AT&T Insider Claims Company Turns Blind Eye to Errors, Fraud A seventeen year AT&T wireless employee doesn't paint a very flattering image of AT&T customer support in a missive over at the Dallas Morning News, the telco's hometown paper. In communications with the paper, the employee claims that the company focuses relentlessly on upselling (like most telecom companies), but also turns a willful blind eye toward both cramming and billing errors. AT&T recently paid the government $105 million for not only ignoring crammers, but modifying bills to make their detection harder.

quote: We as reps are allotted at the beginning of week 5 ‘limited use’ promotions, giving folks the maximum of $40 off. “By Monday afternoon, these are generally depleted as we take about 40 calls a day. “This has created a culture of reps promising promos, but not adding them. Or telling the customer they are disconnecting the service, but just not doing it. Reps do not want to disconnect a customer, as this counts against the rep. The insider continues to note that this dysfunction is systemic: quote: “This goes all the way up to sales center manager, general manager and VP. None of the higher-ups care or do anything to stop it. “They also turn a blind eye to ‘cramming’ by reps (mostly nonunion employees overseas) and erroneous misquotes. “It’s very frustrating to be an ethical rep there anymore, as you are constantly under their scrutiny for not meeting numbers. The only way to meet these numbers is to be a liar and a sleaze. In a statement, AT&T insists that "the picture painted is not the experience we create, promote or endorse." As we've seen with complaints from other customer support agents at telecom operators, the agent says the only way to get ahead is to be a "liar and sleaze" that's willing to mislead the end user:The insider continues to note that this dysfunction is systemic:In a statement, AT&T insists that "the picture painted is not the experience we create, promote or endorse."







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Most recommended from 52 comments

mmay149q

Premium Member

join:2009-03-05

Dallas, TX 22 recommendations mmay149q Premium Member Well In a statement, AT&T insists that "the picture painted is not the experience we create, promote or endorse."



That's complete bullshit, I worked there for 3 years as an AT&T U-verse Tier 2 tech, and 1 1/2 years of that was on these forums helping users (Check out my kudo's to verify, some of you remember me) and that's EXACTLY the experience.... As far as AT&T is concerned, if you upsold the customer regardless of the problem, then you resolved the issue, I've watched stupid reps that didn't know what they were talking about upsell customers who didn't need faster service because the customer had WiFi everything and wasn't getting full speed via WiFi, but was working just fine on wired, and people pay it, the last few months before I went into Social Media Support the main thing the higher ups pushed was just upselling, as well as lowering the average handle time (How long they can spend on the phone to support your issue) from 20 minutes to 12 minutes, oh and no matter how mad the customer was, before the end of EVERY call you had to try and upsell them, even if the customer was screaming pissed at you....



Yeah I mean I could write a book on this, I'm really not going to get into how much AT&T treats it's employee's/contractors like shit, and if you inform a manager that legally what they're asking can't be done? They pretty much threaten your job because you're being insubordinate, not on everything, but if they can get away with it, they'll make it happen till someone catches them that's for sure, so it's nice to see that the wireless side had the same kind of issues we did, won't even talk about how all the U-verse sales reps would promise customers stuff the service couldn't do, only for the customers to find out it was a lie and then spend 30 minutes bitching out Tech Support because they were lied too.... Oh well, maybe one day they'll just cease to exist, that would be a miracle.....

karlmarx

join:2006-09-18

Moscow, ID 15 recommendations karlmarx Member The cost of outsourcing One of my friends worked for Convergys on the AT&T wireless side, and she hated every single second. For starters, they only pay $9.50 an hour, no bonus, and impossible metrics. Everything the original article says is multiplied, by a factor of 2. Average handle time was supposed to be under 8 minutes, upsell was a REQUIREMENT, solving the actual problem.. well, that was at the bottom of the list. To top it all off, these 'outsourcers' only use Americans because SO MANY AT&T customers were complaining that they could not understand 'bob' from 'texas' with his indian accent. Of course, when you outsource to the lowest bidder (like comcast), what kind of support are you REALLY expecting to get? These companies hire anyone with a pulse, and the turnover is WELL over 200% per year.

If AT&T and comcast and these other companies want to get off the bottom of the rankings, they need to start paying MUCH more to get quality people, give those people the ability to solve the problem (and not upsell), and only then will the 'comcrap' experience be what they advertise. You always get what you pay for, and just above minimum wage isn't going to get you ANYONE worth anything.

Samus82

Radly

join:2002-01-29

Pflugerville, TX 15 recommendations Samus82 Member same in the field Att tech here for 9 years. Its the same in the field. there isn't enough time in the day to tell you how we are treated and the things we have to do but the phrase



"its very frustrating to be an ethical rep there anymore, as you are constantly under their scrutiny for not meeting numbers. The only way to meet these numbers is to be a liar and a sleaze"



just about sums it up. Martinl

join:2004-07-17

San Jose, CA 12 recommendations Martinl Member Is anyone surprised by this? I realized back in 2001 when dealing with them on a multi-play deal the sleaze that they were. Quoted one thing and the bill was substantially something else. The only thing that is surprising is how many people still don't mind dealing with this company. IluvMoney (banned)

join:2015-05-04

MiddleClass 9 recommendations IluvMoney (banned) Member Cust Svc philosophy degraded when metrics overode all else Cust Svc in almost all companies degraded tremendously when management by measurement became the "in thing" to do by directors who have all gone to the same stupid seminars. Unfortunately the metrics NEVER include measuring happy customers. They do include minimizing time on the phone; selling things instead of fixing things; preventing call backs; preventing escalation to level 2 personnel; etc. All these things take place because customer service is seen as a COST center that needs to minimize costs. Even the selling things measures are seen as a way to reduce customer service costs by bringing in some income.



So what you have are Level 1 phone answerers that get fired if their avg time on the phone is too high by actually fixing problems. But who get bonuses for selling new services or products; but no bonuses for having a record of fixing problems. Given these measures, guess what Level 1 personnel spend their time on.



Companies keep rewarding Cust Svc VPs who keep reducing costs by promoting them away from the snake pit of cust svc. But no Cust Svc VPs are measured and promoted for creating higher customer retention, so none actually do anything to do that. If customer retention goes up, the Marketing VPs get the raises and promotions.

Simba7

I Void Warranties

join:2003-03-24

Fromberg, MT 8 recommendations Simba7 Member Shocker? I think not. Anything to please the shareholders, right? smk11

join:2014-11-12 8 recommendations smk11 Member ATT phone reps will 100% lie about everything to get a sale Billing is also a nightmare. I won't even touch anything ATT without reading everything and thoroughly documenting everything about the offer/deal.

WillRegSoon

@optonline.net 8 recommendations WillRegSoon Anon So he says "the picture painted is not the experience we create, promote or endorse."



What about tolerate, wink at and reward? grabacon9

join:2013-08-21

Spencer, IN 7 recommendations grabacon9 Member Hate this company Worthless Customer Service and Worthless Company.

R32Raines

Premium Member

join:2003-03-01

La Vergne, TN 3 recommendations R32Raines Premium Member Many companies like this... I used to do tech support for hotels. I won't name the company I was with though, but when I started, it was a small company... support team was no more than about 15-20 guys. The work was great, the company and environment was awesome. Quality of work was priority. Then the company started growing very fast. They fired the call center manager, brought in new people to manage it. Over the period of about a year, slow changes were made until it was quantity, not quality that was priority. I nearly was fired simply because I was in school at the time as well, and they wouldn't work with my school schedule. I even received a write-up over a medical condition I had that slowed me down one day. By the time I left, I hated the company. I saw very good technicians fired because they wouldn't change. I ended up having to leave due to a disability. Too many companies do this. "How fast can you be to make the shareholders more money? Screw the customer."