Needless to say, I visited U-verse tier 1 technical support, tier 2 technical support, tier 2 static IP group technical support, ConnecTech sales rep, ConnecTech tech rep, AT&T DSL tech, AT&T DSL tech #2 (I think this was a screwed up forward), U-verse tier 1 support, U-verse tier 2 static IP group tech. And that was all in my third and final call.
Let me start by professing my utter incredulity with how disorganized and disconnected AT&T's phone support systems are. Disconnected because U-verse reps know nothing about my account information for my home phone, even though it is all one company: AT&T. AT&T maintains U-verse, home phone, and wireless as three separate divisions within their company, as best as I can tell. This makes it sheer agony when dealing with reps from across these divisions. Disorganized, because with each rep that I talked to I had to provide my details again: name, account number, etc. With the ConnecTech reps this was particularly grievous as they insisted on asking me questions that were totally unrelated to my problem, like how many computers I had and what operating systems were on them! I could feel myself getting more indignant with each ridiculous question, and expressed as much; to which the rep simply apologized that this script must be fulfilled before any further action could be made. AT&T truly reduces their phone reps to simple drones. It is frustrating on the part of the customer, and I'm sure on the part of the phone drone as well.
I never should have been connected to ConnecTech in the first place. That I ever arrived there was an error on the first U-verse tier 2 static IP group rep's part, and in fact, another rep later confirmed my suspicion. Because ultimately, I ended up right where I knew I should have been in the first place: U-verse tier 2 static IP group. At long last (over 2 hours later), I ended up with a rep that I could barely hear (I think he had his mic way too far away from his mouth; I kept asking him to repeat what he had just said and more than once wasn't even sure if he was talking to me or not -- when in fact he was), but finally someone took down the two pieces of information I had waited over 2 hours to provide: the one static IP address and the domain name for the reverse mapping. Then he promptly informed me that it would take up to 48 hours to take effect (note: he was just filling in a form, after all), and that if I called back again for a similar request they would charge me. Great. Thanks AT&T. You're going to charge me, after I wasted two hours talking to your powerless reps armed with the worst customer support systems ever, in order to convey two pieces of information to a rep who just typed them into a form that took less than two minutes, for the pleasure of enduring the same pain again. Is there a definition of injustice in this world? Yes.
