Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: att, tech, support | Themes: Smartphones
Not the illegal kind, but the extra-terrestrial kind. I had an exchange with a member of AT&T's online tech support staff today that leads me to believe that the employee is either not human, or has been instructed to do its best to befuddle me with incomprehensible, extremely complex language.
Don't believe me? See for yourself. I wanted to find out if my husband and I (one 3G iPhone, one regular iPhone) could switch to a family plan with my parents without incurring a huge fee.
In a tech support email earlier this week, I wrote:
Q:Enter your contract expiration question below:
A:Hi, I am interested in moving onto a family plan with other members
of my family. Please let me know if I would incur any charges switching
onto a family plan or whether I can switch over onto that contract
without penalty. thanks.
Three days later, I heard back from AT&T. Check out the mind-boggling response below, if you dare. Then, please tell me if you think the response was a) adequately clear, b) written by an alien, c) written by a human instructed to be incomprehensible, or d) a well-meaning but overzealous attempt to be informational and comprehensive, yet failing due to overuse of corporate-speak and non-native English.
From: AT&T Email Customer Care for Wireless
Date: Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 7:07 AM
Subject: Re: Wireless from AT&T Customer Email - West - [CUST]
Dear Rachel,
Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T regarding if you would be
charged any fees or penalties for joining a Family Talk plan with your
family members. My name is Elizabeth Allen, and I am happy to help you
with your inquiry.
I can definitely understand your concern regarding if you would receive
charges for switching to a family plan with other members of your
family. After carefully reviewing your account, I am showing you are
currently on an individual Nation 450 Rollover Unlimited Mobile to
Mobile and 5,000 Night and Weekend Minutes. I also show you have another
wireless line on the account on an individual rate plan. You do have the
option to combine 2 existing lines of service on your account to a
Family Talk plan. No fees would apply to change your rate plan other
than the prorated charges from the old plan to the new plan.
If your inquiry is to move your line(s) of service to a different
account, this would be considered a transfer of service. It is possible
to transfer the financial or billing responsibility of an account to
another party by completing a Transfer of Service. A credit evaluation
must be performed on the new customer, and a deposit may be required.
Once the deposit is paid and the transfer is complete, the billing name
and corresponding information is changed.
The receiving account holder must be 18 years of age. Exception:
Alabama - 19 years of age and Puerto Rico - 21 years of age. We will
need for the account holder to give permission to the customer that will
be taking over the account and that customer must call in to complete
the change. Authorization Note is valid for 60 days. Financial
Responsibility will remain with the original customer until the transfer
is complete.
The account balance will not transfer to the new account. The Transfer
of Service fee will be waived if the: ?Original account holder is
deceased. Customer is requesting a Transfer of Service to be eligible
for combined billing and/or subscribing to the Unity plan or the
receiving account is already enrolled in combined billing. It may take
10-15 minutes for the Transfer of Service team to run the credit
evaluation, build the new account, and complete the transfer. If the
receiving account holder requires Relocation, the Transfer of Service
must be completed first. Once the transfer is complete the original
account holder will receive a final (prorated) invoice. Any deposit will
be released back to the open balance. The phone number belongs to the
new account holder.
Once the transfer is complete:
The original account holder will receive a final (prorated) invoice and
any deposit will be released back to the open balance; the phone number
belongs to the new account holder.
Please note the following information regarding how a transfer of
service affects Rollover minutes:
With a transfer of service when the plan is an individual calling plan
Rollover minutes are automatically transferred to the new customer.
If the transfer of service removes only one line from a family talk
calling plan the Rollover minutes will not automatically transfer. The
rollover balance will stay with the remaining lines that are still on
Family Talk.
The receiving account holder must accept an 11 month contract from the
date the transfer takes place.
Exception: For iPhone and converted accounts, the current contract will
be applied to the receiving account (if one exists).
When a complete Family Talk group is moved, and all lines are
transferred to a new account, the Rollover minutes will automatically
transfer.
An $18 Transfer of Service fee (per line) will be assessed to the
receiving account holder.
Rollover minutes will not transfer on prepaid accounts.
Here are some additional terms associated with a transfer of service.
Discontinued rate plans cannot be transferred to new customers
The original contract will transfer over to the new account.
If you would like to process this transfer of service please call
customer service at 1-800-331-0500. The hours of operations are Monday
through Friday 7:00am to 9:00 pm, Saturday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm and Closed
on Sunday.
The current Family Talk shared minute plan offerings are:
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 550 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.45 per minute
$50.00-primary
$9.99- for each additional line
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 700 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.45 per minute
$60.00-primary line
$9.99-for each additional line
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 1,400 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.40 per minute
$80.00-primary line
$9.99-for each additional line
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 2,100 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.35 per minute
$100.00-primary line
$9.99-for each additional line
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 3,000 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.25 per minute
$140.00-primary line
$9.99-for each additional line
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 4,000 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.20 per minute
$190.00-primary line
$9.99-for each additional line
AT&T Nation Family Talk with 6,000 Shared Rollover minutes, Unlimited
Mobile to Mobile and Unlimited Night and Weekend Minutes with an overage
rate of $0.20 per minute
$290.00-primary line
$9.99-for each additional line
Night and Weekend minutes apply Monday through Thursday between 9PM and
6AM, and from Friday at 9PM until Monday at 6AM. Mobile to Mobile calls
are any calls that placed to or received from an AT&T phone. The overage
rate is the per-minute rate charged for minutes used in excess of the
rollover minutes included with your calling plan. Rollover minutes not
used in a given month will be retained for a period of 12 months from
the close of the billing cycle in which they are accumulated, and are
used to cover any overage in succeeding months. Further information on
rates, services and plan features can be obtained from att.com/wireless,
by selecting the ?Shop AT&T? option and ?Rate Plans.?
If you decide you want to change your plan please call customer service
at 1-800-331-0500 or by dialing 611 from your wireless phone.
You can change your plan via the online website. Please keep in mind, if
the rate plan is changed via the website the change will not take effect
until the start of the next billing cycle. I have listed the steps for
changing your plan online:
1. Log in to your "My Wireless" page on att.com/wireless
2. Click on "change rate" which is located under Rate Plan & feature.
3. Scroll down to the Rate Plans Available.
4. Choose & select the new plan.
5. Confirm the price plan change by pressing ok
Should you need to contact us again, you can contact customer service at
1-800-331-0500 from any landline phone or 611 from your AT&T Wireless
phone or by sending us another email via the contact link through your
online account. The hours of operations are Monday through Friday 7:00
am to 9:00 pm, Saturday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm and closed on Sunday. To send
your request via email, please follow these steps:
1. Log in to your "My Wireless" page on att.com/wireless
2. Click on contact us, which is located by the search link on the top
right hand corner of page
3. Scroll down to bottom and select the link to email us.
4. Follow prompts to send us an email.
AT&T Online Customer Care is unable to assist with email requests unless
these requests are submitted via the MyWireless section of
ATT.com/wireless. If you follow these steps to email us, this will make
sure your email was submitted properly and that you will get a response
to your question.
We are here to assist you. I encourage you to visit us at
www.att.com/wireless often to view your monthly account statements, make
payments and shop for new products and services. We greatly appreciate
the opportunity to serve you. Please let us know if we can assist you in
any other way, and thank you for choosing the new AT&T.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Allen
AT&T
Online Customer Care Professional
Clearly she didn't understand your request and was trying to give you complete information, maybe a little too complete. What I would do is use your AT&T phone and call them. Sometimes you just need to reach out and touch someone. All jokes aside, you could have easily cleared up any misconceptions on the spot by having an interactive communication. Emails are fine for some things, but they will never be as efficient as the good old telephone call.
Agreed. For some people, though, waiting the 30 minutes on hold that his often required before you reach a human being is not an option during the work day. On the other hand--couldn't this tech support person have started out her email like this: "Unless one of the scenarios below apply to you, your transfer fee will be $18 per line."
"The account balance will not transfer to the new account. The Transfer
of Service fee will be waived if the: ?Original account holder is
deceased"
I lol'ed.
Actually, I see the answer to your question. I also the 'dumas' add-on that she must put on every email so AT&T covers itself. Now, you can thank their attorneys for this crap so i suggest finding one and throwing him a couple of smacks. I'm sure you can use this blog post for an insanity plea.
Silly me. Ever heard the expression,"Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer"? Apparently the same does not hold true for, "Ask a simple question, get a simple answer."
"The account balance will not transfer to the new account. The Transferof Service fee will be waived if the: ?Original account holder isdeceased"I lol'ed.
Me too!
I think your question was too generic. You only wanted to know if you would incur fees for transferring, the short answer was a maybe. How you transfer opens up a whole can of worms.
30-minutes to talk to customer service? yikes, sounds like you need a better provider (oh, iPhone user, sorry).
I think your question was too generic. You only wanted to know if you would incur fees for transferring, the short answer was a maybe. How you transfer opens up a whole can of worms.30-minutes to talk to customer service? yikes, sounds like you need a better provider (oh, iPhone user, sorry).
Ha ha ha. Yes, I do love my iPhone, so I am stuck with AT&T. But I put in 10 years with Sprint, and they are no better (in terms of customer support wait times).
Paragraph 2 seemed like a sufficient answer.
This seems like something that was copied and pasted in from some library of responses.
Something a 5 minute phone call would have resolved.
It may sound odd to you people but as an ex CS operator -- WELL YES IT SOUNDS LIKE A VERY GOOD ANSWER!!!
maybe if the question was more specific the answer could be too...
Rachel, I'm with you. I submit you have some proof that aliens are living among us. While they cannot speak our language, ATT is covering this obvious gap by teaching them how to cut-and-paste entire English paragraphs at their customers. This is coming from the same corporate culture that thought automated attendant is a good idea.
It may sound odd to you people but as an ex CS operator -- WELL YES IT SOUNDS LIKE A VERY GOOD ANSWER!!!maybe if the question was more specific the answer could be too...
For what sounds like 99.9% of all customers, the correct information was $18 per phone line. THAT is what they should have said up at the top, instead of making me dig for it. The response seems designed to befuddle.
The response sounded reasonable to me, albeit rather long. Of course, I've been dealt with so many CS reps in my lifetime that maybe I'm just used to it. As some have mentioned, the answer appears to be that you will need an account transfer with an $18/line fee.
I will agree with the others that suggested calling instead of using email. Email is one of the least productive means of obtaining CS-related information. I prefer online chat if it's available.
Wow, this was defenitly insane, can you imagine someone actually typing up all of that? I would thrash my head against the keyboard. I think they may have some special site for the tech support to copy and paste different stuff onto. But, honestly that was waaaay too much for a simple question, a "yes" or "no" would have sufficed for this simple question. Dang...
Hi Rachel,
Don't be surprise..I have the same situation like yours, but instead email them, I called...big mistake too!!!
I spent 15 minutes talking over the phone and explaining my concern to the person. Then at the last minute seem like my questions was being answered, the person suddenly asked me to wait for a second and when he came back, he told me he had to transfer me to another a/c department. Another 20 minutes answering to the new person questions and he mostly asked questions regards my other family members and me the reason for joining the lines, responsibility for using the same a/c. Then he started to explain the plan, rules, responsibility again, just like what you read in the replied. At this point, me and my family members had no ideal what he is doing and it starts to confuse us with those plan, jargon, and "switching to this and that will cause...". I can understand deep space sciences theory, but can't with ATT or any phone company email or reply...why make it so hard?
RiotSniperX, it's called boiler plates.
I think the answer was perfectly tailored for the inquiry. Sure it took a bit to get to the info you needed, but like previously mentioned, your question was rather vague. She simply provided all the details that could pertain to your question.
So as not to mislead you, a simple "it's 18 bucks per line" would not suffice as her interpretation of your question is not relevant. You could become an (even more) aggravated customer if what you wanted done would actually incur higher charges than she may have responded with.
Granted this reeks of CYA, but service providers these days unfortunately need to do this. Take Verizon for example, all the stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid people that ran up their data costs because of the $1.99 a MB billing they implemented caused such a mess that I'm now stuck with a $30 data plan on my Omnia; that I never use as it has WiFi. While my work cell, an i760 doesn't need the data plan because you couldn't get data on it unless you EXPRESSLY put that option on your plan.
If they don't cover themselves, they open the flood gates to stupid people, or people who simply don't pay attention, read contracts and rules, obey said contracts and rules, etc.
Sorry that was so long but I had to vent about Verizon after talking to about 5 of their managers.....simple data block, that's all they need to add.....
The reason and the only main reason why we jailbreak our iPhones is AT&T, not Apple, not App store, not the price, not the fees, and not anything else.
I just went through this mess and I can tell you AT&T has NOOOOO idea how to transfer service. It took me 30 minutes on the phone to convince these people that my father had passed away and that he was the only person that knew the account password. A supervisor gets on the phone and finally tells me that I need to go into an AT&T store. An hour drive later the people at the store are lost as to why I would have to come in. They get on the phone with their support and one HOUR! later we finally started the process of transferring service to my name (Which took about 30minutes total time). We had a super old plan that we just kept renewing, he paid 9.99$ a month (with no other phones attached) and .07$ a minute. They tell me they can't transfer the service with this plan because the plan no longer exist. So I asked them if this was a breach of contract (as I signed the contract with the intent of paying 9.99$ a month) she tells me know and I asked her could she verify that, she says yes and without any pause "it is not a breach of contract". So what choice did I have but agree to a new plan, but not a new contract... THANK GOD MY CONTACT IS UP IN 1 MONTH!!!!! Bellsouth and Cingular were amazing companies that would do just about anything to help their customers. I used to have DSL, Phone, Television and cell with Bellsouth/Cingular. I now have nothing to do with AT&T except my cell and not for long!
You asked 2 simple question... They gave u a college essay to analyze. Oh man, it's back to school all over again. Or like me, I just go to an AT&T store and say "Can you explain this as humanly as possible?"
ATT has the WORST customer service I've ever dealt with in the world.
You know what's funny. I CAN'T pay my internet bill... why? Because they didn't give be information about my account. Not the account name, how to get connected, etc. AND, I was transferred 9 times. On top of that, none of their services are handled internally. Each ATT services is pretty much handled by a completely different entity that calls themselves ATT as well.
OMG, it's ridiculous.