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red230
join:2003-11-07
Monterey, CA
clubs:
3 edits | I had nothing but trouble with Pac Bell
I tried unsuccessfully to get Pac Bell to install DSL at my apartment for an entire year. They sent someone to install it and I took a day off from work to wait for them. The guy never showed up. I called them and argued with their customer service because the tech that they sent out claimed that he installed the equipment and I would be receiving a bill in the mail.
I called their support several times telling them that it was never installed. It took 3 months and countless hours in the hell that is their automated phone system to clear up this mess (including them threatening to sell by debt to a collection agency since I refused to pay for something that was never installed).
The worse part came when I was moving out of the apartment. I asked if I could move my number to my new address. The customer support person said it wouldn't be possible. I said that was fine and asked her to cancel the number. She told me she was unable to do that either. I asked to talk to her supervisor and she said the same thing. Apparently there was a unresolved trouble ticket (my problem with DSL) that kept them from turning off the phone. I asked the obvious question. "Does this mean that I'm going to have to keep paying for a line that is impossible to cancel until the day I die?" The answer was yes.
So here I was, about to move out of my apartment and AT&T was telling me that I was going to have to pay for a service at an apartment that I was moving out of. It took me over 10 hours (mostly on hold) to get in touch with someone that could fix this for me. Needless to say I will never use Pac Bell ever again.
On a side note I was at a friends house when he was having his DSL installed by another Pac Bell tech. The tech said that my friend had to buy a $60 NIC in order for the DSL modem to connect to the computer. I asked him what was wrong with the NIC card that was already in the PC. His answer was that "all NIC cards were proprietary and only the $60 model would communicate with the modem."
Edit: for some reason I said it was AT&T, in reality it Pacific Bell. It's been a long week. | |
TrainBuff
The New Haven Railroad
Premium
join:2003-05-01
Buffalo, NY
clubs:
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: I had nothing but trouble with AT&T
said by red230  :On a side note I was at a friends house when he was having his DSL installed by another AT&T tech. The tech said that my friend had to buy a $60 NIC in order for the DSL modem to connect to the computer. I asked him what was wrong with the NIC card that was already in the PC. His answer was that "all NIC cards were proprietary and only the $60 model would communicate with the modem." I wonder if the tech sells used cars on the side. 
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jp10558
Premium
join:2005-06-24
Willseyville, NY
| reply to red230
Re: I had nothing but trouble with Pac Bell
That's all right, I used to work for one of those phone companies that was ld, and started offering local service. If you tried to cancel, it would take up to 60 days, and you were expected to pay for that time after you called till whoever it was got around to pulling the plug.
Then, we'd randomly set people up for LD at $5 a month after the recieved *one* collect call through us (cause, by calling the right 1-800 # you can choose your collect call agency) but for some reason the auto customer data was always one customer behind, so we'd be billing to someone who didn't live there, or billing to the wrong address. Which we'd eventually send $60 or so to a collection agency. Oh, and the LD was never really hooked up - your calls didn't go through us, we just billed a service charge. And, no one could actually credit that to your account or anything who was on the phones.
Oh, and if you didn't pay, we'd shut off service after awhile. That's normal, but if you'd pay, we'd sit around for 24-72 hrs for the payment to show up in the system, and then another 24-72 hrs for the guys to actually turn back on the phone. This is even if you used a CC and we got an approval code - we would wait till our system got around to adding it.
And, if it didn't work - it seemed to forget to actually restore service quite often - we'd have to resubmit it, and you got to wait another 24-72 hrs to see if it worked this time. Repeat until it decided to work, or you cancelled!
Oh, yeah, and to cancel - guess what, you had to get your other phone company to call our phone company and convince us to actually release the line - we wouldn't do so on a customers say so - even if they were moving out!
I'll bet you can guess what company this was!
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