Carrier Finally dumped AT&T, and they didn't want to go willingly...

[PinkyMacGodess]

I was on the grandfathered plan from what seems like decades ago from a brighter and happier world. I mean, it worked really well, but recently AT&T started getting pissy about features. I was able to add service for traveling for years, and got a solid no recently. Went all over the AT&T drones available, from managers to supervisors, etc. No dice. No help. Threatened to dump them, and I swear they almost laughed at me. (could have been me?)

Two days later, BYE BYE AT&T.

BUT it takes nearly TWO HOURS to port the numbers over to the new carrier. They kept giving me invalid transfer pin codes. One flake told me the transfer code had an 'R' in it. Yeah, no... I mean, that's not even a valid hexadecimal entry. Another call got a number, and she hadn't even gotten my account number! Finally got someone who told us to call this number, and *BOOM* got a computerized voice to barf out a 6 digit code, and the porting people loved it. But why be such 'dicks' over losing someone they really didn't seem to want to keep. Just a final 'up yours' from them? And I was even locked in to a grandfathered plan that was HUNDREDS of minutes more than I ever used. I was paying them TOO MUCH for the plan I was using. Imagine, say, paying more for a hotel room and being told that the movies will cost extra. Like A LOT EXTRA. 'You need a new account. It's less per month, so you win, and you have 'hot spot', and streaming, and all the trimmings (meaning I have the ability to really suck up their bandwidth) and yet they were treating me like I was stealing because I wanted to save some money on calls from someplace warmer than I am now. HELLO!!! My grandfathered plan cost almost twice what the 'new plan' was going to cost with HALF the features, so I feel I have paid for some extra loving, and savings like that. How stupid of me...

Oh, yeah, 'that guy'. He was overpaying for his plan, so we shut him down and he left. We WON!!! He ported his number off our network last night. Good riddance!' - (from somewhere in the bowels of AT&T?)

 

[eyoungren]

Most reps aren't thinking about how the customer benefits the company. They're thinking about their metrics and their supervisor wanting to see them selling 'X' number of things or they lose their job. 'cause - corporate.

While keeping you makes the company more money it doesn't move the reps metrics and in turn it means they don't care whether you stay or leave.

It's never about the customer.

 

[Ram65]

I was on the grandfathered plan from what seems like decades ago from a brighter and happier world. I mean, it worked really well, but recently AT&T started getting pissy about features. I was able to add service for traveling for years, and got a solid no recently. Went all over the AT&T drones available, from managers to supervisors, etc. No dice. No help. Threatened to dump them, and I swear they almost laughed at me. (could have been me?)

Two days later, BYE BYE AT&T.

BUT it takes nearly TWO HOURS to port the numbers over to the new carrier. They kept giving me invalid transfer pin codes. One flake told me the transfer code had an 'R' in it. Yeah, no... I mean, that's not even a valid hexadecimal entry. Another call got a number, and she hadn't even gotten my account number! Finally got someone who told us to call this number, and *BOOM* got a computerized voice to barf out a 6 digit code, and the porting people loved it. But why be such 'dicks' over losing someone they really didn't seem to want to keep. Just a final 'up yours' from them? And I was even locked in to a grandfathered plan that was HUNDREDS of minutes more than I ever used. I was paying them TOO MUCH for the plan I was using. Imagine, say, paying more for a hotel room and being told that the movies will cost extra. Like A LOT EXTRA. 'You need a new account. It's less per month, so you win, and you have 'hot spot', and streaming, and all the trimmings (meaning I have the ability to really suck up their bandwidth) and yet they were treating me like I was stealing because I wanted to save some money on calls from someplace warmer than I am now. HELLO!!! My grandfathered plan cost almost twice what the 'new plan' was going to cost with HALF the features, so I feel I have paid for some extra loving, and savings like that. How stupid of me...

That sucks u left Att . Hopefully your new carrier has a better customer experience . Im stuck with them there service is top notch in my area

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

That sucks u left Att . Hopefully your new carrier has a better customer experience . Im stuck with them there service is top notch in my area

I went with Nextel because a client had solid service with them. I valued their money, and got a phone on Nextel. They had crap service where I lived, and for most of our service area. Oops... Hopefully someone takes the area seriously and provides better service as an alternative. I know what it's like to be 'trapped' by a vendor. It sure sucks...

 

[DeepIn2U]

I was on the grandfathered plan from what seems like decades ago from a brighter and happier world. I mean, it worked really well, but recently AT&T started getting pissy about features. I was able to add service for traveling for years, and got a solid no recently. Went all over the AT&T drones available, from managers to supervisors, etc. No dice. No help. Threatened to dump them, and I swear they almost laughed at me. (could have been me?)

Two days later, BYE BYE AT&T.

BUT it takes nearly TWO HOURS to port the numbers over to the new carrier. They kept giving me invalid transfer pin codes. One flake told me the transfer code had an 'R' in it. Yeah, no... I mean, that's not even a valid hexadecimal entry. Another call got a number, and she hadn't even gotten my account number! Finally got someone who told us to call this number, and *BOOM* got a computerized voice to barf out a 6 digit code, and the porting people loved it. But why be such 'dicks' over losing someone they really didn't seem to want to keep. Just a final 'up yours' from them? And I was even locked in to a grandfathered plan that was HUNDREDS of minutes more than I ever used. I was paying them TOO MUCH for the plan I was using. Imagine, say, paying more for a hotel room and being told that the movies will cost extra. Like A LOT EXTRA. 'You need a new account. It's less per month, so you win, and you have 'hot spot', and streaming, and all the trimmings (meaning I have the ability to really suck up their bandwidth) and yet they were treating me like I was stealing because I wanted to save some money on calls from someplace warmer than I am now. HELLO!!! My grandfathered plan cost almost twice what the 'new plan' was going to cost with HALF the features, so I feel I have paid for some extra loving, and savings like that. How stupid of me...

Realily crappy experience! Sorry you went through that, completely unprofessional. AT&T needs to review these calls and reprimand and retrain these reps.

Seems AT&T still does not understand high amounts of Churn occur with word of mouth from great to disrespectful customer service and it spreads like wildfire; especially now that we all have internet (This isn’t calls, sms/mms, and voicemail anymore).

PS: Not too long ago porting took 24-72hrs, and long ago you could NOT port your number.

 

[velocityg4]

Those call centers can be horrible about how they deal with you. I'm just shocked you weren't sent to customer retentions when you went to close your service. Where you'd suddenly, magically, get deals to stick around. As they're separate from sales and customer relations.

I just remember trying to switch from Vonage to Ooma. It took months to port my number over and many hours on the phone. Until I finally got a tech smart enough to figure out the problem and force the transfer. Apparently it was a difference in how Vonage and Ooma formatted customer names or something of the sort. So, whenever something would come from Ooma to request the port. It wouldn't match what was on Vonage's files.

 

[eyoungren]

Seems AT&T still does not understand high amounts of Churn occur with word of mouth from great to disrespectful customer service and it spreads like wildfire; especially now that we all have internet (This isn’t calls, sms/mms, and voicemail anymore).

AT&T is like any other cellular carrier. They are chasing NEW customers, because adding new customers is the metric that stockholders and financial people pay attention to. How many customers you added each quarter shows 'growth'. While churn is important and you don't want to see it become a problem, there's a certain amount of acceptable turnover.

That's why the majority of promos and deals are all new customer oriented no matter what carrier you're with.

 

[eyoungren]

Also, to comment on porting. I ported from Sprint to T-Mobile in 2015. I had my Sprint account number and my pin. It took less than three minutes and I was receiving text messages on my new T-Mobile phone as I walked out the door.

This porting mess you all describe, is this in the past? Because, the one time I did it, it was super easy.

 

[mlody]

I was on the grandfathered plan from what seems like decades ago from a brighter and happier world. I mean, it worked really well, but recently AT&T started getting pissy about features. I was able to add service for traveling for years, and got a solid no recently. Went all over the AT&T drones available, from managers to supervisors, etc. No dice. No help. Threatened to dump them, and I swear they almost laughed at me. (could have been me?)

Two days later, BYE BYE AT&T.

BUT it takes nearly TWO HOURS to port the numbers over to the new carrier. They kept giving me invalid transfer pin codes. One flake told me the transfer code had an 'R' in it. Yeah, no... I mean, that's not even a valid hexadecimal entry. Another call got a number, and she hadn't even gotten my account number! Finally got someone who told us to call this number, and *BOOM* got a computerized voice to barf out a 6 digit code, and the porting people loved it. But why be such 'dicks' over losing someone they really didn't seem to want to keep. Just a final 'up yours' from them? And I was even locked in to a grandfathered plan that was HUNDREDS of minutes more than I ever used. I was paying them TOO MUCH for the plan I was using. Imagine, say, paying more for a hotel room and being told that the movies will cost extra. Like A LOT EXTRA. 'You need a new account. It's less per month, so you win, and you have 'hot spot', and streaming, and all the trimmings (meaning I have the ability to really suck up their bandwidth) and yet they were treating me like I was stealing because I wanted to save some money on calls from someplace warmer than I am now. HELLO!!! My grandfathered plan cost almost twice what the 'new plan' was going to cost with HALF the features, so I feel I have paid for some extra loving, and savings like that. How stupid of me...

So you were expecting to get the benefits that current plans offer (at probably higher prices) while having grandfather plans and pricing. I am sorry, but things don't work like that.

 

[evoixdan]

So you were expecting to get the benefits that current plans offer (at probably higher prices) while having grandfather plans and pricing. I am sorry, but things don't work like that.

Reading > you

 

[spiderman0616]

That's weird--when I switched from ATT to Verizon years ago, they were just like "K bye." Same when I cancelled Comcast's cable TV service. I thought a lot of these companies had moved past the strong arm tactics.

 

[chabig]

I switched from AT&T to Verizon last November. I didn’t even have talk to AT&T. Verizon ported the numbers and that closed my AT&T account.

 

[jdb8167]

I was on the grandfathered plan from what seems like decades ago from a brighter and happier world. I mean, it worked really well, but recently AT&T started getting pissy about features. I was able to add service for traveling for years, and got a solid no recently. Went all over the AT&T drones available, from managers to supervisors, etc. No dice. No help. Threatened to dump them, and I swear they almost laughed at me. (could have been me?)

Two days later, BYE BYE AT&T.

BUT it takes nearly TWO HOURS to port the numbers over to the new carrier. They kept giving me invalid transfer pin codes. One flake told me the transfer code had an 'R' in it. Yeah, no... I mean, that's not even a valid hexadecimal entry. Another call got a number, and she hadn't even gotten my account number! Finally got someone who told us to call this number, and *BOOM* got a computerized voice to barf out a 6 digit code, and the porting people loved it. But why be such 'dicks' over losing someone they really didn't seem to want to keep. Just a final 'up yours' from them? And I was even locked in to a grandfathered plan that was HUNDREDS of minutes more than I ever used. I was paying them TOO MUCH for the plan I was using. Imagine, say, paying more for a hotel room and being told that the movies will cost extra. Like A LOT EXTRA. 'You need a new account. It's less per month, so you win, and you have 'hot spot', and streaming, and all the trimmings (meaning I have the ability to really suck up their bandwidth) and yet they were treating me like I was stealing because I wanted to save some money on calls from someplace warmer than I am now. HELLO!!! My grandfathered plan cost almost twice what the 'new plan' was going to cost with HALF the features, so I feel I have paid for some extra loving, and savings like that. How stupid of me...

For me it was Comcast/Xfinity internet. I got an offer of a 5G gateway from T-Mobile at 1/2 the cost for twice the speed and unlimited data guaranteed. Comcast keeps threatening to put a 2 TB/month cap on their internet service like they have at other parts of the country.

I knew the cancellation would be a chore so I decided to have some good-natured fun with the poor retention specialist. He wanted to know what I would need to stay on Comcast of course. So I said that the deal with T-Mobile was literally less than half the price and at my home I was getting over 600 Mbps downloads. So I asked if he could match that.

Poor guy, Comcast has no plan even close so he switches to the standard bundling deals. I told him I didn’t have a TV (not true but everything is over internet so it might as well have been true in regards to a bundle). Then he offers me a deal on cellular. I told him I was very happy with my current cell company.

He keeps repeating the same rejected deals so I asked him about the cap threat. He said that would never go through in my area. Probably true but I said I would need it in writing on corporate letterhead and signed by an executive of the company. I was just being mean but he quickly changed the subject back to special one year deals. Yeah, which means the prices all go back to what I was paying in a year and a day.

All in all it took about a half an hour to cancel but after he finally gave up I had no more problems.

 

[TechRunner]

That's weird--when I switched from ATT to Verizon years ago, they were just like "K bye."

Same here. We had been with AT&T since the beginning of our cell phone lives, but when we switched to Verizon six years ago, there was a "see ya!" attitude from AT&T with zero attempt at retention.

 

[profcutter]

We’re on the family plan with AT&T, I keep thinking of switching to Verizon. I work in the sticks, so I don’t think T-mobile would work out.

 

[TechRunner]

We’re on the family plan with AT&T, I keep thinking of switching to Verizon. I work in the sticks, so I don’t think T-mobile would work out.

We switched to Verizon because I was told they have the best chance of giving reception in the more remote areas of the Appalachian Trail (and the U.S as a whole) where I was doing a lot of hiking. Whether that's true or not, I can't know for sure, as I didn't have another carrier's service to compare to when I was out there. But I was rarely without service, which is the point, I guess.

 

[baypharm]

Regarding the post above, I can confirm coverage on the AT. I’ve hiked it twice. Additionally, Hatfield/McCoy ATV trails are well blanketed as well. I can also confirm excellent coverage in the mountains surrounding West Yellowstone Montana. Two Top mountain and the Gallatin National Forest in all areas have superb wireless coverage via Verizon.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

PS: Not too long ago porting took 24-72hrs, and long ago you could NOT port your number.

I remember the mess if getting my number into AT&T. Verizon released it for porting, and AT&T kept saying that Verizon still had it 'locked'. I called back and forth with their various people, and even called the porting organization, and it took close to two days to get it working. All the time Verizon said they were doing everything short of delivering it to AT&T's front door. Who knows if any of it was true, but the finger pointing got to stupid levels. Yeah, I remember when porting wasn't possible, and I remember when it was possible, but turned into a revenge experience.

But I remember walking into the Verizon store to ask if I was out of my contract, and waited almost an hour to get someone to help me. There were no other customers in the store. I dropped them that day, and had no working cell phone for nearly 48 hours. *sigh*

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

So you were expecting to get the benefits that current plans offer (at probably higher prices) while having grandfather plans and pricing. I am sorry, but things don't work like that.

The point was IT DID WORK LESS THAN 2 YEARS AGO. They decided to penalize grandfathered plans by eliminating the opportunity to save money.

I was NOT asking for something that I had done many times before. MANY TIMES...

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

For me it was Comcast/Xfinity internet. I got an offer of a 5G gateway from T-Mobile at 1/2 the cost for twice the speed and unlimited data guaranteed. Comcast keeps threatening to put a 2 TB/month cap on their internet service like they have at other parts of the country.

I knew the cancellation would be a chore so I decided to have some good-natured fun with the poor retention specialist. He wanted to know what I would need to stay on Comcast of course. So I said that the deal with T-Mobile was literally less than half the price and at my home I was getting over 600 Mbps downloads. So I asked if he could match that.

Poor guy, Comcast has no plan even close so he switches to the standard bundling deals. I told him I didn’t have a TV (not true but everything is over internet so it might as well have been true in regards to a bundle). Then he offers me a deal on cellular. I told him I was very happy with my current cell company.

He keeps repeating the same rejected deals so I asked him about the cap threat. He said that would never go through in my area. Probably true but I said I would need it in writing on corporate letterhead and signed by an executive of the company. I was just being mean but he quickly changed the subject back to special one year deals. Yeah, which means the prices all go back to what I was paying in a year and a day.

All in all it took about a half an hour to cancel but after he finally gave up I had no more problems.

When I left Verizon, and now AT&T, there was no act of trying to 'retain' me, unless you call the ham handed mess I had trying to port the number. I would think they would have tried *something*, but they likely chalked it up as a 'win' because they dumped another grandfathered plan. Like having a headache, and getting a partial lobotomy? Okay... Now looking to dump u--verse...

 

[steelhauler34]

The hardest thing I ever got out of was Sirius xm radio. Would not take cancel or no as an answer. I would never in a million years go back for this very reason. I hope they completely tank one day.

 

[crf8]

The hardest thing I ever got out of was Sirius xm radio. Would not take cancel or no as an answer. I would never in a million years go back for this very reason. I hope they completely tank one day.

They are the worst . Never let them have your credit card number, they will bill you forever at the highest price plan.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

The hardest thing I ever got out of was Sirius xm radio. Would not take cancel or no as an answer. I would never in a million years go back for this very reason. I hope they completely tank one day.

My experience, so far, has been fairly okay. I've dropped several cars I had that had the radios, and had no issues. It's been a few years though.

My current subscriptions have been just the in-car radio head units. I get the 'You need the app!' notices, but ignore them. (If you do their 'free trials', you have to cancel the app part or they WILL latch on to you for a 'subscription'. It sucks, but it's 'legal'.

I drive long distances a few times a month, and actually like the Sirius/XM service. Some areas I drive through only have 'country music' stations. YUCK I've heard that Iridium is hard to get out of. They have 'off times' where you can take time off from billing and using, but they always try to keep you stringing along. Now you have to have a vertain amount of 'active' time on your account, or you get slapped with 'fees'. I mean, if you have a satellite service necessary device, you NEED the service, and they NEED your money to help refurbish the CEO's office, and keep those satellites in the sky. No paying customers, those 'birds' start crashing. *shrug* I don't one, currently, any Iridium devices. So far...