AT&T and Dish Obviously Care More For Conditions Than Customers.

Earlier this year, my wife was contacted by an AT&T representative, at first thanking for her for business, then asking her for more. At first she politely declined, but then the representative assured her that AT&T offered some wonderful bundling options to offer the same great services we were already used to, but at a much lower price. We had phone and internet services through AT&T, so what else could we add?

Of course – satellite. Well, we had satellite service through DirecTV, and even though customer service was just OK, we really didn’t see a reason to step away; it was a pretty dependable service. But my wife, being the economically-minded individual that she is saw the dramatically lower price tags using the bundle – and it quickly became a no brainer.

“But WAIT,” she asked, “there aren’t any term commitments are there on the satellite service? If so, we are not interested.”

“Oh, no. Certainly not,” the story went, “You just sign the installation paperwork, and it’s yours until you decide to cancel.”

The Slippery Slope

After several months of frustrating outages with Dish Networks and billing fiasco’s with AT&T, my wife had reached her limit. She cancelled service with Dish, and was then flagged with a $140 cancellation fee for early termination. Now, $140 isn’t a great deal of money, but my wife is very principal-minded.

So she went to work, and after a month or so of battling out whose responsibility it was going to be to pay the fee, she relented being told that she would have to take up her grievance with AT&T since DISH had dissolved their relationship with AT&T for many such instances of false representation (their words – not mine) – but then asked me to step in.

The Collision

So after a few calls, and a few times of being transferred from AT&T (and receiving several comments about how AT&T had to dissolve its relationship with DISH because of many such false representations – their words – not mine), I finally found a supervisor who was a joy to listen to. I don’t think I’ve ever been told “There’s nothing we can do” so nicely – EVER.

In fact – I think this has been about the most professional Go-Jump-Off-A-Cliff experience I’ve ever been part of.

The Post Mortem

Let me bottom line this:

1. Dish Networks lost a customer because of poor technical performance and their partner’s poor billing services.
2. AT&T’s representatives made false statements to sell a product, underscoring very lax quality assurance standards.
3. I offered AT&T (and Dish Networks) an opportunity to save their customer – and a residual revenue stream – by simply crediting the $140. They declined, stating there was nothing they could do for a customer that presently pays a minimum of $119 / month in service.

I’m not a genius, but the math seems pretty simple here. Oh, wait – I got it! AT&T is just being principle-minded, too. That makes more sense. That has to be it, right?

While I’m sure my $119 / month will scarcely be missed, it’s obvious to me that AT&T and Dish Networks care more about their terms and conditions than they do about their customers.

Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. Ken serves on the board of the new Managed Print Services Association, an international industry organization seeking worldwide best practices for the managed print services industry. He is also the founder of Seeking the Son. He is always interested in connecting with you.