Hit the Road AT&T Cellular

 

(Not my phone but VERY close to it.)

Cells phones… basically you have to have one now.  But we only wanted basic so we always had a ‘flip phone’.  It makes calls and I can text if I must.  And that was good enough for us because... 

1.  We don’t use them much – only when we are away from home - since we don’t want to be bothered.  

2.  They were just too darn expensive for our budget (yes, we could ‘afford’ one but we want other things more). 

So for years we have used our prepaid flip phone thru AT&T.  As little as we used it, it only ran us about $12 a month.  Good enough! 

But then about 6 months ago I’d get a message at some times when I tried to make a call saying my 3G phone was going out of commission on 22 Feb 2022.  It stated we would need to get a new phone before that date.  OK fine, that was almost a year away.  I’ll get around to it. 

But then… 

The beginning of September, AT&T started high-jacking my phone weekly.  I could not make a call until I listened to their high pressure sales pitch on how they would “help” me to switch my phone NOW.  

I had to tell them to release my phone so I could make my call that I had paid for.  They would put me on hold “so they could verify the request went thru…”  During which time I was subjected to a 3 minute (every time) advertisement on upgrading my phone.  The whole process would take about 10 minutes. 

EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. 

I ‘was’ going to continue my service with AT&T until this customer DIS-service campaign happened. 

I am now the happy (and very confused) owner of my very first ‘entry level’ smart phone with a prepay plan through a different company.  

AT&T received this email from me:  Hello AT&T!  I am so very happy to let you know I have upgraded my cell phone service from my old 3G.  Even tho I had until 22 Feb to do this your harassing weekly highjacking of my phone line (which denied me the service I'd paid for) motivated me to do the switch now.  TO A DIFFERENT COMPANY!!  Bye-bye AT&T.  You forced this customer to run. 

(I will review my new phone and company) a bit later when I’ve used it for a while.