Posted by on Jul 2, 2010 in Marketing, Ramblings | 3 comments

Dear AT&T:

You lied to me. After my boss and I spent a combined two hours on the phone with unhelpful customer service reps, I turned to a forum where I thought  I could get help: Twitter. I knew you tweeted customer service assistance, and it seemed a fair court of last resort.

Wrong.

Now, you might think it’s strange that I’m writing this letter instead of my boss, Lorraine, who actually pays the bills. But there are two reasons: first, her husband, Andy, works for AT&T. Second, her blood pressure is still sky-high from dealing with you.

AT&T, why did you ignore me? You were so good at first, quickly getting in touch after the initial tweet and promising a call “soon.” Two hours passed. No call. I reminded you. You promised a call “soon.” When I left the office at 5:15, nearly four hours after the initial promise, there was still only silence from you.

Bad move, AT&T. Not only is it awful customer service, but it’s terrible PR. It looks like you’ve only jumped onto Twitter customer service because it’s the hot new thing (companies like Discount Tire use it splendidly), not because you actually care about delivering customer service in this new format. I see it as a cold, calculating PR move with no substance to back it up. And PR should always, always have substance and truth behind it.

I don’t trust you, AT&T. I was neutral towards you before, but your poor service, both on the phone and on Twitter, has moved me to open hostility. I will now do my best to avoid your products at all cost. All because of one poorly executed PR move.

Don’t call us, and I won’t call you.

Sincerely,

Allison.

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  • http://indyscomputergeek.com/ Daniel

    I agree with this. This past week, AT&T lost me as a customer. When I went, so did my father, my mother, and my sister. Now we are all on Verizon. The network seems to be more reliable, the rates a little bit lower, and the customer service, for now, is higher.

    I have been an AT&T cellular customer for over 15 years, through their various incarnations. Leaving them was not as difficult as I thought it would be.

  • Chris V.

    I gave up AT&T years ago when they made the switch to Cingular. They blackmailed me into locking into a new contract, threatened to stop upgrading service, sent me two seperate bills every month, threatened to shut down my account, and gave me the run around. After literally spending weeks on the phone I just paid the temination fee so I wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore. I will never be a customer of any AT&T service ever again. Seems like customer service isn’t high on their priority list.

  • http://alxconn.com Alex Conner

    I recently worked with AT&T via Twitter, and while it took them a while to get in touch with me once they did they worked hard to sort out the issue and in just a couple days everything was taken care of. I was called multiple times a day with updates and everything. But it did take almost a whole day for the initial call to come through.