7am PST. With a smile on my face (I gotcha), I punched the secred code on my phone. This time, the spell was "the system is down, call back in one hour". After one hour, "call back in two". 11am PST, the system came back up. If they had kept some of the IT staff (including some of my friends), your system may have never gone down. The rep informs me that my order was placed "incorrectly" and I didn't order a phone. My heart started pumping blood, the adrenaline level skyrocketed. How is this possible? The web application wouldn't let you do that. Whatever, canceled the order. The rep tells me that I need to place another order on the web to get the "web deals". B/S BINGO! (see my previous post). Let's talk to another person ... "welcome to AT&T Wireless". This time, the person sounded like someone with some common sense. Took the order, booked it, made sure it's all correct. In retrospect, if you need to have a problem resolved and the rep that takes your call has a "funky" southern name and a nice drool (nothing against accents, I got one too), just hang up and call again. "How ya'll doing, this is Chaaris" is going to cause only hypertension.
Bottom line, I phone-ordered it anyways. Poorly developed web applications and business processes just do not work. Period. They need to be fixed and the customers are not supposed to suffer from someone's negligent desire to meet the project deadline for an action item he took pursuing a valuable spot in the fragile office ecosystem of the company. I am not sure what the customers have to do with this and why I had to invest about two hours of my life, one hour of customer service reps' time and several million bits transferred back and forth. Fellow executives and managers, wouldn't it be better if we all made responsible decisions and put out well-developed and tested (why bother, we got customers for it, huh) applications out there. If we hired and trained better (i.e. paid more than minimum wage) customer service representatives. There are people who care about this kind of stuff and do not mind paying for it. People who refuse to live a beta-version of their lives. Aren't we all following the footsteps of Wal-Mart? At least, their processes work. The customer service doesn't exist, but it's by design, not by accident. It's all about cheap there.
Fellas, if I may quote Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" - "Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. (We also pay the bills -ib). Do not **** with us."
posted by IvanB at 9:50 AM
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