Monday, October 01, 2007
AT&T is Awesome!!!
I can tell you that I am a total AT&T die-hard fan. I can even tell you that I am AT&T's number one customer. If they sell mugs with "AT&T is John's favorite wireless carrier of choice," I'd buy a box of them and stash it in my desk drawer.
No joke!
Let's review. Back when I was in college in 1999 or 2000, I made the leap into the 21st century. I felt that I, too, should be in the elite club where its members carry cellular phones. Mind you, I never liked cellular phones when they were the size of standard Kleenex® boxes, but when they got relatively smaller, I wanted one. For safety reasons, of course. And who was my virgin cellular phone's carrier? AT&T!
I went to school in Springfield, Missouri, and if anybody has lived there back then, you would know that Sprint was the first to enter the cellular market in Springfield, and AT&T had little coverage. Yet, I waited it out and bought my first cellular phone from AT&T. Over the Internet, no less. It was definitely a ginormous leap into the 21st century, I tell ya.
While being faithful to a company where I had to be monogamous for two whole years, I interned at Convergys for half a year, a company that wrote the software designed for billing wireless cellular customers with their ever complex rate matrix as well as running call centers for AT&T across the United States. Of course, I don't know if Convergys still do that for AT&T now, or if all of AT&T's customer service operations have been shipped over to India. Nevertheless, AT&T and I were tight.
When I graduated college, I moved to Kansas City in the hopes of making a difference in the world in which I live in. As a naïve young adult, I was quickly disappointed pleased that AT&T didn't have a whole lot of service up there. Despite the fact that Sprint was headquartered in the Kansas City metropolitan area, I was stubborn to avoid Sprint like the Bubonic Plague. After months of carrying the 417 area code, I finally got myself an 816 area code by switching over to Cingular.
Cingular, then, was a joint venture of Bell South and a few other companies. Of course, Bell South was a remnant of AT&T when they were broken up by regulators back in the day. And I was very happy with my Cingular service. So much so that I remained a loyal customer until 2004, when I moved to Chicago.
Again, I was so pleased with my service with Cingular that I kept my 816 area code for a few months while living in Chicago. At that time, I had the Nokia 6340i, one of the most advanced cellular phones sold in the United States. The Nokia 6340i was a true tri-band phone. Not in the frequencies within a technology type, but multiple technologies. It had AMPS technology (a.k.a. analog), TDMA technology (a.k.a. digital), and GSM technology (today's next generation digital).
Despite owning a device that had a blank SIM card with GSM technologies (I was only using the analog and TDMA bands), Cingular wouldn't let me keep my awesome plan, which I had fulfilled my two year lock already, while going into their GSM network. Cingular wanted requested me to sign on to yet another two year contract, and force switch me into buying another phone. Now mind you, at that time, Cingular's GSM network was still in its infancy, despite the fact that they have been developing the network for almost two years. And the first generation GSM-only phones that Cingular carried were slim pickings, as they didn't sell any decent Nokia product save for a couple very basic ones. I wanted to stay with my Nokia 6340i, which was technologically superior albeit its lackluster in the cool department!
I felt that I was being forced asked into a crappy deal, so I went back to AT&T. AT&T at that time had so many choices when it comes to selecting a phone that I felt like a kid in a giant candy store! Furthermore, AT&T had a larger GSM network than Cingular's. I figured that if I have to sign on to a new two year agreement, I might as well get into something better. After all, I was never disappointed by AT&T ever! So I got my very first smartphone in 2004 from AT&T, which was the Nokia 6620 that had a Symbian operating system.
From then on, I was with AT&T all the way until AT&T and Cingular merged. During the time of the merger, AT&T was struggling dealing with profitability problems that there were no good deals as far as their calling plans go (which they called Gold plans during the merger, to differentiate from Cingular's calling plans). And during the transitional period, I decided to "upgrade" into the Cingular's version of calling plans, which was better (at the cost of a renewed two year monogamy requirement). I wanted the Rollover Minutes® as well as better Internet data plans. Cingular's plans were awesome for the money.
So back to Cingular I was, which I had to update my online bill pay settings from AT&T to Cingular. Everything was good. After moving to Chicago, I never had any problems with dropped calls, or mysteriously losing all signal reception suddenly despite the fact that I had a full bar just seconds prior. Never! All my calls were pristine and crystal clear, as if I was talking in the same room as the other person, in person!
As a loyal customer who have never had an affair with the likes of Sprint, AllTel, Verizon or US Cellular, I am shocked pleased to learn of AT&T's latest Terms of Service, revised today, October 1, 2007.
My shocker-up-the-ass favorite addendum (underlined below) is the 5. Term & Termination chapter, 5.1 Suspension/Termination section:
AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.
Well, how about that?!?
Companies go goo-goo-gaa-gaa when they can use customer testimonials praising their products or services. And likewise, companies have long quietly ignored public criticisms and complaints, and used those feedbacks as a way to improve their product or service.
But now... Is this going too far enough?
What if AT&T's customer service representatives are under-trained, and rude to a lot of customers? Obviously any customer who experiences such rude awakenings pleasantries may be terminated let go if they choose to voice his or her concerns in a public forum, like say a blog such as this.
And if we take this scenario further, what may happen to a reporter who also happens to be an AT&T customer for her cellular and broadband services, whereby she was tasked to investigate reports of a widespread AT&T customer service problem happy time? What if she writes the article in a newspaper? Will her service be terminated unexpectedly disassociated gracefully the night she returns home after the paper hits newsstands?
Hmm... Interesting, huh?
Like I said, I am a loyal AT&T customer who absolutely love AT&T and the kind of corporate giant lovable little company it has become today after being broken up by our anti-trust agency back then.
Yeah, AT&T is awesome!
Labels: stupidity, technology
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