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In our MSN Money-Zogby poll, AT&T's customer service was rated "poor" by 26% of respondents who had an opinion about the company.
An AT&T spokesman, in an e-mail, said the company communicates daily with thousands of customers and that they are AT&T's No. 1 priority.
"And the feedback we receive indicates that they're satisfied with the service, products and value AT&T provides," the spokesman said. "We provide our representatives with ongoing training on AT&T technologies and services as part of our effort to continually enhance the level of service we offer."
- Talk back: How has AT&T treated you?
Indeed, many of AT&T's customers are satisfied, at least a little. The company's service was rated "fair" by 36% of those who expressed an opinion, "good" by 31% and "excellent" by 7%.
Over the past couple of years, Ma Bell has been reborn, first with SBC's acquisition of the old AT&T in January 2005 and then with last year's acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T. In addition to local telephone service and long-distance, the company is the nation's largest provider of wireless and broadband service.
But nostalgia doesn't mean much to AT&T's ticked-off customers, who probably remember a time when phone companies had human operators. From our message boards:
- "Why does a communication company rely on an abusive automated interactive phone system to deal with customer calls. It is very time consuming and irritating. … When you do get through the screening process, they are always experiencing high volumes of calls and it will be a while. This happens no matter what time you call. The recorded response is to go online. What if I don't have Internet access? Hey, AT&T, hire people!!!!"
- "I once spent my ENTIRE birthday (yes 8 plus hours) on the phone with them trying to correct a change in long distance carrier. They kept putting me on hold because I was obviously frustrated . . . they finally agreed to transfer me to a manager who could fix the problem after I broke down and started crying telling them they had ruined my birthday."
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