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>>”Let me talk to a supervisor.”
>>
>>”I am a supervisor. You can’t talk to anyone over me who will tell you anything different.”

I’ve gotten this kind of runaround at the post office (lost package, returned package (their applied postage fell of of my shipment and I was being billed to ship it again, etc.) and on different matters on the phone.

I got that kind of horsepucky from AT&T when we were trying to switch my 95 year old mother's internet from DSL to U-verse because her DSL was down more often than it was up. In the process, AT&T succeeded turning off my mother's land line phone for over TWO WEEKS which she has had with them (or their predecessor company) for 75 years.

This landline has her alarm system, her lifeline, and her only means of communication (she lived on the phone).

I kept track of the time I spent trying to get her phone turned back on while AT&T technicians failed to keep eight different appointments, just not showing up at all—once when I called to find out where the tech was I was told "Well, there's no one here who wants to work today!"

Other times they were giving me the run around, and giving me a load of excuses why they could not turn her phone back on, even being told "Why don't you just get her a cellular phone?", and "We are the phone company, we can shut off phone service if we want to!", and they also announced that she had to re-apply for phone service with AT&T, including filling out and passing a credit check (she's never been late on a phone bill, or any bill for that matter, and my mother's credit score was only slightly lower than God's!). Once, when I asked to be connected to a supervisor, I was told "I'm the highest person at AT&T you're allowed to talk to!" Incidentally, this was from the day after Christmas to a week after the New Year. . . and my mother had no way to contact any of her friends or relatives.

As I said, I clocked all the time it took to finally get my mother's phone turned back on. It took a documented 29 ½ hours of phone time, counting waiting on hold, being hung up on, disconnected, being bounced from one department to the next, one supervisor to the next, talking to the "senior ombudsman" who was FIRED between 1:30 PM the day I talked to her and the next morning when I called her back to get the results of her trying to get the phone turned back on for a 95 year old senior, and finally getting a TECHNICIAN out to my mother's house who found that someone had disconnected a wire in the switch box down at the end of her block. . . and that was the entire problem all along!

I was livid. Within a month, the AT&T Business in a Box Digital with Internal service at my office (over $1100 monthly in billing landlines) was replaced by Comcast Business Phones and Internet. Over the next year we cancelled the AT&T cellular phones and switched to other carriers. We cancelled out advertising contracts with them when they came up for renewal. (over $500,000 in ten years). . . and we re-allocated that advertising elsewhere.

This was eight years ago, but we spread the word of AT&T's really poor customer service.

By-the-way, I took a clue from my daughter who at 18 years old had fought AT&T over a bollixed up bill, won, and billed them for the time she spent arguing with them and got them to pay her $800. I sent AT&T a bill for my time. . . came to $1475 at $50 an hour. While they did not pay cash, they credited me on the office bill.

That still did not stop me from cancelling service. They also sent a letter of apology to my mother. . . and credited her with six months of U-Verse. She was really happy to get back on the Internet. She got to use free it until she died at 95½. She thought the whole thing was a hoot. It didn't do MY blood pressure much good, though.