Bye-bye AT&T...almost

Yesterday, my wife and I picked up a new SIM card for her MPx200 SmartPhone, and got signed up with T-Mobile for voice and data. While AT&T was never able to get the MPx functioning, after popping in the T-Mobile SIM, it immediately picked up the T-Mobile network, and I was able to dial customer care even before they had our mobile # assigned. Voice service was available within a half an hour. The folks at the T-Mobile store were very helpful, unlike the folks at AT&T Wireless, who required me to call no fewer than 4 different numbers, with several transfers, just to cancel my account (that is, once the systems were back up and they could cancel accounts at all...oops, never mind, I wasn't able to cancel tonight, after all!).

Typical was the call this evening, in which the first CS rep said that his department didn't handle cancellation of Web orders, so he transferred me to another department. The nice lady at that department apologized, but said her department didn't handle GSM cancellations. The best part is the voice on the hold systems that says that "We're here to help you, so if you need something, just ask, and we'll make it happen!" They've got to be kidding, particularly since (for the second time in two nights), the answer was that there's no way to cancel the account right now, because their "systems are updating". Well let's see about "making it happen"..."could you get someone to call me back, rather than making me call back over and over again?" "No, I'm sorry sir, we can't do that."

I'm beginning to think this is some sick joke, but no, it's reality. If ever I've run into a company that richly deserves to go out of business, it's AT&T Wireless. I have never had worse service in my life. And the worst part is that the CS reps have been very nice about not being able to help, so I haven't even been able to yell at anyone. Actually, I feel terrible for the people working in the call centers for AT&T Wireless. It's not their fault that the company couldn't manage an upgrade without creating a huge disruption, but they're probably getting dumped on pretty frequently right now.

So the good news is that my wife now has a working phone. The bad news is that I have to call AT&T Wireless back later for yet another painful attempt at getting them to actually accomplish something.

UPDATE: After a relatively brief call to T-Mobile customer care, both voice and data are working on the MPx200 (data had not been working because they initially configured the phone for unlimited Hotspot [wifi], rather than the unlimited GPRS data plan). So far, our experience with the MPx200 has been very good, and having helped my wife export her contacts from Palm Desktop and import them into Outlook and sync her SmartPhone, we're both still very pleased with it. AT&T, on the other hand, well...you can probably guess how we feel about them.