

My conversation with AT&T - jasongullickson
http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/my-conversation-with-att

======
patio11
If you're talking to front line support, you are talking to a finite state
machine. Getting mad at the finite state machine because a transition was not
written in it will not get you better customer service. Just inspect the
finite state machine looking for the transition to escalation, and provide it
exactly the input needed to achieve escalation. (Edited to add: plus such
pleasantries as are necessary and proper to polite society.)

(I only know what a FSM is because I was one for two years.)

~~~
generalk
I was also a frontline tech for some years, for Verizon DSL. These are all
things I was asked by other geeks that I couldn't do:

* Help you configure an email client that wasn't Outlook. (I could give the servers/ports/config info, but I couldn't help you figure out where to put them.)

* Connect you directly to a higher-tier support person. At least at the time, if I tried, you'd be immediately redirected back to the front-line queue once the higher-up realized you hadn't done our troubleshooting.

* Talk to Real Network Engineers without a _serious_ wait time. You think we're in the same building, let alone _state_ as them? The hold times were always horrible to get to talk to them.

* Troubleshoot outside the script. Most of the guys we had were barely-trained phone jockeys, and the script was set up for them. I _could_ deviate from the script as it was written, but I couldn't troubleshoot anything that wasn't somewhere on the list anyway.

* No shit, some geek somewhere lost the ability to resolve DNS. First words out of their mouth: "Can you reboot your DNS servers?" I am not rightly able to comprehend the confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. (My answer was, verbatim: "Of course not. I'm not in the same building as them, I wouldn't have permission if I were, and they're working fine for our other customers.")

Helpful hint: if the call times went over 12 minutes (this varies by call
center and company), there will be folks prodding you to "resolve the call" so
the call center had lower average call time stats.

Quickest route to help: Just answer questions and do what they ask quickly.
"Have you rebooted." Yes. "Have you power-cycled the modem?" Yes. Sometimes
they'll ask you to do it, on the phone, for documentation purposes. Either do
it or lie. The quicker you get to the end of the end of the script, the
quicker you get an escalation.

~~~
wrs
I got a high score in this game once, calling Dell tech support to get a hard
drive replacement. I had of course done all the troubleshooting in advance, so
when the agent answered I said "Hi, my hard drive is having trouble, I've done
this, and I've done that, ..." basically fast-forwarding through the script
that I knew must exist. And I must have done it right because his response was
"Uh...OK...looks like you have a bad hard drive, we'll ship a replacement
right away." Yes!

~~~
bokchoi
I had a similar experience.

There are little code numbers on some of the Dell troubleshooting self-help
pages. When you call in, you can mention you've already tried doing XYZ and
list of the code numbers. The guy on the other end of the line said, "I've
never had anyone so prepared before. I'll send out a replacement laptop screen
right away."

------
noonespecial
I had exactly this happen to me. After a week of explaining the issue, they
finally threatened me with the cost of the lineman's visit if my computer was
at fault ($1500). It had gotten so bad (128kbits) that I said I'd pay it in
any case if they could just fix it. I didn't hear anything. The lineman missed
his appointment and never showed and my ticket vanished from the system.

The issue dragged on for 5 weeks. Finally I called a local cable provider and
begged them for service. In a miracle of bureaucracy, the place I was renting
had cable _a decade_ ago and was so on their "served locations" list. They ran
more than a mile of new cable and hooked me up.

Months later I was talking to some local telephone linemen (we do a lot of T1
installs requiring truck rolls) and lo and behold, he knew exactly what had
gone wrong.

The DSLAM in our local exchange had gone bad and began running in degraded
mode to compensate for the failure. AT&T decided that there just weren't
enough subscribers to justify fixing it right away. It was scheduled to be
repaired in 18 months.

Edit: My takeaway from the entire episode is that you are so impossibly far
away from the reality of boxes and wires when you're on those tech support
lines that you might as well be trying to direct the mars rover from your back
yard with a megaphone.

------
vietor
As obnoxious as these type of conversations are, I'd be interested to know
what percentage of their 'my Internet is slow' support calls end up being
resolved by kicking Little Jimmy BitTorrent offline and trying again. (Or
turning off the computer that's participating in 7 botnets, etc. Anyone who
has done freelance support can tell you that the customer's computer is always
_wrong_.)

It's why this was funny: <http://xkcd.com/806/>

I found that paying for business class Internet for personal use was worth it
for the support and service nearly on it's own. Though on the subject of
rebooting the modem, I've had it work the other way too: many years ago my
512K/3mb cable started giving me only 250k up ... but over 5mb down. (It went
back to normal when rebooted. (I rebooted it because I need the extra 250K up
more than the extra 2mb down)).

------
jarin
I've had similar situations happen before. Usually what I do is call the phone
support, quickly run through everything I tried, and the first-line tech
support guy transfers me to a call center in the US with higher-level
technicians right away.

I don't really think there's any point in arguing with someone manning the
chat help or lower-level phone support anyway as they don't seem to have the
ability to run the more advanced diagnostics even if they wanted to. All
arguing with them is going to do is frustrate you. Just work with their system
a little and you can usually get things taken care of.

~~~
d2viant
I'm not AT&T's "partner", I'm their customer. I pay them for service. I
shouldn't have to find the optimal path through their system to get things
done. Move to a different ISP, plain and simple. There's no reason the
customer should be inconvenienced because they can't get their act together.
It seems like a no-brainer to me, especially since some ISP's will give heavy
discounts to jump ship from their competitors.

~~~
patio11
_I shouldn't have to find the optimal path through their system to get things
done._

Consider this a "hacking a non-computer system" challenge. It is a very useful
skill even if you never send YC an application, since there are at least a few
organizations which are isomorphic to AT&T customer service which are very
difficult for you to opt out of using. (Your local department responsible for
collecting taxes, for example.)

~~~
dmoney
Arguably it's not a non-computer system if the customer service rep is just a
front-end for a finite state machine.

------
nikster
My experience with DSL customer support is you have to lie.

You don't use OS X - you use Windows, and IE. You don't have a WiFi router
connected to the DSL modem - you're connected directly via Ethernet. You have
re-installed your operating system and all drivers. Twice. Etc.

It's just more effective to do that, since you already know the problem has
nothing to do with your local setup. I'll actually do things that make sense.
But when they ask me to re-install the OS or stupid stuff like that - no way.

Also if you make a mistake - like admitting you're using a Mac - you can try
again. Just call again and get a different agent on the line.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Um hm. Yes, I often "know the problem has nothing to do" with me. And then it
sometimes Does have to do with me. The reason the suggestions are in the
script is, to try what works most of the time. Thinking it out in your head
can lead you to conclusions, but actually rebooting the modem may prove
something. Also routers, modems are hardware shipped on a schedule, so they
have bugs. Logic can be tripped up by bugs, since they negate assumptions -
"clearly the modem isn't editing my UDP traffic!" etc.

------
bradleyland
If you want to get this fixed, you should call their number and get a
technician dispatched. He can put a test set on your line at the demarc
outside your house. If the SnR is bad, or someone did something dumb like put
a bridge tap on your loop, he'll know.

If you want to prove that ATT sucks, congrats. Mission accomplished. Problem
is, we already knew that. Go ahead and move ISPs. Don't be all that alarmed
when the lawn guy cuts the cable vision line that Your cable provider buried
the whopping 3" below the soil, as required by their policies. Don't be
alarmed when their front line support requires you to restart your modem.
Don't be alarmed when the experience still isn't what you expect as a network
engineer.

Front line support sucks because it's designed to handle calls from people who
really do need to be instructed to reboot their modem. If you want effective
support, you have to recognize that you are the exception to the rule, not the
standard.

------
kwantam
I've generally had good luck with the AT&T customer service. I play the
"standard customer" role to navigate first-level troubleshooting, get
escalated, then talk to the tech about my actual debugging results. (It helps
that, in addition to network admin experience, I design telephony integrated
circuits; I'm _very_ familiar with their testing procedures, since I've
designed circuits and wrtten firmware to do it.)

Generally once I'm actually talking to the tech it's only five or ten minutes
before they get a truck roll scheduled and I'm on my way. It helps to have
multiple DSL modems available before calling them so you can rule out
equipment malfunctions, and to directly connect the DSL modem to the service
entrance after disconnecting your home wiring to rule out internal wiring
problems.

In the several years that I've had my DSL, AT&T has piecemeal replaced pretty
much all the copper between me and the DSLAM---no surprise, since most of it
was 25+ years old. Each time, it's taken one phone call of no more than 30
minutes to get things done. The only trouble I've had that didn't require
copper replacement was when a tech disconnected my (dry loop) line because he
didn't hear a dial tone and assumed the connection was superfluous.

~~~
ekidd
I spent years fighting with Verizon customer service about my DSL line. Not
only was the DSL flaky, but the accompanying voice line would routinely lose
dial tone. So there was obviously some sort of bizarre equipment problem.

After about 6 phone transfers and a technician who claimed Vermont was a city,
not a state, I hung up and called a local phone company that provided DSL. The
very first thing they did was run new wires into the building.

Everything has worked fine since.

------
plinkplonk
"We have some dedicated department for some specific technical issue like
wireless, Mac or gaming console etc.They are expertise on these stuffs."

Indian English!

Not the "Are expertise" bit which is just wrong, and maybe just a typo, but
"some dedicated department" and "these stuffs" are good markers. (FWIW: I am
Indian, and not mocking anyone, just noting what I perceived)

~~~
cnu
I also thought it was some indian who was on the other side. Though it has
nothing to do with the bad service and response. He is just typing it off a
script.

Note: Indian here too.

~~~
shrikant
These two posts mirror me and my thought process exactly!

What triggered it for me was: "I am sorry for my typo" - I've seen a few of
the 'cultural training sessions' for tech support call-centre shops, and
that's a line straight out of the playbook..

------
devicenull
Go here: <https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/sbcdirect> and post about your
issue. You can get actual competent techs to look into your issues. Every time
I've had issues with SBC/ATT, this forum has helped me with 0 frustration.

~~~
ben1040
This works great. Also, I've found that at least for my cable company
(Charter), a mere mention on Twitter will get them to contact you and solve
the matter quickly over email rather than going through their call center
nightmare.

------
Encosia
When he practically begged you to call, why didn't you? Those primitive chat
features are not suitable for working out complicated issues. This reminds me
of when people insist on discussing something a dozen messages at a time on
Twitter, when it belongs in email (and would be simple there).

------
there
_No need to start a new session, I'm ready to troubleshoot on Windows XP_

 _How did you change the computer?_

 _I have an xp machine handy and plugged it into the modem, then connected the
mac (with the chat session) to a second ethernet port_

 _Mr. Gullickson, the speedstream modem has only one Ethernet port._

i couldn't help but laugh at that part. every time i've had to talk to
technical support because of some problem on their end, i always get the
runaround because i use an unsupported operating system, to the point that now
i just lie and tell them i'm using windows. i was pretty surprised that the
technician actually called him out on that.

~~~
lwhi
_i was pretty surprised that the technician actually called him out on that._

I don't think you need to be surprised. There's a high likelihood that the
operators are educated and intelligent.

I'd imagine that having to stick to a script isn't very fun for the person on
the other end of the phone / chat session - especially when you're tied to
responding in a certain way and are regularly patronised by annoyed customers.

------
IChrisI
Any conversation with a large company not well known for service will probably
go like this. The lower-tier support technicians have a script they follow,
and if you stick to it you will A) actually get support, and B) not make some
support guy's day suck. The person he was talking with was clearly out of
their depth and doing their best to get him in touch with somebody that could
help him.

------
ENOTTY
This really could be a conversation with any ISP and any technical support
line.

~~~
Xuzz
It doesn't even have to be an ISP, you get pretty much get the same with most
technical support lines on any computer-related product.

------
nhangen
Seemed like the blogger had an axe to grind more than they wanted their issue
resolved. If you were choked, I doubt a low level chat rep could fix it
anyway.

------
S_A_P
I get it. Sometimes ISPs realize that making your life difficult is easier
than fixing the problems that can occur where lines go bad. No matter the
provider, edge cases exist, and 3-5% of the time a company sucks. Anecdotally
I can say comcast is that provider for me, but generally speaking they were
not much worse than AT&T or my current provider, consolidated. All have been
decent 95% of the time.

~~~
andreyf
Aren't ISP's contractually obliged to stay somehow reasonably within the
speeds they advertise?

------
runningdogx
I have griped to AT&T several times about how their 2wire 3800hgv-b router
(used for their UVerse service) is broken when you set up pass-through to an
internal box. They call this "DMZplus".

What happens is that when icmp packets relating to connections from the
DMZplus host arrive at the 2wire router, the 2wire drops them. This breaks
path MTU discovery, unix-style traceroutes, etc. It is not a general
limitation of the 2wire box, since hosts that are not using DMZplus can
receive related icmp just fine. It's caused by the pathologically stupid way
that the 2wire router implements "DMZplus". It basically assigns itself AND
the internal host the same external IP address, and uses its best guess which
traffic to forward and which not to. They missed some corner case relating to
ICMP in the state tracker, and AT&T's response is that since it's a "feature"
that few people complain about, if I want it fixed I shouldn't be using
UVerse. Even after I've pointed out that this behavior violates the tcp/ip
standard.

------
colanderman
I once had a Verizon support rep literally _trick_ me into purchasing a
service I didn't want, no doubt to get a commission. I have no love for
Verizon.

On the other hand: I had Charter cable internet a few years back. It was
spotty, expensive service (1 Mbps, $50/mo), and tech support was crap.

Funny thing is, I resubscribed to them about a year ago, and found that
somehow, they've improved _dramatically_. The one time I was having connection
issues (and knew it wasn't my box), the tier 1 phone support person performed
a remote line test within 5 minutes of me calling, and actually understood
concepts like "ping" and "DNS". She even had records of the times my
connection had been down. Getting the issue resolved was a breeze (I think
they increased power in a repeater or some such). For the first time I felt
like I was interacting with a human and not a script.

Hopefully this wasn't a fluke and ISPs are slowly starting to change for the
better...

------
siddhant
Its almost the same here in India. The so called "tech support" has 5 steps
they want us to go through, irrespective of anything.

    
    
      1. Press the "Start" button
      2. Click on "run"
      3. Type "cmd" and press "enter"
      4. Ping router
      5. Ping (their) DNS servers
    

The good thing happens to be, they arrange for a visit by a lineman if you
straightaway answer in the negative to all of them.

In situations when they want me to "check the automatically configure IP
address/DNS servers checkbox", restart modem, and such stuff (and I don't use
Windows), I just try to simulate the system that they are expecting, from my
Mac (if they tell me something like "open control panel, go to network
properties, double click on TCP/IPv4", it fairly obvious they want me to
change the IP address or the DNS servers). Usually it works out pretty well.

------
tibbon
I think the problem being highlighted here is that AT&T (and many company's
support) is becoming out of line with what we're expecting from _good_
customer support these days.

While I am not yet a customer, from my understanding if you call/contact
Zappos for example, their customer service reps fix the problem. They don't
run through a script, and they don't put you off onto another department that
will have you troubleshoot the same steps again.

Yes, I realize there is a difference between network troubleshooting and
shoes, but having enabled and well trained reps who are the first to receive
the calls and are able to actually fix most scenarios is important these days.
Of course these things come at a cost and many larger/older companies are not
able to come to grips with that type of a change.

~~~
5teev
"Good customer support" is a matter of perspective. As customers, we prefer
highly qualified responders who understand and solve our problems. Most
businesses prefer to pay as little as possible to people who are just good
enough to keep you from canceling your service.

At the scale of AT&T's business, if they can keep you just this side of
canceling, they will consider their customer support "good."

------
jasonkester
DSL is one of those things it pays to spend a bit extra on. Here's a
transcript of my last customer support experience:

    
    
      - dial dial dial, ringle-ringle (one ringle-ringle, that is)
      - <irish accent>Hello, Fast.co.uk.  How can I help you?</irish accent>
      - Something's up with my DNS.  I can't resolve google.com.
      - Hang on, let me check a few things...
    

... followed by a discussion with a guy who knew everything he needed to fix
my problem (and every problem I've called them about) in a few minutes.

For this privilege, I pay maybe $3/month more than I would with BT or some
other terrible provider that you hear horror stories about. I consider it
tech-support insurance.

And since this is my livelihood, I consider it money well spent.

------
ygd
I had my suspicions, and then I came across this line:

    
    
        They are expertise on these stuffs.
    

Yup. Definitely an Indian.

~~~
trustfundbaby
... because, obviously, only Indians can't spell.

~~~
Rhapso
no, because there is a set of grammars that seem to be consistently mis-
matched when one overlays English on Hindi or Urdu. One of the exemplar being
an intent of "Noun adjective" that ends up being "Noun Noun-form of adjective"

------
mscarborough
So someone gets frustrated with online customer service-person, obviously non-
native English speaker, and then gets 'clever' by claiming something that
doesn't even pass the smell test from Level-1 support?

And then saves and posts the entire conversation? Ugh.

------
knieveltech
<http://xkcd.com/806/>

------
Athtar
AT&T is bar none the worst company in the world when it comes to Customer
Service. Although, in this case, the conversation could've been applied to
just about any support call.

~~~
fitzhume
While I don't doubt that AT&T internet service is terrible in some cases, I do
have to say that they're wireless telephone support is actually quite good
every time I've called. Always helpful, always apologetic, and issues get
resolved quickly the times I've called.

It's the one thing that I think I'll miss when the iPhone is available
elsewhere. I dread having to deal with Verizon's customer support again when
they finally have a few other phone choices I'm interested in.

------
jasongullickson
Follow-up post: <http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/coincidence>

------
initself
I tried signing up for AT&T DSL twice via their online form. They never got in
touch with me even though I received email confirmations from the signup
process.

I even chatted with an AT&T representative who could see that I had signed up,
but couldn't tell me why no one had contacted me. And they also weren't able
to sign me up for service either!

~~~
theletterd
I had a similar experience with using their online forms to sort out moving my
phone and internet to a new apartment. When it didn't happen, I called
customer service who told me that sometimes things just disappear if you do
them through the website. AT&T's website is a complete joke.

------
Joshim5
Reminds me of the problem my parents just had with Dell. My mother broke the
USB port on her computer and got a technician to come and fix it. For some
reason, the technician replaced the power supply and motherboard (which
clearly were not causing the problem). After he did this, the computer would
not boot and he decided it must be due to the hard drive having too much data
on it. When I was home later that night, I moved that hard drive into another
computer and booted it. It worked. Obviously this technician had no idea what
in the world he was talking about. He came back the next time, he replaced the
motherboard once again and gave us another hard drive. Now we have 2 hard
drives in that computer (we have to send one back. We may clone the old hard
drive onto the new one since the new one obviously has a longer life left).
The USB port issue has still not been solved. TECHNICIANS SUCK (for the most
part)

------
swah
Here's something strange that happened to me recently:

I call to one of the frontline people, explain the problems, tell them that a
technician already visited me came and checked that it wasn't a physical
problem, etc. Then see says that they are going to send another technician.

Then, 5 minutes later, someone that isn't a FSM calls me and talks to me and
realizes that I'm not the average non-geek customer, oh he also uses a mac
too. That makes me very hopeful. Then he says he is going to call me from the
datacenter so we can run some tests, because there might even be a dirty
optical fiber. He also _cancels_ the technician visit because we two agree
that the problem isn't in my house! At this point I'm very confident that this
guy will solve my problem.

Except he never called, I don't know his name and there is no protocol number
(because he just called me directly).

------
kevinherron
I had this issue happen with my AT&T DSL line. I even got to the point where a
technician was supposed to come out and look at the line but he never showed
up.

I called back, I jumped through all their hoops, and then they eventually
connected me to another more advanced department who just looked a few things
up, said "ok, here's the problem, hold on gonna put this order through to fix
it."

Within 2 minutes my connection was back to 6Mbit. Whatever they did they were
able to do it COMPLETELY REMOTELY. I never found out what was going on but I
suspect I may have ended up on some sort of black list, maybe because of
torrents or some other traffic profiling.

It blew my mind. I suffered that speed for nearly 3 months before getting it
fixed.

------
thaumaturgy
If you have a good local independent computer technician available -- not Geek
Squad -- they can usually navigate AT&T for you and get the issue resolved
quickly.

We do this on a regular basis and don't have any trouble with AT&T. Yesterday
I got to chat with the fellow doing front-line technical support about the 12
feet of snow they had gotten recently while he resolved the couple of system
issues that AT&T were having on my client's line.

There are some key phrases that can make things go a lot smoother, and
technicians that deal with AT&T (or Comcast, or whoever) on a regular basis
know what they are.

~~~
paulschreiber
And the key phrases are?

~~~
Twisol
"Shibboleet".

<http://www.xkcd.com/806/>

------
rmc
I'm sure we all have horror stories like this. And we all wonder why the phone
companies/ISPs don't hire technical people (like us) to do tech support, it
would be so much easier!

However can you imagine being a front line tech support person? You'd hate it.
People ringing you up the when the cat knocks their cable out. You'll spend
all day telling people to turn it off and turn it on again, and that'll work
for 50% of people who call you.

Front line tech support treat you like you know nothing about computers
because most of their customers know nothing about computers.

------
dedward
Other side of the planet, but I've had my plan rate-achanged accidentally and
it really did take severla levels of technical support (although the problem
was recognized, nobodoy could solve it) to fix it -there turned out ot be only
one or two guys in teh country who could actually figure out how to untagle
the mess they'd created.

------
niels_olson
I have a hard time believing a network engineer would know so little about
front-line support that they would continue on this track for so long. If I
was his supervisor, his evaluation would say "perseverates".

------
Mrdev4
I had same painful AT&T experience, although i was able to log into the modem
and it displayed connection speed in the advanced menu.After frontline hell,
second tier support fixed the problem.

------
jhawk28
While these various tech companies have terrible support, I'm glad they are
the first line of defense so that I don't have to answer ALL the tech
questions from friends, family, and acquaintances.

------
notyourwork
Anyone else wonder why black was chosen for the two characters in the
conversation along with one of their dialogue and only one was orange.

