Any got some inside info on ATT? phone #? email?

[ILBandit]

I am ready to explode on someone, I have not had cell service for 3 days now, this is not the first time it has happened, went 4 days without a few months back.
For the past year, my ATT service had been the most horrible thing I have ever had.
I bought 2 iphones recently, I was almost ready to dump ATT completely, but when the iphones came out, I wanted one, so I figured I would go ahead and stay with them. I bought 2 of them, 1 for me, and 1 for my wife. It doubled my monthly bill, due to their lovely deal the made for $30 a month per phone. But I figured, o well, its a great phone, and will be worth it.
Here is my problem...... Yes, it is an awesome phone, but it sure would be nice if I could actually use the #^#*&^ thing!!!!! I haven't been able to make / receive a call on either of the new phones since Saturday.
Called ATT several times, and got the usual... "turn your phone off, then on again" ..... " I understand your frustration sir".... yada, yada.
Trust me,,,,, they do not understand my frustration, I am paying $140 a month, for something that does not exist, cell phone signal / service. I pay my bills on time, every month, have for years, so I am living up to my end of the contract, but in my eyes, they are not living up to their end of it. 3-4 days with no service is not in the contract.

I know it is not just my 2 phones, I called around tonight, and it is every ATT customer in my town right now, and I explained that to the C.S. rep also.

OK, sorry for the rant, just had to vent a little. My question is, Does anyone have an email address, or phone number to call other that the regular numbers on the website, Something where I can talk to someone other than the "book readers" that answer the phones on their C.S. lines?
Do you think it would be fair for me to ask them to credit me the money, for all of the days that I went without service? Or would I be wasting my time even trying?
The money is really not an issue for me, it is just the fact that they are not giving me the service that I am paying for on a monthly basis.

Anyone have similar issues? I am just at my wits end, on what to do, and wish that I could talk to someone at ATT that can actually help out with the problems, instead of telling me to keep turning my phone off and on, and the problem will go away.

Help????

 

[USCGMK]

You should have made sure you had adequate service at your residence.

 

[Jeremy]

Do you bounce back and forth between no service and service or is it a constant no service?

 

[ILBandit]

I have been with Cingular / ATT for years, and the service at my house has been perfect up until recently. ( It seems like it all started right after ATT took over). The problem ended up being a tower that had went down, they finally fixed it after everyone in town went without service for apprx. 4 days. Since then, there have been several other service outages. And a fairly good amount of data service outages.

If I drive outside my "home area", it always works fine. It is basically just around my home area. I think the tower nearby is just going bad. Hopefully they will eventually get it all fixed up, and back to normal. Just last week, we had an outage for about 12 hours, that caused everyone with ATT service to not be able to call anyone else on ATT. (mobile to mobile). Since everyone in my family is on ATT, this was a mess also.

Anyways.... I am just going to try to be patient, and hopefully everything will get resolved soon. I am just going to have to deal with the problems for a while I guess. When my contract comes up for renewal, hopefully it will all be fixed, if not, I guess I can hope that another carrier has the iphone by then.
I love the phone, and want to stick with it, but if the ATT servie continues fo decline, I will switch carriers. My job requires me to be on call 24 /7. And I can not deal with phones that don't work consistently. I have been screwed several times because of my phone not working, when people needed to call me with major problems.

I know it is probably just a coincidence, but I swear that all of these problems started right after the ATT logo showed up on my home screen of all my phones. I realize that nothing changed on the towers when they took over Cingular, but it is just very strange that my service at home was perfect for all the years up until ATT took over.

Any thoughts on this? Is there anything that could possibly have cause this from just the ATT acquisition? Or is this all a big coincidence that I am imagining ??

Ash - It is a little of both, but most of the time it goes back & forth. Mostly off, with a few spurts of it working, then back off for hours again.


Also..... I finally got a direct number to the techs at ATT. They are alot more pleasant to talk to, and it's nice to be able to talk to someone who isn't "dumbing it down", and reading a script.
I won't say anything bad about the customer service from ATT techs, they have always been great. I just cant stand hearing the main CS people, reading their scripts, and telling me to turn off the phone, and then turn it on again. LOL

 

[Jeremy]

Going off and on tells me it is a reception issue for sure. Have you tried switching to Edge only? I know it's not something you want to do but that will tell you right away if it is indeed just spotty 3g service in your home area. That's what I'm willing to bet on...

 

[ILBandit]

I have no 3G in my area at all, it is just the regular edge / cell service that I am having the problems with.
The closest 3G network is about 30 miles south of me in Bloomington / Normal.
I use it when I am down there, but when home / work I just turn it off completely & use wifi.

 

[Jeremy]

So you have 3g turned off and are still having the issue....? Hmmm... if this all started with the iPhone 3g I'd for sure stop into a Apple store. Or if you have another AT&T phone available to you put your SIM into that phone and see if your reception gets better. I don't know what else to tell you.

 

[ILBandit]

I'm pretty sure it is just ATT's service in my area. I have tried the sim card thing, put it in my old razr, treo 680, sony w600, same thing in every phone. So I don't think it is an actuall iphone problem, just AT&T's service for the past year or so.

 

[Jeremy]

Yeah, sorry to hear that. That happened with me a year ago with Sprint. All of a sudden my service at home was garbage. Gave it a few months and tons of calls to Sprint... they did nothing so I switched to AT&T and all is well. Good luck.