Trolling AT&T
The Mrs and I got new phones this week, and I needed to activate them. Should have been easy- right?
Well, we went to the local AT&T store where the lone employee stopped his tik-tok surf long enough to tell us that because we bought our devices from the web site and not this store, company policy forbid him from helping us. Nice. Company policy totally blows chunks. So we went home and I started the upgrade on her phone.
After many hours, I got all the data transferred from our old devices to the new ones and I even got my new phone to activate. However, her phone refused to activate. After spending 2 1/2 hours (yes!) on the phone with four different levels of tech support, they finally got her phone to work. At one point I was tired enough of the requests to power cycle the device that I mentioned perhaps the issue could be fixed if she restarted the entire data center at headquarters. She laughed, appreciating my humor.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Maybe they don't have access to customer files. Stupid move on ATTs part, IMO.
I had an issue activating a new phone I bought online, too. My problem couldn't be solved over the internet & the phone reps didn't help either. Even though there's an ATT store a mile away I had to drive to a store 15 miles away. However, the young man who helped me knew exactly what to do & had my account straightened out in 15 minutes.
Having stores with your corporate logo who can't access customer accounts seems stupid to me. 
