Letter to AT&T

Re: my facebook post
(I have had nothing but issues since switching to U-Verse. The customer service is leaving a lot to be desired. I only switched over about a week ago and all ready I have had to make 7 phone calls and 2 chats and talk to 11 people and still my issue is unresolved. I am thinking about canceling the whole thing and going back to Comcast.)

Dear AT&T rep:
It has been a customer service billing issue and not a U-Verse service issue. The U-Verse internet and phone have been working fine. I am just having billing issues and instead of explaining what is going to happen fully I have to keep calling back to get a new piece of information.

I had a land line and dsl in a bundle with Directv. I then switched to U-Verse phone and internet (TV is not available in my area and I am under contract with Directv.) When setting up my U-verse account I couldn't remember my old email address password so the tech told me to set up a new account. I did.

So then I had 2 separate accounts. Which I was not told would happen. I was worried about losing my original email account b/c my husband has a sub account under that. I called and was told that they could not be combined after being transfered to level 2 customer service. Then I did a chat and I was that I need to set up an AccessID. I tried for several times to set one up and always got an error.

I called back because I wanted to get my Directv on my U-Verse account. I was told that they were having issues with the system and someone would call me back in a couple of hours (they did not). I called back the next day and at this point wanted to at least figure out how to get the email account saved. I was transfered to a web tech who did help my save my email account. So now I had 3 separate accounts, Directv, U-Verse and my old email account.

After a couple more days of trying to set up an AccessID I did another chat. After trying to make that person understand that I was trying to get my Directv attached to my U-Verse account, I was again transfered to a level 2. After a little more explanation, I was told that I did have an Access ID it was the one I set up for my U-Verse and that I needed to call billing to get them to combine the bills. I did that, was again transfered to another person because the original rep couldn't help me. The second person said it was all taken care of.

Of course I got the "it may take two billing cycles to get it all straightened out" line but at no time was I told that I would be getting a separate bill from Directv in the interim and/or was in risk of losing any discounts.

At the beginning of all of this I had called to cancel my HBO, they gave me a $5 discount for 6 months and because I was bundled with ATT a $10 HD discount and would not be able to sign up for it. No one on either side ever told me that this would drop if the when I got U-Verse because it unbundled everything.

So now I have am getting billed through Directv and got a call saying that if I don't sign up for Autopay through them I will lose the $10 HD discount. I called Directv and had to be transfered to someone else there and he said on their end there was not integrated bill request and that I need to call back and make sure that I was opted-in.

(I did manage to link my old email to my new U-Verse account, as the "link an account" options finally showed up.)

I called this morning and was assured that I was set up for it but that it was going to take 2 "billing cycles". I then called Directv to see what was going to happen to my discounts that said that it shouldn't be an issue but I might want to set up autopay any way just be sure.

I have heard from someone who works at another company and deals with combining Directv bills as well that there can be integration issues when I don't have a zero balance and if I set up autopay.

So now I have to wait 2 months, risk losing my discounts, have two separate bills and hope that it all gets resolved but if it is anything like the billing issues I had when I originally bundled my dsl and directv it will take forever. I had to call several times and wait almost 6 months before the dsl discount was properly applied.

So I do not have high hopes and wonder if just going back to Comcast might not be the better option. Then I could just deal with Directv until that contract is up and June and go back to just having Comcast for everything.

Thank you


(I am also going to call the CEO's secretary back and tell her this same story. It is probably not going to get me anywhere but maybe they will fix their customer service a little, I don't hold out much hope.)