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Man Emails AT&T's CEO, Gets Threatened With C&D Order
An anonymous reader writes "After its recent bait and switch, AT&T went ahead and threatened someone emailing the company CEO about customer service concerns, namely with a query about tethering and eligibility rates. The email author also put up a voicemail recording of the company's response and how he managed to contact the CEO in the first place — through The Consumerist." As Engadget notes (as does the complaining customer's updated page), AT&T did at least offer an apology for the threat of legal action, which the company says was unauthorized.
Or if you live in an area like me, it's Comcast cable, or nothing else. There is no choice.
It always annoys me to no end when I have to call their dismal tech support line, and am greeted with "Thank you for choosing Comcast!"....
Steve Jobs says, "You can do that?"
It's bait and switch because they advertised $15 / month for 250 MB and $30 / month of "unlimited" (5 GB) for the iPad - you know, that same iPad that's only been on sale (well, with 3G) for about a month. AT&T advertised that you will have no contract, can change your plan at any time (go up, down, or no data all together) at no charge, and that you can have unlimited data on your iPad to watch all the Netflix, browsing, apps, etc you could want. So yes, telling a customer X to get them to buy a product and then just a couple weeks later making changes that make it impossible for the customer to use what they bought under the terms with which they purchased it, is a bait and switch.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Current customers are grandfathered in and can continue to receive what they signed up for. For now.
I agree that changing things after a month or two is pretty crappy, but I guess on some level no-contract is a two-way street.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
It worries me slightly that someone would send out a letter threatening legal action without even considering whether or not they had the authority to do that.
Every day I try to be a little more cynical, but I can't keep up.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
"Dear Mr. Tony Hayward, we, the collective fishermen from the Gulf Coast would like to apologize for taking your life away from you. We realize that you, as a CEO of British Petroleum, have had a hard time what with all these US politicians, sportsmen, fishermen, tourists, vertebrates and invertebrates being a little miffed that your company continues to vomit well in excess of 5,000 barrels a day of poisonous hydrocarbons. You, as a CEO, shouldn't have to surrender your golf game or your wife's Sunday tea just because your company and its subcontractors are poisoning the living shit out of the one of the most economically important strips of water in North America. Please except our humble apologies.
Signed - the people, animals and single-celled life you're wiping out."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Try reading.
The guy was complaining about iPhone stuff, tethering on his iPhone, etc etc.
Since AT&T is the 'only' provider of service for iWidgets that makes this an apple story too.
And it's actually filed under 4 categories, not just Apple.
Looks like the old slogan is still true: "AT&T. We don't care. We don't have to."
~X~
I guess I just dont get this whole "email the CEO" thing. We keep seeing people getting replies from Steve Jobs (no doubt really from his team) and I have read of people having luck with other big companies.
But there are two parts to this. First - someone is frustrated and has nowhere else to turn. Second - the CEO (or whomever) may actually nt know about the practice.
A couple of years ago I got a lemon of a Whirlpool refrigerator. After three trips out by the service company (A&E -- don't ever buy an appliance whose warranty service is done by A&E), and five times ordering the wrong part, and several failed attempts to escalate within A&E... I got annoyed and started doing some digging.
I learned the email of the CEO Whirlpool. I took the time to write out the saga -- including the three refrigerators full of lost food, several days spent waiting for service folks (who were either late, didn't show, or "oops" had the wrong part. Did I mention they get paid for each trip by Whirlpool regardless of whether they fix anything?)...
The result? The CEO sent their general council head an email saying "take care of this, it shouldn't be happening." The general counsel got the right people involved -- people who didn't realize the scam A&E was running. I got a new refrigerator (two tiers up from the one I bought) and some cash. A&E at the very least got a firm speaking to, but I suspect it went a bit further than that. The CEO sent me a note thanking me for raising the issue.
So yeah... I could have just sat at home and whined about how unfair life is and how Whirlpool really sucks. Or I could do about two hours of research to find the right email address, send a well-written email detailing how their customers were being treated (including links to several blogs and forums indicating that my experience was not unique) by their service contractor, and see results.
I think the problem would go away if they just stopped answering normal customers emails to the CEO and executives, or at least just replied with the customer service contact details.
I guess that depends on how you see the "problem" -- if the problem is a whiny customer customer annoying you his petty complaints, I guess that tactic might work. On the other hand if the problem is that your customers are being treated poorly by the company you're putatively in charge of-- well no, that problem won't go away if you ignore it. It will just get worse.
Is Comcast that bad?
Are they that bad? Well, lets see. The last time I had them, I had no internet service for 3 days. After repeated calls and a tech coming out I got no resolution. Finally I took it upon myself to install a packet sniffer, and what do you know...all of the IP traffic on my subnet was in an entirely different range than the IP I was being assigned. I picked a random IP in the valid range that appeared to not be in use and statically assigned it, and *mysteriously* every was suddenly working. I had to wade through first level tech support, convince them to let me talk to a network engineer (because he had no clue what I was talking about), and then tell that guy how to fix my internet service.
Then there is the billing department. The bill is conveniently itemized so that you can see the comcast charges, and then separate entries for the franchise fees, city taxes, universal service fees, etc. Comcast raised the bill by exactly $1 with absolutely no mention in any of my previous 6 bills about a coming change. That $1 increase was in the line item for the comcast charge. Yet when I spoke to the billing department, they were insistent that they absolutely did not raise the rate on me, and that the increased charge was solely due to city taxes. Even showing them my previous bill and pointing out exactly where the increase occurred could not budge them. They blatantly lied to me, and continued to lie even when shown evidence that they were clearly lying.
Now, compare that to WOW, where I can personally email the CTO directly about a problem, and he'll happily respond with a technical answer, and even admit fault if something went wrong on their end. Or with the install techs, who routinely show up in the first 30 minutes of the 4 hour service window, instead of the last hour (or even after the 4 hour window). And those techs are always willing to chat with me about how much better WOW treats them and makes it easier to do their job.
yeah, comcast is that bad. I kind of feel bad for the comcast guys that come around to my door every now and then trying to get me to switch back. They probably feel like I treat them as if they're carrying the plague or something, as I won't even humor them to listen to their sales pitch. I'm very polite in declining to hear their offer (I know the guys going door to door really have nothing to do with my experiences), but they always act like they've never seen someone so dissatisfied with a company before.