Man, where do I begin? Let’s start when I decided to take the plunge and buy an iPhone from AT&T on the morning of Black Friday…
Everything was looking good; the 16GB iPhone 3Gs was on sale at $49 for a refurb, activation was waived, and there was a $50 new customer promotion for accessories when ordering online. I priced out an iPhone for myself and a decent (and free-with-contract) Motorola flip-phone for my wife to replace our aging pay-as-you-go phones from Boost and Virgin, along with $49.97 worth of accessories mostly for my wife’s new phone to take full advantage of the $50 promotion. My total, plus tax, was $52.79. What an awesome deal! I loaded everything into the online shopping cart, asked my wife pretty please, and then pulled the trigger on the order. Seconds later, I had a confirmation email in my inbox, and the world was good.
One minor hitch during the purchase process did bug me though, the AT&T website (understandably) assumed that both of the numbers I was porting from the old cell phones were on the same account, and therefore it only asked me for one set of information for porting. That kinda bugged me, so I hit the “Chat with a live agent” button on the AT&T website and asked how that was going to work out. The agent was very friendly, told me that was a good question, and asked me to wait a moment while she checked for me. A minute or so later, she returned and let me know that I would be able to fix that once I received my phones and called to activate them. Since I didn’t know better, I went ahead and thanked her and gave her a glowing review on the little survey that popped up after the chat was finished.
Fast forward to Monday. I had been checking my order status throughout the day to see when my order shipped. It never did. In fact, my order never even came up on the order status system at all. Monday evening, I contacted AT&T to find out what was going on with the awesome deal I had landed. After talking with a customer care agent who had no idea what was going on, I was transferred to the e-commerce department. A young lady named Angela found my order, figured out that the failed porting request had put the whole thing on hold (Gee, thanks Ms. Live-Chat-Lady) and put me through to Emily in the porting department. Emily got the porting requests straightened up in a flash, and I was back with Angela again.
Angela told me that she had resubmitted my order, that the order would be going out Tuesday via FedEx Priority, and would most likely arrive Wednesday. I also asked her to verify the order amount. She said it was still as I ordered it, $52.79.
An hour or so later, I receive an email stating that there was a problem with my order, and that I needed to contact AT&T to provide more information. This is where the trouble began.
I called AT&T to find out what the issue was now. The agent I talked to said there was no apparent issue, and that she would go ahead and mark the order for processing. I was just about to thank her and hang up when something told me to ask one more question: Is the total still $52.79? The answer was no, it was $76.80.
WHAT!?! After talking to the agent for a few more moments, she assured me that my 50% discount on the accessories was still in place. I told her NO, that wasn’t a 50% discount, it was a $50 discount. I asked to speak with a supervisor. She placed me on hold.
40 minutes of crappy hold music with annoying ads later, a supervisor named Debbie Elliot answers, only to place me on hold immediately again. A few moments later, she came back and the FUD was flowing deep. First, she claimed that there was no $50 new customer online discount. I showed her where the page for it was on their site. ( http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-sales/promotion/50off-wired.jsp?PROMO=promo290009 ) Then she claimed that the discount didn’t apply to the iPhone. I agreed, but pointed out that it was not the iPhone I was trying to have discounted, it was the accessories for the Motorola. Then she tried to say that the discount didn’t apply to additional lines on family plans. I pointed out that a) there was no mention of such a restriction anywhere in the huge disclaimer at the bottom of the page and that b) the cart should not have told me I was going to get $50 worth of discounts if that was the case. THEN Debbie tries to tell me that the discount page says “Up to $50″, and that it’s actually a 50% discount. I point out that again, there’s no mention of such a limitation anywhere on that page, and that the cart should have reflected this fact if there was one.
Finally, I brought it down to the bottom line for Debbie. The site said $52.79. I agreed to pay $52.79. I will pay $52.79, and not a cent more. Debbie’s response was, more or less, that I would pay $76.80 and get over it. “It’s only $24. I don’t see what the problem is.”
Yeah, Deb. $24 is a tank of gas in my car. That’s 350+ miles of driving to and from work. (Yes, I drive a rollerskate.)
Finally, out of desperation, I asked Debbie to remove all the accessories from my order in order to drop it back to the original price. She refused, stating that she can’t change the order because AT&T has a “Ship-as-ordered” policy. I reminded her that if it was truly “shipped-as-ordered”, it would only cost $52.79. I then asked Debbie if she had the authority to give customers complimentary accessories to retain a customer who’s about to cancel their service. She said yes. I then asked her to cancel my order and then resubmit it with just the phones, and then comp me the accessories. She refused to do that as well.
In the end Debbie told me that in order to get my phones I would HAVE to pay the $76.80, and that after the phones shipped I would have to call in to the customer care line (1-800-331-0500, then 0, then 0 again) and ask them if they would give me a credit on my first bill. I asked her if she could definitely say they’d give me the $24 back, and she said that she couldn’t guarantee it. I said “FINE.” and hung up on her, after 2 hours of arguing and horrible hold music.
The issue STILL isn’t resolved, as now apparently all orders from Black Friday are shipping and emptying out the warehouses. Since my order was canceled and resubmitted by Angela on the following Monday, I’m now locked solidly in backorder hell, with no ETA on when my phones will ship. It’s been a week since my order, and I’ve been informed by the AT&T website, the automated telephone order status system and at least one phone rep at various times that my order will “definitely ship tomorrow.”
So, for those keeping tabs, AT&T’s site lied to me about the price, Ms. Live-Chat-Lady gave me misinformation that held up my order, Angela gave me misinformation about the cost of my purchase and got it locked in backorder hell, everyone and everything has lied about when it’ll ship, and Debbie Elliot tried a zillion different ways to lie to me and worked very hard at being exactly unhelpful.
In case this gets read by an AT&T employee, and in case AT&T actually cares, keeping me as a customer at this point means not only giving me $24 back, but also giving me my first month of service free to compensate me for all my wasted time, the misinformation, and aggravation. Otherwise, I’m just going to go to Verizon or T-Mobile instead.
Also, if anyone at Apple takes notice of this, please consider dropping your exclusivity with AT&T as soon as the current agreement ends; do NOT extend it again. I like your products well enough, but your choice of partners has me pretty pissed off right now. While it’s not your fault, and has nothing to do with your device, it reflects badly on the whole customer experience for a product that’s supposed to “Just Work.” Besides, competition in the marketplace will be a winning proposition for you, the carriers, and the consumers.
Remember how I said one of the kids dumped an orange soda into my trusty SD300? Well, my options for getting it back up and running were
First it was 
One of my co-workers, Lance “The iLancePro” G., will be posting his experience at the last worthwhile 
