Dear ATT

Your customer non-service is atrocious.
Our internet service has been spotty the past few months. After being without a service we have paid for you make it next to impossible to explain why interruptions keep happening. NO, you don't explain.
Each time I have to 'talk' to one of your customer service help desk employees I have to go through a script. Every. Single. Time.

Your customer service employees made us purchase a second modem we did not need for $80 because she could not see beyond the fact that she could not access my modem. Therefore the only thing it could have been was a faulty modem. It wasn't the modem.

Another time another employee made me change my modem password because of some silly script, guess what? I still could not get on the internet once we did that. ONCE he contacted the second tier of the help desk he found we were in a neighborhood outage. Then he was going to leave my computer set up with the 'test' password. As it was I had a bad feeling that the password he changed in his system wouldn't match the one I had. Guess what? I was right. He actually hadn't shown me the right steps to truly change my password and although your system had the new one, mine was still the same.
Luckily that time, I had to talk with one of your employees that actually knew how to explain how to do something.
Well guess what?
The past THREE days our service has been on and then off.
The previous two days I called it was a neighborhood outage.
I called today after an hour of it being out.
Your customer 'no' service employee wanted me to unplug the cable to the DSL line to the computer. I plead and nearly begged her to check the second tier to find out if there was an outage she said "THERE IS NO OUTAGE". Then she wanted me to unplug the DSL line from the wall jack.
BIG problem.
My office is so small a several hundred pound bookcase sits in front of the jack.
I told her I could not get to it.
Guess what?
She said she could not help me if I didn't unplug the DSL cable from the jack.
That would reset the DSL line and it would IMMEDIATELY come back on.

So I said again with a LOT more frustration to please check and see if there was an outage.
She wasn't going to do it.
ABSOLUTELY.
I said that I would have to call back and she said not if the internet came back on.

My husband and I moved everything off the shelves on the bookcase, he unbolted it, he tugged,and pulled and tugged. I had to move nearly half the office because of how small (7X11) this room is.
He unplugged the DSL filter and plugged in the DSL line to the wall.
JUST.LIKE.SHE.INSTRUCTED.

Guess what?
NO internet.
I called back.
Guess what?
There was a message that said there was a neighborhood outage.

AND we saw the AT&T tech working outside on the junction box because it is right next to our property.

I found the name and street & email address to the CEO of AT&T.
I wrote a 'real' letter.
I know it won't do any good.
But, I really want to know is this the way you truly want to treat customers?
It is so wrong to 'script' each and every call.
Sometimes the customer is right.
And they don't have to tear their house apart nor pull out their hair to talk to your company.
I have a very real frustration right now with AT&T.
Honestly I think that the supposed problem(which they 'fixed') when we lost our connection for several days was never really fixed, but there is no one who will give an answer as to what the problem is nor who to talk to about it.
It is really unfair to the customer, and also unfair to the customer service employee.
The employee today was terribly short with me, and perhaps she felt I deserved it, I was growing deeply frustrated, but isn't the the point my frustration was because she wouldn't listen? She would not listen -- and that is what I needed her to do. She could have successfully handled my situation if only she had checked a bit further. We both would have a better time of it had she simply listened.