I realize this is about DSL, but AT&T recently took over my mobile broadband data service from Alltel... They sent me the wrong type of modem. I called to get it changed. After three transfers and enough time on hold to go over my ‘minutes allowance’ for the month, I finally got to someone “who could help me”.... Someone who didn’t speak English very well... Who demanded my social security number before we could progress.
After I told her that it was illegal to demand a SSN for identification, and I wasn’t going to give it to her, she said she couldn not proceed with the discussion without it.
So I told her to go to h377, and figured out a way to get around the wrong type of modem issues.
So, After fifty dollars of expenses and five hours of software hassles, I finally got connected.
At first I was pleased, once all the technical problems got worked out, because my bandwidth / download speed was four times faster. But there is a huge downside... They have shut my connection down completely from 10PM to 10 AM every day since they took over. And I have waste hours on the phone to finally talk to someone in some foreign country who will demand my social security number??? No thanks.
Unfortunately I’m out in the boonies and my only alternative is Satellite Internet which costs three times as much and apparently has very similar service issues (or, rather, lack of service).
I hate AT&T. Call them All Trouble and Tedium.
I spent four hours on their website to try to find someone I could email, or fill out a web form or something, and I could only find telephone contact info.
Oh, and half of the manuals and communications that they have sent me have been in Spanish ONLY.. Someone might inform them that New Mexico is slightly different from Mexico, and that English... at least for a short time more, is the default language of the state.
If it's set up like U-Verse, you need to provide some kind of authentication in order to have tech support make changes or provide information about your account. The authentication can be your four digit authentication passcode, the answer to your authentication question, or the last four digits of your social security number.
Somebody on FR posted a year ago or so that when you call an 800 # and are having problems, ask what country they are in. India, Philippines, wherever, ask to be transferred to someone in the US. For some legal reason they must transfer you back to a service rep here in the US.