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AT&T Wireless Fumbles Number Portability
cloudscout writes "The FCC is demanding that AT&T Wireless Services explain their number portability failures. Apparently, tens of thousands of customers are having their number portability requests delayed because of computer system problems at AT&T Wireless. Sadly, the FCC did not say they were going to be imposing fines for this breach of regulations yet but I'm sure that will follow if things don't improve quickly." Reader (54)T-Dub adds: "As many of you already reported on wed, there have been some pretty serious delays for people switching cellphone providers according to this NYTimes article (free reg required). Most notably former AT&T customers can expect to wait up to a week for their number to switch."
This problem relates both to people trying to switch FROM AT&T and to people trying to switch TO AT&T... while it may be a stalling tactic on AT&T, it seems unlikely and they wouldn't want to give themselves such a PR black eye.
All the major carriers except AT&T are using one portability company. Looks like AT&T ought to explore using that same firm.
There are more horror stories at Wirelessadvisor.com.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
There's someone on here (can't remember who) who's tagline goes something like 'Never ascribe to malice what can be satisfactorily explained by incompetence'. I doubt this is really a 'policy' by AT&T ...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It's not a stalling tactic on their part. I'm about 95% sure of this because of some unrelated problems I've been having with AT&T Wireless lately.
They recently switched to a new management system for their GSM phones, and they're having a very difficult time getting everyone up to speed on it. Their website has been broken for accessing account information for a while, and their retail folks barely have a clue what they're doing when it comes to GSM stuff. I was trying to get a credit for a promotion recently, and it took over 3 months, and several different people, before it was done without using the GSM management systems at all.
So, while it doesn't seem that they're screwing up number portability deliberately, they do have some other problems going on. You don't introduce a new system to service without making sure that everyone that needs to use it is already trained on it. And, of course, that it works and interoperates with the rest of your systems properly.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
AT&T has a reputation with pulling this crap. It might not be with everyone, but it happens more than it really should.
I've known a few people who've worked for AT&T who claim some of the stuff they do is no good.
For example, when I switched long distance carriers from AT&T, I *knew* I'd have some kind of issue with it. Lo and behold, 2 weeks after terminating service with them, AT&T mysteriously accepts an order "placed by me" and reactivates my service through them. I call back to cancel and to make sure it's cancelled and they tell me I was removed from the system.
A week later, it happened again. I guess I must be sleepwalking or something, because, again, they claim I place a service reactivation order.
In the end it all got straigtened out, but after hearing from people who used to work there that they practice some shady business tactics, it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that the number switching would "mysteriously" fail.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
That one company was found to have purposely *caused* a 3 day delay, and was bombarding customers with ad pitches hoping they'd stay.
Guess we know who it is - and these days I'm not surprised. (I'm a former employee)
I abhor AT&T wireless, they have been a constant source of grief for me. Recently they have placed their own towers in the San Luis Obispo, Californa area that can not handle the load of their customers. It usually takes about 8 attempts to make a call before I can get out. Calls to AT&T Wireless resulted in the Customer Service representative yelling at me and treating me with a complete lack of respect. Once I re-finance my car, I'm going to cancel my 2-year contract and tell them to go to hell when they try to collect the early termination fee. If I wasn't a college student, I would love to be involved in a lawsuit against them.
Only recently have I been able to get decent service. This was only after I mentioned to the rep that I has just submited a complaint to the FCC.
Back in the beginning of November my phone died and I went to the ATT store to try to buy a new one. I was told to come back the next day because the computer system was not working. I did, and the same thing happened for the next WEEK. That's right NO gsm phones were activated for a whole WEEK.
Once I did get a phone, I emailed their customer service and told them how badly they screwed up and wasted my time. This is the point where good companies realize they made a mistake and go out of their way to fix it, but instead ATT offered me a measly $5 credit. I found this insulting as a loyal customer for ~2 years who has just been given a huge runaround and inconvenience. So I replaied to the email saying so.
Now at the bottom of every email from ATT they append this:
" If you need to respond to this message, we suggest you reply directly to this email for the best service. Please remember to leave all documents attached for reference."
which I certainly did. So to follow the course of our correspondence, all you had to do was start at the bottom and read upwards (like any normal email thread). So about a week later I get this simple reply:
" Thank you for contacting AT&T Wireless regarding the e-mail you recently sent us. Unfortunately, we are unable to determine the nature of your request. If you would like to email us back with more detailed information, we would be more than happy to assist you further. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."
So the point of this rant is that ATT is full of technically incompetant people, and this story does not surprise me one bit.
jnichols@www jnichols $ host forums.attwireless.net
Host forums.attwireless.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
jnichols@www jnichols $
I'm a former AT&T Wireless customer care employee. Oddly enough, it was the only call center job where I did *not* hear about people having problems getting through. At the very least, they didn't outsource all the staff to India or contractors.
A lot of the current problems are related to a massive switch to Siebel's backend setup. That could explain the excessive hold times.
They may have known for a year that this was in the works, but they were fighting it, and hoping it wouldn't come to pass. No sense paying your techies to undermine the moral of your lawyers by assuming the latter were going to fail to prevent it, eh?
And you find that excuse acceptable? All the while the bastards were fighting it they were charging me a monthly fee over it. They don't want it, but they have no problem charging me for it.
They knew it was coming and should have been implementing it, even if they thought they could beat it. Cover all of your bases, you know? This is a major fuckup on the part of whomever decided "We can win this fight, no sense in working on it." I hope the FCC hits them hard.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
There is a reason why I submitted this story in the first place. I have been trying to get my number ported from AT&T to T-Mobile for 11 days now with no luck. Yesterday afternoon I called their number portability group and sat on hold for 5 hours, 10 minutes before I finally gave up.
I have never before experienced such incompetence on such a large scale.
I work for AT&T Wireless, and have been right in the thick of things for about eight months. Let me tell you, it's far worse than what the press is indicating.
Apparently corporate favored hiring Deloitte consultants over their full time employees to save costs and to prepare for a possible buyout, and they simply didn't get the job done. Their efforts can be measured by the numbers I've gotten wind of. Wireless's passthrough rates for LNP are not even above 20% for port out, and they're logging about 10-15 thousand tickets per day at their help desks. That's right, per day.
Wireless also chose Siebel and Vitria to work out back end systems, and they were both pieces of hand-picked corporate garbage (and they were told way in advance by former full time employees, but were shunned as 'not being agreeable to the team') that have proven unscaleable, unreliable, and though modified incessantly, not up to the task of doing LNP. Apparently no one has any idea what we are going to do now. AT&T Wireless is stuck with a backend system that we're now locked into because of contractual agreements with the aforementioned companies.
IMO, Corporate has torn the soul and guts out of this company in order to turn a profit, and now their gonna reap what they've sown over the course of last year.
I worked there for a few months as a temp, and let me tell you, their processing is incredibly manual. We would actually print out web orders and manually enter them into their arcane, VT100-based order entry system. Like going back in a time-warp. I was shocked at how old skool it was and how manual (and error-prone) everything was.
It is important to note that AT&T has an opportunity to gain just as many customers as anyone else from this. People on other networks might be interested in switching to AT&T. From this point of view, dragging their heels would not make much sense. My guess is just that they are getting way more requests than they had expected, and are having huge technical problems.
Note that on their home page links to their wireless plan have been dead for the last two days. I doubt that is something they meant to do. My guess is that life over at the AT&T wireless offices for the last week have been a chaotic nightmare, with everyone getting about three hours of sleep each night. I bet it is just a big mess.
On another note, it seems that if there is going to be true number portability, there should be some sort of national database that is shared. Who would administer this, I don't know, but having each carrier have separate databases gives me some hints as to how much of a technical mess this system could turn into.
I've had AT&T Wireless for about 4 years now and have had no complaints about them. When I started, I bought a nokia 5165, got some minutes, and 6 months of free text messaging. When I called after the 6 month period was up, I asked for them to drop the messaging service since I didn't use it that much. Their reply was "how about another 6 months free?" This continued each 6 months for about 2 years. All good things must come to an end though, and they finally started charging a couple bucks (since then I have learned that I cannot live without text messaging).
The reception has been the best I've encountered, experiencing it for 2 years in the SF bay area, and the previous 2 years in Nevada. My employers have bought me other providers, but none would work as well as AT&T, so I kept my personal phone with them. (If you must know, cingular's reception was horrible for me. Of course your mileage can and will vary. Sprint works okay for me, but AT&T still works better.)
As for service... I've only had to call maybe a dozen times in 4 years. All of the times I've been impressed with their service. Or should I say, while my view of the world's customer service is at an all time low, AT&T has provided some of the least crappy customer service, irregardless of industry. They've reversed late charges just because I've asked, and I don't recall ever being on hold a long time.
The last time I called was about 3 months ago. My 5165 died (4 years for a cellphone is impressive, these days a cellphone's lifespan seems to be about 6 hours), so I bought a nokia 3360 online, called customer service up, was on hold for about 3 minutes, and it took maybe another 4-5 minutes to get the new phone activated.
So I'm happy. But I'm also knocking on wood, since the last company I praised on slashdot was my SBC DSL, and as a result, my DSL line went down about an hour later. Heh. Also, as it's been mentioned before in these comments, the problems with number portability are probably not some evil scheme by AT&T Wireless. Their problems are affecting both switchovers TO them as well as FROM them. Remember, being evil means screwing the customer AFTER they become a customer of yours, not before.
Standard disclaimer: All corporations are evil. Some are just not as evil as others.
I've asked to speak to managers, and they don't let me. I asked after the crazy lady went nuts on me, and she gave me some lame reason why she could (would) not connect me to a supervisor. I called back again and asked to speak to a supervisor, but they wouldn't connect me, again because of some dumb reason. I think the reasons were because I didn't know the "password to my account". This is amusing, because I have no memory of ever setting a password on the account.
I snagged an Ericsson T610 recently...free after rebates, with a Bluetooth headset thrown in for another $20. It works with my Palm, so there should be no reason why it wouldn't work with your Mac. The rate plan I'm on with T-Mobile includes free unlimited data on certain ports (25, 80, 110, and 143 IIRC), which would get you your mail. An extra $10 per month should enable SSH. (I might go for that myself, as I haven't figured out how to get VersaMail to read anything beyond my main inbox...mailing-list traffic gets filed separately.) As things stand now, I'm paying only $10 more per month than I was spending with AT&T, and I'm getting more than double the airtime and data for my notebook and my Palm. (Yes, the T610 has a camera...it's little more than a novelty feature. It won't exactly replace my Coolpix 995 anytime soon.)
(In the past month, the price has come down...you can now make $50 after rebates at Amazon when you get this phone.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I don't understand why people put up with the phone companies in the USA.
In the UK, nearly all phone contracts are for one year. After a year, the customer only has to give one months notice to leave - none of this crap about being locked in for another year unless they take a new handset and sign a contract.
We can also change tariff mid contract, and it doesn't affect the contract end date.
We have had number portability for years now, enforced up by OFTEL the telecomms watchdog.
All phone companies have to unlock phones at the end of the contract if the customer asks, again enforced by law.
I don't understand why in the USA, phone companies get away with extending contracts by another year at the slightest excuse, locking customers into 2 year contracts, refusing to unlock phones for new SIM cards, putting extra "taxes" on the bill with no real basis, and dragging their feet over number portability. Why does the general public put up with it???
Steve.
A latent existence
I went into t-mobile on Monday the 24th and filled out all of the paperwork. 12 days later, 10 hours of hold time, and several nasty calls later, my phone still isn't ported.
ATT's system keeps coming back with some "Not Authorized" message when they try to port it. I'm pissed.
I wouldn't be switching, but ATT's coverage map says they have native coverage where I work, but they don't. I roam on t-mobile for 69 cents a minute. That's bullshit.
T-mobile customers don't pay anything to roam on ATT's network either. ATTWS's GSM network was slowly getting better until they signed the roaming agreement with t-mobile. Now they really have no incentive to keep building their network when they're sucking down 70 cents a minute from their customers that roam. To make it all worse, they TDMA network has gone to hell for some reason, and there are huge dead spots now where there used to be full signal. With all of the IT problems that I've heard about over there, I think they are in deep trouble.
Too bad, I've been with them for 7 years, and was happy until about a year ago. Now that I started a new job a couple of weeks ago and don't get coverage where they say I should, that's the last straw. I've complained several times and they just tell me they'll send me a new phone, even though I've tried using 3 different ones. They told my friend when he complained that he should just switch providers. ATT Wireless sucks now.
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