Terrorized by AT&T Lady
Back in the days of propeller planes and monopoly telephone companies the airlines and the telephone company were respectable places to work. That's generally not the case anymore and I'm not sure how much deregulation had to do with this - but most of us enjoy interacting with airline and telephone company representatives about as much as we enjoy finding a bug in our food. I was reminded of this the other day when I had need to call AT&T about telephone service.
I tried to take care of my business by emailing them and telling them what I wanted. I explained that my phone was not working. They emailed back and said call us. I called on my pay-per-minute cell phone and got ahold of an AT&T service representative. I told that I wanted a very simple and basic service. 15 minutes later I was still fending off multiple attempts to get me to buy this or that service. "Surely you need Internet service. How many computers do you have? No? Ok, well if you sign up for our satellite TV service I can give you this for a $40 savings and throw in a free tweety bird mobile phone. No? Are you sure? How about our total security anti-crime kitchen monitoring service and blah blah blah." Normally I would have just hung up on her but I needed that one little thing I had originally called for. I was afraid that if I didn't humor her she'd mess up my order, cancel it altogether or, now that she knew where I lived, come out and slash my tires.
She was very determined. AT&T had trained her well and probably incentivized her to be ruthless in her pursuit of up selling customers into additional and unnecessary services. I'm pretty good at saying no after three years on the streets of Shanghai but it was all I could do to get this AT&T "service" rep to leave me alone. I could just imagine that she would have had more agreeable people signed up for $200 of services every month by the time they hung up the phone. I hate to think of what she would do to one's grandmother.
No wonder Americans hate their phone service providers.
I tried to take care of my business by emailing them and telling them what I wanted. I explained that my phone was not working. They emailed back and said call us. I called on my pay-per-minute cell phone and got ahold of an AT&T service representative. I told that I wanted a very simple and basic service. 15 minutes later I was still fending off multiple attempts to get me to buy this or that service. "Surely you need Internet service. How many computers do you have? No? Ok, well if you sign up for our satellite TV service I can give you this for a $40 savings and throw in a free tweety bird mobile phone. No? Are you sure? How about our total security anti-crime kitchen monitoring service and blah blah blah." Normally I would have just hung up on her but I needed that one little thing I had originally called for. I was afraid that if I didn't humor her she'd mess up my order, cancel it altogether or, now that she knew where I lived, come out and slash my tires.
She was very determined. AT&T had trained her well and probably incentivized her to be ruthless in her pursuit of up selling customers into additional and unnecessary services. I'm pretty good at saying no after three years on the streets of Shanghai but it was all I could do to get this AT&T "service" rep to leave me alone. I could just imagine that she would have had more agreeable people signed up for $200 of services every month by the time they hung up the phone. I hate to think of what she would do to one's grandmother.
No wonder Americans hate their phone service providers.
posted by Kevcham at 8:32 PM
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