On Monday I wrote a diary Two wasted hours with the phone company and the joke's on me. (Quick recap--I wanted a cheaper plan and they decided to switch my landline to Uverse VoiP without explaining it.) Do you think that was the end of my AT&T story? No, of course not! Follow me below the twisted phone cord while I rant about the last two days to get it out of my system.
After Monday's response to my diary, I started to feel a little bit better about myself, but I still wanted to write a complaint. Also, I wanted to check and see if the change in my service was correct. I went to the AT&T website, and it looked like nothing had changed so I called them up again. (This generally entails twenty minutes of waiting, mind you.) The representative who answered understood that I wanted to switch to the most basic plan (yippee!) but said that it hadn't been done. Swell. I guess the representative I talked to on Monday decided I really didn't want that service and didn't bother to order it. This one seems to have done it correctly, as I even have an order number.
With the story complete (I hoped) I sat down to write the complaint letter. One of the representatives had previously told me to send the complaint to consumer.appeals@att.com. Of course, I was so irritated when I wrote it that I couldn't tell if it was "consumer" or "consumers" because my handwriting was scribbly. Ugh. I looked all over the AT&T website. I swear there is nothing there about sending complaints. I put "complaint" in the search. I looked at the top and the bottom. I tried to do a live chat (which didn't work). I gave up and called back AT&T.
Twenty minutes later, I was connected to someone. When he started to give me the usual routine (what's your account number, name, blah blah) I said I just want to know if the complaint address is "consumer" or "consumers" dot "appeal" or "appeals". He came back and told me it was consumer.appeals@att.com. I asked whether it was singular or plural on each one, and that is what he told me. So I sent the letter off feeling relief that that chapter was over, and my heart sank when I heard the email ping directly after. Yep, it was sent back because "A message that you have sent could not be delivered to one or more recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address failed: consumer.appeals@att.com"
You know what that meant. Back to the website to check again if I had missed some information the first time. Nope, couldn't find it. Back to the phone...Twenty minutes later, I had another representative on the line. After explaining that I didn't want to complain to him, but I wanted to write a complaint to someone, and I didn't want to complain on chat, but I wanted an email or a snail mail address, he gave me PO Box 5014, Carol Stream, Ill 60197-5014.
Frankly, I don't know if the letter will get there or not, but I'm going to send it anyway. And I feel better having written this so now I can let it go. There's nothing to do but laugh about the absurdity of the whole thing. What a pain!