I did a post a couple days back about my mixed reactions to the iPad. I also started writing about AT&T but it ran so long that I realized it was really a new post. The upshot is that I am both bewildered and fascinated by AT&T's suicidal tendencies. I suspect that the people who run that company have not quite come to grips with the deadly mix of their horrible system and the brilliantly managed Apple stores -- where so many people are forced to purchase their services. I wonder if they realize that each Apple store appears to serve as a grass roots organization for providing people with bad experiences with AT&T, watching others have bad experiences with AT&T, and an arena for telling and listening to horror stories about AT&T among customers and Apple employees. If a panel of experts tried to design a system to destroy AT&T's reputation among its most valuable customers and salespeople, I am not sure they could do a better job than what seems to be happening in Apple stores throughout the country.

Rather than buying a new iPad last week, I thought about waiting for the iPad that allows you to connect to the web anywhere through an AT&T account (not just via wifi as my model does). But I have had so many experiences with that deeply defective organization that I do whatever I can to avoid entanglements with AT&T. I have had multiple lousy experiences with AT&T in recent months, and based on my experience at least, I suggest you never believe any of their promises and always assume they are up selling you. They don't care about you, they just want to squeeze every cent out of you. I also found that when they up, they often aren't trained well-enough to explain the strings attached and limitations.

My worst and most intriguing experience in recent months happened one Friday in March when my wife, two teenage daughters, and I were trapped in the Apple store in downtown Palo Alto. Our salesperson there spent a full four hours trying to get something done for us with AT&T. I thought it would be pretty easy but turned out to be absurdly complicated -- we were buying one new iPhone and replacing another that had been stolen from my daughter. The Apple guy ultimately succeeded despite dozens of obstacles put up by AT&T's people, system, and rules (which were interpreted differently by just about every employee he and we dealt with, by the way). Our Apple guy succeeded only through his raw persistence and because, as he explained, he had learned that such a high percentage of the AT&T people are so incompetent, that sometimes the best thing to do is to just hang-up and start from scratch (in hopes the next one will be competent). I believe that, in the process of making this happen, at least 10 different phone calls were made to At&T, some by him and some by us. During this time, we talked to virtually every employee and manager in the place, and each assured us that our salesperson was among their best people. The problem, they explained, was that AT&T can be impossible and time-consuming to deal with -- and their system meshes very poorly with Apple's in many ways.

An added problem is that the AT&T people are apparently on a flawed incentive system. So rather than actually trying to what was best for us as customers or relationships with Apple, there was constant up selling directly to us and through our Apple person -- which he resisted and advised us to ignore. He also reported that, on multiple occasions, AT&T employees resisted doing what was needed to get our phones working because it meant they would get no incentive pay (I never quite understood this, but I heard him say many times to AT&T employees something like "I know this will mean you don't get your incentive, but this is how what we have to do it to serve the customer.") I was amazed to find that AT&T does not have a dedicated hot line that enables Apple salespeople and "Geniuses" to connect directly to AT&T people who are especially trained to deal with Apple stores as Apple sells so many AT&T accounts -- but apparently that isn't the case. I would give At&T a solid "F" on customer service, relationships with a key vendor, incentive system, and organization based on my recent experiences with them.

I would love to have a film of our experience in the Apple store to show to AT&T executives. We were there so long that virtually every employee in the place at one time or another came up to us and told us there favorite story about how much AT&T sucked and how lucky we were to have the most skilled and persistent person in the place helping us. Also, quite a few customers overheard the stories or asked us what was going on, and jumped into the conversation with their own bad experiences. This was a busy Friday night at the store closest to Steve Jobs' house, and in fact, it was the store where he made a surprise appearance the day the iPad was released. Perhaps AT&T ought to spend less money advertising and brag less about wonderful they are and devote more attention to fixing their defective system and improving their training. I especially believe that they don't quite fathom how much damage their incentive system does because it focuses their people away from helping customers and toward getting as much money as possible out of them. Perhaps they should read Steve Kerr's classic "On The Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B."

In any event, for better worse, the effect of all this is that tens of thousands of customers a day get to experience Apple's competence and AT&T's incompetence side-by-side in a public arena. This contrast not only affects the particular employees and customers involved in a given transaction, it often spreads to many others in the setting -- especially when it is a long ugly one like ours.

If you are an AT&T executive, you don't need a fancy survey, you don't need a marketing consultant, just walk into a few Apple stores and ask employees and customers what they think of your company and why. And stand around awhile and watch the dynamics surrounding the especially bad customer experiences. Apple stores create experiences that teach customers and key opinion leaders to despise your company and see it as greedy, incompetent, and out of touch.

As always, I assume I am biased and my experiences are not representative. Am I being unfair to AT&T? Have others had good experiences with them, especially in Apple stores? Note that I had good experiences when I simply bought my iPhone, but whenever anything at all complicated has happened, it has been awful.