Ross and his neighbors have had to drive a few miles down the road to get any bars on their cellphone after a nearby AT&T tower went down and the other two nearby weren’t working well either. Despite the fact that he has no service and there is no fix in sight for several months, AT&T won’t let him leave his contract.

Ross writes:

We (and all of our neighbors) have lost AT&T phone service in our home area. It has been down for over 3 weeks. We have to drive a few miles to get back on AT&T service. I have been calling AT&T for about a week (everyday) trying to find out when they will fix this issue. Over the past few days I have been told that there is 1 tower that is totally down and the other two towers that support our area have a “degradation problem” and are relaying calls to a tower that is too far away to be reliable.

Finally after talking to them yesterday, they informed me that there is no way that they will help me break the contract. They did however mention that this one tower, which is down, could take as long as 4 months to get it operational again. This is not good because I run a home business and my wife and I both have minor medical issues where we would need to have the ability to make and emergency call.

On a side note, my next door neighbor called in for the first time yesterday and within 30 min, they agreed to cancel her contract, as they said they do not know when they will be able to provide reliable service to the area again.

The thing to do here is call back and get someone else. Ask immediately to be transferred to the retentions department. Insist on it. Once there ask to be released from your contract without early termination fee because they are not providing even the bare minimum level of service they’re contractually required to. Use the fact that your neighbor was released from contract as backup. They will try to run you around the mulberry bush but just keep reiterating you want out of contract without ETF because they’re not giving you any service whatsoever. You may even have to resort to saying the same words over and over again. You can do it!

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