Wither She Blows
"
Oh, tantric mistress!
My ears brim with the siren's sweet song and the burble and smack of the sea cradling me schooner.
Long ago me two masted steed crossed me mistress and was cast into a murky, watery grave.
Oh, me sea; my coy and sumptuous mistress.
How to be in your embrace without me vessel?
"
"
'Lock em up,' they says of Salty Bob.
'He ain't got no ship!' theys says.
'Ahoys!' I calls now, for I found me new ship, and me heart ensnared in the lightning embrace of an electric sea.
Home, Iyams, home at last, so methinkeths.
But, far from port me mistress offers her lips and I'm met with a gale of salty spittle on me face; the kiss of the corporate merchant.
'Aye, she's a monster,' I says of me new mistress, 'Tame her? No mate can tame the sea.'
"
"
'Her name?' they ask.
She be AT&T*.
"
*Herein where any claim that is made or alluded to that AT&T Broadband is the personification of a coy and sexy siren of the sea or a vast ocean unto themselves is pure fiction.
AT&T Broadband is really a corporation that has made false advertising claims, demonstrated a grotesque lack of manners, and a general inability to deliver advertised services within an acceptible amount of time.
These facts are undisputed.
This document is merely a retelling of these facts.
All telephone and email correspondance I have had with AT&T Broadband articulates and supports these facts.
I mean, come on, how can AT&T Broadband behave with so little regard to their customers and not expect some kind of response?
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Shoot Me!
A personal request to AT&T Broadband: Why don't you just take me out back and shoot me?
Wouldn't it be easier?
I don't want to be on the receiving end of the serated blade you use to gut your customers,
but I have little choice.
- I live in an area with one cable provider: AT&T.
- I have a cell plan and don't use a land line.
- Satellites, even two way systems, require a land line. Plus, they require an entire week day to install, cost over 500.00 USD to install, and cost over 70.00 USD per month.
- DSL requires a land line. Since I want my cell plan, but not two phone lines (hence two phone bills), DSL would be 200.00 USD to install and 70.00 USD per month (DSL plus phone line).
- Cable broadband is 45.00 USD per month and is advertised with no installation; AT&T directed advertising to my address.
Prices are given for where I live at the time these events occurred.
It doesn't matter if you can get any of this for cheaper.
This just happens to be the state of things at the time I set out to get broadband.
I could certainly get a land line and go with DSL, but that violates my Western principles:
AT&T Broadband advertised something to me, and so I want it.
Apparently, I forgot to give the secret password when I ordered service.
I must have missed something.
What could it have been?
I know! I should have bribed the very first technician who showed up, or at least tipped them.
Or maybe the second? The third? The fourth, or fifth, sixth, seventh?
Or the third-party contractor approved by AT&T Broadband, and who said everything was OK and couldn't figure out what was wrong?
Perhaps if I greased a palm, the magic switch would have been turned on.
It got so frustrating after the first two months that I broke down, cancelled the order, and ordered satellite.
That was it, I gave up.
After waiting an entire work day for the install crew to show up, and waiting an additional hour while they crawled around, they realized they had forgotten something and couldn't proceed.
They wanted me to wait another entire day just for them to come back?
Who are they kidding?
What is it with this trend that consumers think it is acceptible for a service industry to provide a window of
an entire work day?
And, the technicians think it is okay when they screw up and want you to wait another work day.
On top of that, they want you to pay them for the convenience of missing work while they mosey on over at a leisurely pace.
Back I go, crawling to AT&T Broadband.
After two months, the little lights on the modem changed.
Nobody told me, but I now know that I could have had broadband in November if somebody had at least left me install instructions.
Or, the tech had bothered to knock on the door after connecting the cable.
Or, AT&T Broadband called me to say the fat Internet pipe would be turned on if I followed a few, non-sensical, instructions created by some crack-smoking* technician in their engineering department.
*I do not have evidence that their engineers use drugs, but the technical steps provided to me indicate an illogical thought process that must have been induced by imbibing, inhaling, inserting, or injecting a stiff narcotic.
But, to be correct, I'll refer to their technicians as "suspected crack smokers" and not just crack smokers, where in the latter case one might incorrectly conclude that I had some irrefutable evidence.
In late November, AT&T Broadband bought @Home.
Two days after the network blackout in early December, I received a call (automated, no less) that said my broadband account was successfully switched over to the new network.
That's pretty amazing considering they never turned it on.
Early one Sunday morning, I received a call confirming that my account had been cancelled.
"I cancelled the installation order over a month ago, but then ordered a new installation," I told the caller.
"Oh," came a sheepish voice, which then instructed "Um, I can't do, um, you'll have to call back and re-order.""I already called and re-ordered the installation."
And, it is pretty amazing that I could cancel my account in the first place since it was never turned on.
Just before Christmas, I received my first month's bill for AT&T Broadband services.
That's pretty amazing considering they never turned it on, and apparently, I had just cancelled the order and re-activated it two weeks prior.
At this point, my wife had started going through the checklist of what qualifies a person to have obsessive-compulive disorder.
Why don't I just bite the bullet and get DSL? Why not try satellite again?
"Because AT&T [Broadband] advertised it!".
I think that response alone let her check off two or three boxes.
It wasn't so much that she was right as it was that I was on a quest.
Yes, that's what it was. A quest for broadband.
I wanted AT&T Broadband to come through on their advertisement.
But, I had to admit my current tactic of playing a consumer sheep wasn't working.
I had to try something else.
So, I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint.
Next, I started using the online chat forums and citing the BBB complaint.
Finally, I copied the email address from the "suspected crack smoker" technical support forum and began to CC their corporate head quarters.
A full month had passed since the modem lights had changed when, on December 26, 2001, I finally got a response from AT&T Broadband's "suspected crack smoking" technical support.
The response didn't include the regular step-by-step instructions on power cycling my modem and restarting my computer.
The response came after spending at least an hour every day for a full month sending them emails, using their chat system, and calling their tech support line.
The "suspected crack smoking" technician sent me a very terse response with a few basic steps. Here are the pertinent parts:
- Go to http://###.##.attbi.com
- Enter your account number. ################
- Enter the last nine digits of your account number.
Wait, what the heck is that?
First, I could have done that back in November!
Second, this wasn't documented on their web site, at least when I was looking; that may have changed.
The application that was supposed to auto-configure the modem didn't work at all.
So where exactly did these steps come from?
Specifically, what kind of corporation uses some cryptic and undocumented registration process like this?
But wait, that's not all!
The above steps register the modem MAC address with the server.
Most people neither know or care about MAC addresses or why registering it matters.
But, what this does is allow some of the other installation steps to work.
So, now, the user has to go to another internal web site, and download and execute a program to configure the account.
Of course, this second internal website is only documented on the Internet.
When a broadband account is not setup and the modem doesn't work, everything on the Internet is inaccessible.
I guess the "suspected crack smoking" documentation writers never thought about that.
Third, the user has to go back to a third site and register again.
I realize that most technicians know these steps and perform them for the multitude of users out there.
They didn't do this for me.
AT&T Broadband expected me to ferret out these details on my own, because they certainly didn't make it obvious.
If you were a manager and an employee suggested that some of your customers may have to follow these steps,
wouldn't you immediately suspect that employee of having recently altered their perception of reality with a stiff narcotic?
Lack of an education wouldn't do it.
Under-compensated? No, that wouldn't do it.
Too much television wouldn't do it, either.
No, this looks like the job of somebody who was fried out of their gourd on a rectal suppository.
You know what? After those wacky and completely non-sensical steps, it worked flawlessly.
Once it was turned on, I never had a problem with it.
Oh, wait.
It stopped working on March 7th, 2002, a little over two months after it first started working.
This was the day I came home and the little lights were behaving as though it was day-one.
It was day-one all over again.
More phone calls.
More schedules to have a "suspected crack smoker" technician check things out.
What really irritates me about the 3/7 outage was I had come home early that afternoon and saw two AT&T Broadband trucks outside.
Let's see: Broadband worked the previous night, now broadband doesn't work.
My conclusion was instantaneous and, most likely, correct: AT&T screwed up and disconnected my line.
Are AT&T technicians completely inept, or just sick?
I saw the AT&T Broadband truck.
It is obvious they accidentally disconnected my line.
And in order to get it fixed, I have to wait on the phone, wait for their service personnel, and for God knows what else.
The modem didn't burn itself out, my computer doesn't need to be rebooted.
On 3/12, the service miraculously returned to life.
Did the entire block lose service? I wouldn't know because half the block gave up and went with satellite, so I'm not sure who has broadband or DSL (the satellite folk have the satellite dish on their roof, of course).
AT&T Broadband, just shoot me already.
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Hoist Thee Megabit Main Sail
"
Breathless and wide, this electric blue sea.
Near flat under a cloudless sky.
I takes me astrolabe and plot a course.
For want of wind and wave, I am adrift.
"
"
But she be there, just over the horizon.
A far-off phosphorescent splash she makes whilst out for a midnight swim.
And her voice, I can hear it now, and I be swooned by her fiery lips and luscious curves.
A woman of the sea, she is; her siren's song hypnotizes me and draws me further and further out.
"
"
But the wind? Where be the wind?
Curses to thee, siren, curses to thee.
For how I love thy song; how I detest thy wretched nature*.
"
*
Note that AT&T Broadband has never demonstrated the ability to sing.
They are wretched, though. Oh, yes, indeed, quite wretched.
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Consumer Sheep
I am the ipconfig master.
Before you have finished reading this sentence, I will have successfully released and renewed my IP address ten times in rapid succession while sipping coffee and checking the news.
Becoming an ipconfig master is a gruelling, thankless task, fraught with perils, and something that most people would never want to become.
I imagine most would rather watch every Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen video at high volume three times in a row than learn what I have learned.
Yes, I am the ipconfig master.
I can also power-cycle a cable modem with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back while locked in a room across the street.
I am the Harry Houdini of cable modem power cycling.
Why am I an ipconfig master, and a Harry Houdini of power cycling?
Because I am a consumer sheep.
And so are you.
The fact that I knew what ipconfig was before I started my trek to obtain broadband from AT&T Broadband is beside the point that broadband consumers don't need to know.
The real fact here is that corporations dealing with personal computers have gotten into the habit of sidetracking consumers with the variety of ways that a computer can be configured, when in fact the problem is almost always on their end.
Granted, most people don't know much about computers.
And that is precisely why telling them to run utilities like ipconfig is a complete waste of time.
It's a round-robin task meant to distract you, the consumer, from realizing that the company knows their service is broken or misconfigured.
This doesn't just apply to computers, either.
How long did you have to wait for the appliance company to drop off your refrigerator, or the cable company to install cable?
Phone company? Plumber? Contractor?
How many of you can actually get to the bank during banking hours?
It's a cosmic gag, and we're the punchline!
(Now I'm sounding like Michael Moore)
When did the person with the money stop defining the rules?
Consider deliveries or any sort of contract work at your home.
If you are paying for the delivery or installation, in addition to the product, what kind of window are these people giving you?
You know what, a time frame of 8am - 12pm doesn't work for me.
A time frame of 10am - 5pm definately doesn't work, which is what the satellite install crew gave me.
And, of course, none of these people work on weekends.
If you take your car to the dealer, how long do you have to wait for an oil change?
Any dealer I go to says: "Just drop it off at 7:45am and you can pick it up by 4pm".
For an oil change? I can go to Penzoil and be out in ten minutes.
There is no Penzoil for broadband.
But it makes me wonder. The next time I buy a product, I'll be sure to set my own time.
"You can deliver it at 7:00 pm, when I get home from work. What, you don't do that time? Ok, then I'll go find somewhere that will."
Nice thought. But, with AT&T Broadband, what other choice do I have?
The Internet is cool, but AT&T Broadband blows.
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Thar She Blows
"
Lost, I be, in the far-off sea, longing to see land again.
Though me ears are ringing from the siren song, where could I possible go in this vast electric sea?
"
"
No wind in me sail, no stars to find me way home.
And me mistress who lead me to this place?
Nowhere to be found, she is nowhere to be found.
"
"
I sit me crusty, salty backside on the weathered deck, and call out like some dern love-shorn land-lubber.
Call out to me mistress, AT&T?
Nay, I be calling to the wind, to fill me sails, and guide me home.
And I be saying, nay I be praying, 'thar she blows. Aye, thar she blows.'
"
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Disclaimer
This article claims that AT&T Broadband demonstrated bad faith, poor manners, and a general ineptitude regarding their technicians.
My position is that AT&T Broadband technicians, technical support, and sales representatives have all behaved in a grotesque manner.
This disclaimer has been added to state the facts that lead me to make these claims.
Their records indicate that for several months I called them on a daily basis, usually several times a day, and up to two and a half hours per call.
I have emails that contain text demonstrating their lack technical expertise, and a general lack of customer care.
I have a copy of the Better Business Bureau complaint I filed.
I have advertisements for services they were unable to provide,
premature billing statements for service during the extended time they took to install,
and, a bad taste in my mouth from my contact with their representatives.
When their service works, it works well, and I have no contention with that aspect.
I believe that I have the correct facts, and think it is necessary to bring consumer attention to their behavior in some type of forum.
I have already written a formal letter to AT&T, and that did nothing to change their practices.
If I could draw, I would create a cartoon of AT&T writhing in a pit of vipers where each snake is a dissatisfied customer.
If I could sing, I would create an opera about the evils that conglomerate corporations inflict on their consumers.
Rather, the forum I have elected is one of mockery and chastisement for a contemptible company.
References to AT&T are soley directed towards AT&T Broadband.
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