Refuse to Settle: 4 Signs a Company No Longer Values Your Business (My AT&T Story)

Today’s post is compliments of AT&T. It took me three agents, an hour and a half, and a lot of frustration to find out that the towers in my area were down. The full chat transcript is at the bottom of this post if you want to read it for yourself. Fair warning: it reads like a sketch from SNL, or better yet Impractical Jokers.

I’ve been an AT&T customer for 26 years, with the same phone number the whole time. I can’t think of any service I’ve used longer in my life. This one exchange made me decide it’s finally time to move on. Here are the four things that, as a consumer, you should recognize as more than a bad day. They’re signs a company no longer values your business. If a company values you, the customer experience is at the front of everything it does and says.

1. You repeat yourself to every new agent

When you’re passed from agent to agent, do you have to explain the problem and recite all of your personal information again each time? In my case they said they couldn’t verify me because they couldn’t send a one-time passcode. In 1998 I didn’t have the option of a one-time passcode and they handled my issues just fine. They have every bit of my personal information, plus a PIN. I wasn’t trying to change my account or do anything that could compromise my service. I was asking them to fix a problem. That’s why this wasn’t acceptable. The same goes for payments: it makes no sense that a business can’t take a payment on an account. If someone else wants to pay my bill, let them.

2. The “solution” is the thing you just said you can’t do

You explain the problem, and the fix they offer is the exact thing you can’t do, because that is the problem. They aren’t listening; they’re following a (very bad) script. New employees happen, and I give them grace. But when you go through three agents and it takes you asking “Don’t you have something that tells you what this error code means?” before anyone gets helpful, the company has lost sight of why those people are there.

3. They won’t let you talk to a supervisor

This is one of the biggest customer-service no-nos in my book. You should be able to talk to a manager without an employee hanging up on you or trying to talk you out of it. If a company is honest and above board, it should have no problem with you escalating. And as a manager, you should understand that by the time a customer reaches you, they might be pretty mad. Nobody should have to take physical or verbal abuse, but a loud voice isn’t abuse. I’ll be the first to admit that after a one-star experience like this, I’m usually upset by the time I reach a supervisor. If they can’t handle a raised voice, they’re in the wrong job.

4. They waste your time

A company should respect your time and be as efficient as it can. Too efficient isn’t great either, but in this case they put me on hold for several minutes only to come back and ask the same questions they had already asked.

The verdict: one star, and I’m leaving

In this day and age there is no reason to settle for a subpar experience from a company you spend thousands of dollars a year with. Find one that values you as a customer. If you hadn’t figured it out already, this was a one-star experience, and if my personal scale went to zero, it would have fit right in. Mistakes happen and service gets interrupted; what matters is how the company handles the problem. The same rule runs through every review on this site, and I explain why in Value vs Cost. Don’t settle, friends!