In ads, AT&T has been hyping their 4G rollout. It is pretty exciting, Unless you’re a customer using 3G whose service has been taken out by the upgrade. Scott is trying to remain patient, but has sought compensation in the form of service credits for the crappy service he receives. Big Orange granted him these credits, but he got an irritating surprise when he checked his upgrade eligibility date. It had been moved ahead three months, because he was now giving AT&T less money. Because they were granting him service credits for their crappy service.

I’ve been an AT&T customer for over 10 years. I’ve never had issues with customer service until this year. West Kentucky is a place with very poor AT&T coverage. Just recently AT&T dropped 3G in areas here, and put 4G/HSPA+ overlay on top of the 3G this year. Ever since, the connection has been horrible.

I begain emails to AT&T regarding this. Being employed at a CLEC [competitive local exchange carrier], I know that calling an ILEC carrier [incumbent local exchange carrier or “baby Bell’] on the phone is a bad idea, since there is no paper trail to prove a conversation existed. So all my emails between AT&T and myself are in my Gmail.

In March, AT&T issued a service credit to my account for poor service, as well as AT&T’s customer service being horrible to boot. I was credited 86$ for the month of March. April billing came around, and I paid my 1.12 in taxes to AT&T.

Here in may, I started checking my account information, and noticed that my upgrade eligibility date has changed, from the 16 month to the 20 month timeframe.

AT&T has told me that because the “revenue stream” on my account has changed, (meaning AT&T paid for a month of my service) they can no longer honor the June early upgrade date. My upgrade is now in September, due to AT&T’s crappy network, and I had the nerve to complain.

How many other customers has this happened to at AT&T? Do other carriers treat their customers like garbage? At this point, i’m still fighting AT&T on this. I’ve also sent this information to the FTC and Better Business Bureau, but doubt anything will be resolved.

Maybe this was all their way of telling him that he should find a new carrier.

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