On Changing Perspectives

I was 52 years old when I came home from a showing of the movie August: Osage County and had my own epiphany moment. I was thinking of family dynamics and secrets. And how the wise witchy old women did actually know all that had happened. They just made choices about what they chose to acknowledge and what they didn’t. 
I thought about my own family and our dynamics.  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks as I reflected on my own deep dark family secret - “What if she knew all along?”

Doesn’t that turn my world on it’s head? What if she knew! I had to stop and re-examine everything. Why hasn’t she ever asked me why I despise him so much? Why hasn’t she ever asked me why can’t we just get along? It never occurred to me that she didn’t ask the question because she KNEW the answer! How wicked is that?

Does she? I immediately went into turtle mode and scoffed. I liked my flight of fancy because it showed I still had some imagination left. Or did it? Was it my subconscious driving up from the deep to drop a pearl of crap on the sandy beach? Did I know she knew somehow? And was finally ready to acknowledge it? Today of all days? Decades later? Could I really be that oblivious? 

Well why the hell not? I’ve certainly thought she was that oblivious all these years. Why couldn’t it be me instead? 

It just reinforces what I know but fail to respect - there are two or more perspectives to every single story. I’ve been living with mine and only mine, never considering another might exist. Seeing things as I saw them in my area of the spotlight without seeing the rest of the stage or back stage. 

What a moment in my life when I was reminded I don’t know it all.

AT&T Home Phone Service

What do I think about AT&T Home Phone service? Don’t buy it. It’s not worth the contract they get you to sign in order to get the price down.

Here’s my story. Two year contract, 6 months in, and the dang device breaks. I don’t think that’s going to be a big deal. Now, 1 & 1/2 weeks later, I learn it IS a big deal. AT&T doesn't have a clear channel on how they service these devices. I would hazard a guess that it kind of falls thru the cracks between their regular business & residential telecom business and their wireless phone business.

The device I have looks a bit like a small router or a 4 port ethernet hub. It’s just a rectangle box, with a power port, two telephone jacks and an industrial fat antenna. It’s a wireless “phone” unit that you connect your own cordless phone system into. It costs $20 a month with FREE nationwide unlimited long distance, so I ported our landline number to it in order to save $30 a month plus long distance charges. Seemed like an excellent deal at the time. I retain a separate number designated as “home phone” so I don’t have to give out cell phone numbers, and keep the number I've had for 20 years and not communicate a phone change to friends and family.

7 months after purchase it fails. Won’t keep power to the unit. No biggie, I’ll call for help. Talked to an AT&T rep on a Saturday. She can’t resolve it over the phone, so sends me in to the local AT&T store. They can’t resolve it either, and determine the device is still under 1 year warranty, so give me a phone number to call for warranty repair.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The warranty department rep determines, based on his troubleshooting call tree, that the device needs to be replaced. This is Saturday, it will ship two day business, and I actually receive it on the following Thursday. Now, they don’t do a full replacement of all pieces and parts. Just the device shell is all that was in the box. No new power cord. No new re-chargeable battery unit. No new SIM card.

Hook it up, doesn't work. It’s Saturday again. Back on the phone. Based on what is happening when this one gets hooked up, next troubleshooting step on the tree indicates it must be a bad battery pack. The device works in such a way that the battery pack must be in it, can’t just run it off the power cord and be done with the batteries. They work as a team. Together.

Because this is the second warranty repair for the same device, this part gets shipped next business day. Ships out on Monday, I get it on Tuesday. Hook it up. Battery indicator indicates progress is being made. Device still doesn't work.

Back to the AT&T support line. Here’s where my suspicions are finally confirmed - they don’t have a good support process in place for the “wireless home phone” device. After 55 minutes of troubleshooting, and speaking with FIVE different AT&T reps who pass me from department to department, the final outcome? You guessed it - another bad part. SIM card is the next thing determined to be bad by the troubleshooting call tree. The rep can ship it, or I can get off my happy little butt and drive on over to the AT&T store. Same one I visited at the beginning of this story.

I choose the store, the rep replaces the SIM card, and everything now works on the device. I’m back in business with a dedicated “home phone” line.

I would have canceled this service after the first warranty replacement part didn't work, but I’m roped into a contract. $122 for a cancellation fee. Nearly paid it anyway after the second warranty replacement part.

Moral of the story? NO CONTRACTS! Have the freedom to throw your hissy fit and walk away from a bad product or bad customer service experience. Hey AT&T, instead of making sure there is always a team member to open and close the doors at the retail store locations, how about streamlining your phone support even more, and get more cross training done, and get your stupid computer system to perform warm handoffs from one rep to the next. I had to repeat who I was, provide proper verification, and restate what I was calling about three different times in the same 55 minute call. Very frustrating consumer experience for me and did some damage to my opinion of AT&T.  

           Next day - Update:  In the middle of a call to my spouse the phone service dropped.  Device powered off.  More troubleshooting to come!

Final Update:  Back to AT&T, by now we have done our own troubleshooting and verified that the power cord is not supplying the correct amount of electricity to the device, using some tool my spouse has to check things.  We've also found a similar cable in our electronic stockpile that we were able to plug in and noticed that now the power light is lit up (it had never been before during troubleshooting) and it was in a green status.  It began charging the battery.  So I called AT&T and explained that all we need is a replacement power cord and we will be back in business.  Unfortunately, I spoke to an incredibly helpful person who probably didn't fully understand the device she was working on. 

She offered me two options:  1) provide a credit card number to pay for a power cord, and then she would issue a credit on my bill, or b) drive 16 miles to the closest device support center and pick up a power cord.  I'm pretty bullish by this point, mad because this whole thing would have been a non-issue if they would have just done a complete replacement, and refuse both options.  She spends time offline with a supervisor and they figure out how to get a power cord shipped to me for free.

Power cord arrives next day.  Guess what?  It's a USB cable.........

Called back, spoke to Ted - the best rep I have ever spoken with during this whole mess, and he identified what needed to be done and arranged to have the correct part shipped within a total 12 minute call time.  I received the power cord the next day, it was exactly the right part, plugged it in, and a week later have had zero issues with my phone.  Problem solved.

Upon reflection and some time/distance, I believe this story illustrates more the vastness of the call center divisions and amount of products supported thru one central phone number.  You never quite know if the branch you are heading down is going to be the best one for your particular problem. 

I left my business with them, because I'm lazy and it's too much to have to change, now that the phone works.  I'm just a little more dissatisfied than I was a month ago.