The World's Common Tater

Yesterday morning Verizon arrived with our new router. Our upgrade to our Internet and TV is complete. I’m hoping that means it will be a while before I have to deal with their customer service people again. Unfortunately, later that day, another bad customer service experience began.

A couple of weeks ago my wife had some reason to call AT&T about our cell phone plan. While on the phone with them they told her there was a deal available for us to upgrade our phones for a relatively low price. Since both of the kids needed new phones and my phone was in good shape, but old, she decided to do it. While setting it up, she mentioned several times that we wanted to keep our existing numbers. She was told that would not be a problem.

When the phones we delivered, they were delivered in person by an AT&T contractor. We discovered when he arrived that he had phones with new numbers attached. We said again that we did not want new numbers. We wanted to keep our existing numbers. He said that wouldn’t be a problem. Just switch the SIM cards and the new numbers would be deactivated by AT&T. We did what he told us and have been enjoying our new phones.

My wife discovered yesterday that AT&T was charging us for our existing lines plus the three new lines that we were told would be deactivated. She called to fix that and was told that the plan we were given for the phone upgrade did not allow for keeping existing numbers even though we were assured multiple times that we could keep the existing numbers. They said they could fix the problem, but not with the phones we have in our possession. The only way they will fix their mistake(lies) is for us to get new phones delivered to us and we return the phones we have been using, These will be the exact phones we already have, I assume with no SIM cards with numbers attached, Seems like we could have kept the phones we have and sent back the SIM cards that came with them if that is the issue. It seems ridiculous that today I will get another new phone delivered and I will send back a phone I have been using for two weeks. It seems like there should be an easier way.

This is supposed to fix the problem and get us back to the rate we were expecting. We will be watching the bill closely to make sure. My experience with both Verizon and AT&T shows me that they have no problems with lying to customers. I guess the hope is that we won’t check things and will just pay the bill without questioning things.

Why is customer service so bad?