After AT&T introduced the iPhone, they received such an influx of customers they had to change some policies. At the top of the list was the Unlimited Data Plan.
They had certain customers using so much bandwidth, that certain markets, notably New York and San Francisco, ran out of bandwidth.
This resulted in the decision to end the Unlimited Data Plan, with the exception of those who already had it could continue to keep it. However, if you moved away from it, you could not go back.
This past December, my wife decided to surprise me with a new iPhone as a Christmas gift. When she went to the AT&T store, the sales rep offered to upgrade her from the iPhone 3 to the iPhone 4. That was not the purpose of her visit, but like a good salesman, he sold her on the upgrade.
While the sales rep was good, it was his first week on the job and he made a slight error. It seems AT&T’s computer system does not default to the previously selected data plan and the sales rep, being new, didn’t confirm with my wife the plan she was currently using. On her part, my wife incorrectly assumed AT&T was a company with integrity and would not make changes without her approval.
Because we trusted AT&T, we didn’t closely look at every bill, and so did not notice the change. It came to our attention when my wife received a text message informing her she was reaching the end of her data usage for the month. We began to look into why she would receive such a message when she had unlimited data and we discovered what had happened.
So I called their customer service to get the mistake rectified and was denied. It seems it took us too long to discover AT&T’s mistake, so they would not correct it. It seems when AT&T makes a mistake, if you don’t correct it within 90 days, AT&T won’t do the right thing.
So I visited the store where my wife purchased the phone. Certainly they would understand what had happened and make it right. And they did understand. And they tried to make it right. But the bean counters at the corporate headquarters would not do the right thing. I was impressed with the efforts the in-store sales rep went to to try and make this right, but AT&T corporate does not care about customer service.
So, AT&T you will lose my cell phone business. And my home phone business. And my high speed Internet business. And my TV business.
Looking forward to my visit to the Verizon store.
