Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers
Proudrooster writes "In the past two weeks AT&T has sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service will be suspended in 30 days and permanently disconnected in 60 days. They cited E911 service as the reason. (It is peculiar that AT&T is unable overcome an E911 technical hurdle, since SBC/AT&T is also the local landline company in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.) Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to set up a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those who are unable to transfer their old numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers: 'We are turning off your phone in 30 days, goodbye.'"
All the monopolistic tendencies that you love and none of that silly customer service stuff...
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
They are allowed to become a monopoly once again.
They are allowed to do anything they want.
They are dropping VOIP customers because IPs can be spoofed and firewalls used.
It was messing with the NSA's equipment in tracking people.
They're using their grammar skills there.
It struck me as absolutely bizzare that SBC would want to be associated with the AT&T monopoly identity. Now I see that it goes even further than just a brand association, it is a monopoly mentality in customer management. As long as AT&T thinks that they can get away with treating their customers this way they will continue to treat them this way.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Sorry, some of us are just not that self-important that we need to be a button away from the latest phone call no matter where we are.
These stuff show company philosophies. You shouldnt expect anything that would mean caring for the customer from a company that tried to control and spoil one of the biggest inventions of all time, the internet.
Since it was not profitable, they just scratched off their customers and thats that. Same approach with net neutrality; "Im gonna screw anyone in any fashion as long as i can, and then do away with them"
Read radical news here
You know, sometimes people who call 911 are *unable to speak*. You may be having a stroke, to pick an example. Standard procedure for the 911 operator when 911 is called but no one talks on the other end is to dispatch emergency response to the phone number's location, for precisely this reason. Which can be done only when the 911 operator knows where the phone number is, of course.
Chris Mattern
The problem is your ability to communicate this information over the phone. If you're experiencing shortness of breath while phoning for an ambulance, your location is the kind of thing you would want the operator to be able to find automatically.
I love people who think they are in the right when they arn't and have power that they don't.
You will be charged like it or not, they can and will get the money out of you for a service they are provided. Going "a part is missing" is NO EXCUSE for not paying the bill. If you keep it up they'll take you to court and win, then send a nice bayliff round to remove your goods if you still refuse to pay up.
I suggest you ring up and act POLITELY to the staff and they will help you get your answering service back on. It's all good and well that you go in with your mouth running, but they are people NOT the company, if you appeal to their nature (make them feel you're greatful for their time and help) they are more than likely to help you rather than shrug you off as "that dick who shouted at me".
Remember you're a fish in a barrel, they have all the power (oh yea you have a tiny amount of money, wooo you can buy a lollipop!), even the longest rung (the call centre) have the power over if you get results or not. So if you speak to them as human beings and use a little politeness they will use their little bit (read 'a lot') of power to help you get your service back.
Goto a play like Customers_suck on Livejournal. A lot of it is "this complete back came in earlier, bitched like fuck so I acted politely and pushed her off" but there are also posts like "this nice guy came in, he was really polite and patient even though I was having a horrible day. I was exhausted but bent over backwards to help the poor chap". And maybe you'll see that your mouth and "OMG I'LL SUE YOU! DON'T HOLD ME!" infact make you the biggest bump in your little ego based road.
Be nice, it does more than stops your mouth hitting you on the ass.
I like muppets.
Ooh, ooh. I've heard this kind of issue before. Seeing as I work support for a cable company (that will remain nameless) doing VoIP support, let's go through this line by line and translate, shall we?
The Phone Company DOES care. You damn right they care. They like to get paid.
I think my phone company is nothing but a bunch of greedy bastards, so I will use this fact to treat anyone I deal with from said company like a piece of shit.
I refuse to wait on hold. Any phone company that offers an answering service for its customers certainly should be able to set one up where its customers can leave a message for them.
I am self-important and feel that I have the right to talk to someone right away at busy times, screw anyone waiting patiently in the queue, I shouldn't have to wait 5, er... 40 minutes for a rep!
My answering service for instance has not been working since last November. I actually think they shut it off deliberately because when I didn't like the over billing I contacted Investor Relations and their legal department. Seems the phone company cares about its Investors. Seems this is a direct line into the corporate management. Go figure eh?
My answering service stopped working at the same time I was dealing with other billing issues, most likely something that happened while dealing with those issues, something that got overlooked by the rep that legal had me dealing with, but rather than bring it up with them, I'd rather just not pay my bill, because if its not fixed magically, I'LL SUE, I TOLD THEM I'D SUE!@111111
Note: The legal department has to deal with legal issues. If you want something done then write a letter or fax the legal department and threaten them. They are smart and they are high priced help. The Legal Department does not want to deal with this shit either.
Always talk to legal first instead of the people paid to help you. They'll go out of their way to just shut you up so you're not a nuisance. You always come before anyone else, after all!
Well - seems the COMPANY PRESIDENT phoned me. Seems he didn't like me suggesting that after my bill has been PAID IN FULL BEFORE THE DUE DATE that its not ok for them to restrict my line and seems they also don't like me changing the amount owing and paying what I owe and telling them it is THEIR job to straighten their accounting out not mine and I'm not willing to wait on hold while they do it
Seems they think it is My responsibility to take up with the bank the time it takes for the bank to transfer the money into their accounts. This is despite the fact that they admitted the money was in their account at the time they restricted the service and they simply didn't check. The bank was excellent. Note when the line is restricted someone will answer the phone. This person noted the bill had been paid in full. They left the line restricted for about 4 days. They restricted it the day the bill was due. I paid in advance.
Some rep called me sounding important, so it had to be the company president. He has nothing better to do than talk with me, of course! Anyway, apparently either I made a payment in escrow or mailed a check and did not give enough time for it to PROCESS before the due date, and also decided they charged me too much, so I didn't pay the minimum due. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DISCONNECT MY SERVICE IF I SEND PAYMENT 2 DAYS BEFORE THE DUE DATE WHAT I THINK IS DUE!
My Position: THE BANK IS YOUR AGENT, NOT MINE. You pay the bank for this service. Not me. If YOU have an issue with the bank then YOU take it up with the bank. Not Me! I told the guy to walk down the hall and ask his legal department.
HOW DARE THEY GIVE ME FLACK FOR MAKING PAYMENTS AT THE LAST SECOND! If they are still processing the check and can't verify if it has cleared, ITS NOT MY PROBLEM! I don't have time in my busy life for things like mailing payments a week or more ahead of time, or making credit card payments online/over the phone! I told that
Well this doesn't bode well for VOIP on the iPhone, under Cingular, does it?
You must not remember $0.25/min long distance in 1980 dollars, with no alternative carriers and no other options. And if yo udon't remember that, you certainly don't remmeber having to lease a phone - never owning it - in perpetuity becuase if you didn't lesae one you didn't get service.
What they should have done - and what they should do with cable, power, and all public utility services which have installed infrastructure - is to require separation of physical plant from the actual data/power/other services. No company or conglomerate may own any part of both a plant and a service.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm not trying to say that you haven't been wronged by AT&T, I'm just saying that believing it's "their problem" isn't correct, because it's obviously YOUR problem, because YOU'RE the one whose answering service isn't working. And instead of acting like an adult you rant like a little kid and pound and stamp your fists and threaten to beat them up if they don't "pick up the ball." I've worked customer service jobs in the past and although I've never refused to help someone based on them being rude I sure as hell wasn't going any extra miles for them. But I also have known other fellow agents who had no remorse about fucking around with people like you that demand, demand, demand. Usually the ruder you are the longer you're on hold, that's not a coincidence.
You're taking the proper action but you need to chill out on the hate speech. Realize that the "Company" is just an illusion and that you're really talking to someone that just needs to pay their rent at the end of the month and doesn't need some dick call them up and refuse to stay on hold, even though the agent most likely can't do anything about it themselves. Take legal action if you must but don't get all bent out of shape about it! Or, you know, you could switch providers....
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
When I subscribed to Time Warner Cable, several times I stated I wanted Digital+Variety tier.
They hooked me up, they charged me for Digital tier (no Variety), and they installed Digital tier (no Variety).
Didn't take me all that long to call customer service to bitch. I wasn't (at least intentionally) rude, just like "just thought I'd mention, I asked for Digital+Variety, you only gave me Digital (and only charged me for Digital)" - took it to be an honest mistake, and in a few minutes it was corrected. First day was a bit jumpy but I've been running fine ever since. Politeness and the benefit of the doubt go a long way.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I'm so happy I live in RI. Here, the state and it's citizens own the E-911 system. We only get the intrado db lookup from Verizon. So it's no problem to get VoIP to work with our E-911 system.
But at&t is blowing smoke up peoples asses and they should know it. They OWN the damned E-911 systems and could easily interconnect it. But they won't because they're trying to prop up dying copper pair.
Coax and fiber are the future, not copper pair, at least not for OSP. As it is right now, the regional operators (All three of them!) have pretty much no idea what they have for OSP when it comes to copper. Let me qualify that a little, in the corridors between Boston and New York, then Chicago, etc, cities, they have no clue.
The nice thing about coax or fiber is that it has broadband characteristics, so provisioning is done at the terminal ends, not the OSP side.
Long (like anti-trust old AT&T breakup) time Southern Bell / Bell South customer here. This is precisely the reason why I'm sad to see BellSouth leave and the new AT&T arrive. More CC (corporately correct) behavior than ever and fewer customer services. Everyone can look forward to more crap and less service as the new AT&T tightens its grip.
E911 is a convenient excuse, nothing more. They're killing it because they know Verizon will come after them as soon as they're done beating Vonage into a bloody pulp. AT&T has bigger pockets, and Verizon knows they'll settle so they're nipping it in the bud while they have the chance.
- Adults who live in houses, as opposed to transient youngsters who move from apartment to apartment
- People with DSL connections
- People that understand how 911 works
- People that understand that the landline is pretty darn reliable, and that using only a mobile is a Single Point of Failure
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
In fact the phone company can and do still do all these things, but cell phones and other competition is holding them at bay. The interesting thing is that even though a full service competitor can give all the treats for half the cost, the big bells are still in business. Even though cell phones can give nation access for free, and calling cards cards can give cheap service, people still pay huge amounts of money to call next door.
The phone industry is not the profiteering heathens they once were, but they by no means have been put out to pasture. They bought up the cell phone companies and then added the customer hostile fees we had on land lines. They destroyed the last mile internet access industry, which was growing 10 years ago, to the point the shining example of the industry, Speakeasy, has now been subsumed by the customer service hostile mass sales driven Best Buy, and as an extension MS.
I have no idea why ATT does not want to do VOIP. It will likely just drive those customers to cable. Perhaps ATT has plans to convert VOIP to their cable service. What I do know is that the bells have never really been behind DSL, and it appears even more likely now that thier intention has always been to destroy internet access at the consumer. Fortunately, I live in a place where last mile access will soon be wireless.
OTOH, from what I have seen with VOIP, it is not the most reliable communication method. It is cheap, but fraught with complexities that makes it unreliable. If we take the positive perspective, perhaps it was just not making any money for ATT, and they did not see how it could. They know that a serious business is going to worry more about reliability than the communication costs, which are most not that significant. For example, I recall many years ago trying to convert an office from a dedicated fax machine, with the truly expensive paper, to a computer and printer. Since the fax was so reliable, and the risk of losing a single order so grave, a new even more fancy fax machine was bought, even though the computer solution would have resulted in nearly zero initial and operating costs.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The posting makes it sound like AT&T has begun a process of systematically canceling its CallVantage customers' service. This is not the case; I, too, have CallVantage and it was sounding crystal clear as of five minutes ago.
What is happening is that certain CallVantage customers have always had trouble obtaining E911 service. In the past, I think what has happened is that those customers got letters saying, "We are working diligently to provide you with E911 service, but you must understand that YOU DO NOT HAVE IT RIGHT NOW AND IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO UNDERSTAND THAT. It should be here soon." Now it sounds like AT&T have had a change of heart. There is some unspecified number of customers who have not been able to obtain E911 through CallVantage to date, and AT&T now seems to be giving up on trying to get that service to them. Because of government regulations, AT&T are not allowed to provide VoIP without E911, so they really have little choice but to cancel the service for those customers.
If you live in an area/circumstance where you can't get E911 for whatever reason (which is out of your control) AT&T will no longer allow you to sign up for VoIP, nor will they allow you to continue your existing service.
Breakfast served all day!