🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4i75ep$gt@decaxp.harvard.edu>, bb@wjh.harvard.edu (Brent Byer)
wrote:

> I think you are allowing your zealous dislike for AT&T (etc.)
> to cloud your sensibilities.  Just because the woman
> *said* she was from AT&T, that doesn't make it true.
> It's not uncommon for scumbags to use such opening lines
> to get their "mouth in your ear" (cf: "foot in the door").
> After all, she *was* a telemarketer.

And AT&T doesn't do telemarketing? I was recently at a client's place of
business and an AT&T sales type phoned and began going through his shell
game of rates with one of the firm's employees. The person said, "Our
consultant happens to be right here; talk to him", at which time the phone
was handed to me.

I thought my ear would be talked off with a convoluted presentation of
rates, "by-the-second" billing, and a lot of other ITL (Impress The
Layman) tactics. I finally ended up concluding by telling him that AT&T
had just pulled too many dirty tricks on my clients and myself to be
worthy of consideration.

> I've always found AT&T *employees* to conduct themselves
> professionally. 

At one point, during a multi-month period where hundreds of dollars worth
of bogus calls to the UK were being billed to one of my numbers, one of
those "professional" employees practically accused me of trying to weasel
out of "AT&T's just charges". After all, she explained, "those are
direct-dialed calls. That means they HAVE to be made from your telephone."
That, of course, is baloney. It took months and months to resolve the
matter, and AT&T was of absolutely no help whatsoever. (Pacific Bell
finally handled it for me.)

> However, more than once, I've gotten a
> call from someone representing themself as being from AT&T,
> but, when I asked them *explicitly*, "Are you an employee
> of AT&T?" I then got the hem-and-haw reply of "Well, not exactly ..."

Well, if that is happening, it would be well for AT&T to investigate such
occurances and do something about it. I realize that the company considers
itself to be above all such effort, but then maybe they ought to do
SOMETHING useful with the exhorbitant amount of money the company collects
from its customers.

> You're in the data-comm biz, John; (I'm not, but) I consider you
> to be a competent, and ethical, person, so I'm sure you do have
> justification for your opinion of AT&T (& Sprint & MCI),
> but you lose credibility by grasping at the example, below,
> for support.

I merely presented the exchange at face value. If you want dozens
(literally) of examples of why one should avoid AT&T, just get me started.
In all fairness, however, if anyone is going to avoid a company, my top
choice would be MCI. As I have stated many times, possibly the worst
experience of my professional life was attempting to use MCI Vision as a
long distance arrangement--an experience shared by many others that I
talked to.

BTW, of the three, I have have found Sprint to be the most
straight-forward and professional. If you can negotiate any sort of decent
rates, the company is worth consideration.

-- 
John Higdon  |    P.O. Box 7648   | +1 408 264 4115  |      FAX:
john@ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | +1 500 FOR-A-MOO |+1 408 264 4407
             |       http://www.ati.com/ati          |