GatewayRedbirds.com

I come home to see the DSL is down. So I start up the PC that has a dialup modem to find the ISP's phone number. After the anti-virus software takes a half hour to do its work, I try to get on and fail. No dial tone. I check the land line. No dial tone. I try calling my land line from my cell phone, and all I get is an ambiguous message that the call cannot be completed. I look for a contact number, but I don't have a phone book.

I go to the office, which is not a big deal since I was going to the gym anyway. It takes a few minutes to log on, as this piece of junk Windows machine always does, then I get on the web to find contact info. I find att.com, click to the repair page. After a few minutes of flashing animations, I enter my phone number. It asks for my account manager ID and password, which I have forgotten. It will email it to my DSL account, which is blocked at work, or it will send the combo to my home phone, which is not working. I try a couple of other things on the site, but they want me to log on to my account. So I click on the "Contact Us" link and get a 404 error. I do a search for "phone contact" on the site, and get nothing immediately useful. But there are a couple of links that might work. I click on each of them, but they include both phone and email links, which means "email" is in the URL, which means those contacts links are blocked at work.

I find a phone book. I call ATT and get the automated maze. After about five minutes of pressing buttons, I finally win the right to talk to a human being. Or, more precisely, win the right to get in line to talk to a human being. Another ten minutes pass. The human being asks for my name and phone number, which I have already entered, but that is not too bad. Then she says "There is a massive outage in your area." At this point I want to scream at somebody, "Why couldn't your freaking website or automated maze have told me this?!?" Fortunately I don't, so I get to hear the better news, that I could be without phone service until Saturday.

Well, I needed to avoid the stress of a Wellemeyer start anyway, since the championship is on the line for the Bowling League tomorrow night.

We don't care. We don't have to. Were the phone company.

New Pagodi wrote:

We don't care. We don't have to. Were the phone company.

One ringy dingy!

Two ringy dingy!

I work for AT&T and feel your pain. If you have any dsl issues call 1-877-722-3755. That's the # if you have any problems/questions. I'm sure they'll transfer you to the telephone side if need be. BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

cardinalkarp wrote:BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

I use that trick all the time with insurance companies...it works for almost all of them.

BTW, quality rant GB.

cardinalkarp wrote:I work for AT&T and feel your pain. If you have any dsl issues call 1-877-722-3755. That's the # if you have any problems/questions. I'm sure they'll transfer you to the telephone side if need be. BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

Is this the correct number regardless of where a person lives in the US??? Here in ATL, I call 1-888-321-2375 for AT&T DSL issues (which is RARE). I punch in my phone number and it lets me know immediately if the the problem is an area outage and provides a timeframe for resolution. I've had to call this number twice in 2 years....each time, it was resolved quicker than estimated.

Simbagal23 wrote:

cardinalkarp wrote:I work for AT&T and feel your pain. If you have any dsl issues call 1-877-722-3755. That's the # if you have any problems/questions. I'm sure they'll transfer you to the telephone side if need be. BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

Is this the correct number regardless of where a person lives in the US??? Here in ATL, I call 1-888-321-2375 for AT&T DSL issues (which is RARE). I punch in my phone number and it lets me know immediately if the the problem is an area outage and provides a timeframe for resolution. I've had to call this number twice in 2 years....each time, it was resolved quicker than estimated.

I think it'll probably work anywhere but there is definitely more than one number that will get you to the same place. If you've had good luck w/ the # you currently have I would continue to use it.

cardinalkarp wrote:

Simbagal23 wrote:

cardinalkarp wrote:I work for AT&T and feel your pain. If you have any dsl issues call 1-877-722-3755. That's the # if you have any problems/questions. I'm sure they'll transfer you to the telephone side if need be. BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

Is this the correct number regardless of where a person lives in the US??? Here in ATL, I call 1-888-321-2375 for AT&T DSL issues (which is RARE). I punch in my phone number and it lets me know immediately if the the problem is an area outage and provides a timeframe for resolution. I've had to call this number twice in 2 years....each time, it was resolved quicker than estimated.

I think it'll probably work anywhere but there is definitely more than one number that will get you to the same place. If you've had good luck w/ the # you currently have I would continue to use it.

I'll definitely continue to use the 1-888 number as it's dedicated only to DSL issues and provides an answer ASAP. The recent issues were due to line upgrades, so I really can't complain!

cardinalkarp wrote:

Simbagal23 wrote:

cardinalkarp wrote:I work for AT&T and feel your pain. If you have any dsl issues call 1-877-722-3755. That's the # if you have any problems/questions. I'm sure they'll transfer you to the telephone side if need be. BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

Is this the correct number regardless of where a person lives in the US??? Here in ATL, I call 1-888-321-2375 for AT&T DSL issues (which is RARE). I punch in my phone number and it lets me know immediately if the the problem is an area outage and provides a timeframe for resolution. I've had to call this number twice in 2 years....each time, it was resolved quicker than estimated.

I think it'll probably work anywhere but there is definitely more than one number that will get you to the same place. If you've had good luck w/ the # you currently have I would continue to use it.

It's awesome that you're the official GRB Phone Trouble Troubleshooter.

RC21* wrote:

cardinalkarp wrote:

Simbagal23 wrote:

cardinalkarp wrote:I work for AT&T and feel your pain. If you have any dsl issues call 1-877-722-3755. That's the # if you have any problems/questions. I'm sure they'll transfer you to the telephone side if need be. BTW, just so you know the easiest way to ALWAYS talk to a live person is to continue to hit 0. 99% of the time that will get you to a live person, whether or not you will be able to understand them is another whole story.

Is this the correct number regardless of where a person lives in the US??? Here in ATL, I call 1-888-321-2375 for AT&T DSL issues (which is RARE). I punch in my phone number and it lets me know immediately if the the problem is an area outage and provides a timeframe for resolution. I've had to call this number twice in 2 years....each time, it was resolved quicker than estimated.

I think it'll probably work anywhere but there is definitely more than one number that will get you to the same place. If you've had good luck w/ the # you currently have I would continue to use it.

It's awesome that you're the official GRB Phone Trouble Troubleshooter.

I play my role here at GRB.