[AT LEAST YOU'RE 'CONSISTENT'] Sonic service outage: no-show & no follow up. THIS is 'support'?

[blakers]

Wed, my internet dropped in mid-business. Down for many hours.

Called Sonic support.

Troubleshooting, non-recoverable by reboot/reinit of modem.

Told 'likely modem'; AT&T truck roll was scheduled -- for Thu "8a - 4p".

Thursday, after wasting the whole day awaiting the possible need to enter office/premises for a modem fix, "no show" from AT&T -- get VM from Sonic stating "couldn't make it & no access to building" (which is complete crap considering everything's external -- there's no building to have access TO!). Sonic VM says they rescheduled roll for Fri "8a - 4p".

Called Sonic, told 'nothing we can do'. Asked tech to escalate CustomerService issue, re: AT&T's non-response, and this 'nothing we can do' reply, to Sonic mgmt.

Their response? "They won't be able to do anything either" and "We already 'escalated' it by rescheduling the truck roll for Fri."

During Thurday, net's ~ 50/50 up & down -- apparently nothing to do with modem.

Fri, again ANOTHER "no show" from AT&T; at least none that anybody made me aware of. Subsequently, NO follow-up at all from Sonic of any kind.

During Friday, net's mostly up, with a few, < 15min down periods.

So far, Saturday, no issues. Other than a COMPLETE VACUUM of status/information from Sonic.

Sonic / @dane -- do you consider this acceptable 'support'?

[miken]

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you are having with the line and the missed dispatches. AT&T does need someone onsite for dispatches and will not touch internal wiring, replace the modem or even stick around on someone's property unless someone is there to authorize them to do so. As soon as we got the call from AT&T that they had run late on Thursday and no one seemed available at the address, we tried reaching you and when we could not, escalated a next day re-schedule. Unfortunately, I don't have any more information outside of that. Someone will be reaching out to AT&T to get an update and following up with you shortly.

[blakers]

> As soon as we got the call from AT&T that they had run late on Thursday and no one seemed available at the address, we tried reaching you and when we could not escalated a next day re-schedule.

'As soon as'? You called > 1 hour AFTER the scheduled full-day window of '8a-4p'. You left a VM at 5:42pm on 4/19. I then returned your call, speaking to one of your support agents at 5:53 pm.

As for 'noone available' -- make up your mind which fiction you want to pitch.
1st you told me 'they're running late' and 'can't make it out', then in the same breath you say 'noone's available at my address', which is a baldfaced lie.

That there was noone "at the address" is complete BS. I was here the entire day. I told you that *repeatedly* on the phone.

There was no knock or note on the door, no phonecall, email or txt from them or you.

> Unfortunately, I don't have any more information outside of that. Someone will be reaching out to AT&T to get an update and following up with you shortly.

WEDNESDAY was my call to you. It's MONDAY now. There's been NO CONTACT prior to this email.

Again, THIS is the 'support' you consider OK & "nothing you can do about it"?

[blakers]

It's Wednesday now. (That's Right. A full week later.)

Monday, Sonic called (in response to this thread? random chance? no clue.) to see "what's up".

NOTHING was up. Still no AT&T, no info, nada.

Short story ... got YET ANOTHER AT&T roll scheduled for a "tighter window" of '10a - 12nn' on Tuesday.

Which was missed. AGAIN. I guess it's 'good news' that they DID show up -- evntually, at ~ 1220pm.

*Several* hours later (apparently due to 'outages' at AT&T's 'registration' services), I've got an 'up' line, with an Arris NVG599 to replace my old Pace. Despite noone -- particularly AT&T -- being able to verify if this new box supports DMZ/IP_Passthrough -- find that it does. So in addition to an 'up' line, my env is 'up'.

So, back to Wednesday.

I get a call from Sonic TechSupport -- asking 'is your line up? did everything go as it should?'

Nice they asked. That's 2 separate questions though.

1st, yep it's 'up'. 2nd, 'not by a bloody longshot'.

Answer(s)? AGAIN?

"It's AT&T"
"There's nothing we can do"
"AT&T's responsiveness, even to a partner like Sonic, is 'less than it should be"
"Even if you escalated this to Sonic management, there's nothing they could do"
"What would you like us to do?"
"We're taking 'political action' about 'expanding our fiber network'."

How about take some ACCOUNTABILITY for the fact that WE pay YOU to provide service & support. And we're even generally amenable to that service/support being reasonable. It does NOT include jerking your customers around -- with schedules and service -- and the BLAMING IT ON AT&T.

That you can't get AT&T to fulfill their obligations to your contractual relationship is YOUR PROBLEM *NOT* OURS!

My personal fave is
"We're taking 'political action' about 'expanding our fiber network'."

ESPECIALLY when the answer from Sonic about that -- in my 'neighborhood' -- has been FOR YEARS "Well, *YOU* should go argue in front of your City Council blah blah blah".

Riiiiight. Cuz with the extraordinay level of customer service I'm supposedly enjoying, and should understand as "nothing you can do about it", I want to spend my time doing YOUR job for you.

[miken]

I am very sorry that it took so long to fix your problem and that AT&T missed multiple commitments - we aim to never miss any scheduled dispatches and do a pretty good job of that when the technicians being dispatched are our own. Unfortunately, we do need to rely on AT&T representatives to dispatch out for our FTTN service and while as a whole we are using examples like these to pressure AT&T into improving their game - the problem is that when AT&T has a high workload, they miss commits, regardless of the pressure we put on them. I personally followed up with an AT&T supervisor with this case so he was aware that a dispatch had already been missed in order to make sure the dispatch happened and it was on time, but that still didn't hit home and make the dispatch happen the way that it should have. We try to set expectations truthfully and are wary of giving false promises and sometimes that may come off as not even attempting to try - but we do. I'm sorry if communication of that got lost along the way.

[blakers]

> the problem is ...

No. 'The problem is' that if Sonic's got issue with AT&T's contractual obligations, then your CEO needs to get on the horn with them and fix the problem. It's YOUR problem, NOT ours. Despite the fact that you try to MAKE it ours.

> are wary of giving false promises and sometimes that may come off as not even attempting to try

No. Repeatedly saying "There's nothing we can do", and clearly not giving a hoot ("What do you want/expect us to do?") about mis-treating YOUR PAYING customers, is what "comes off as not even attempting to try". You might want to actually LISTEN when a many years' long customer is TELLING you directly & clearly that the service they're getting for the money they're paying IS. NOT. ACCEPTABLE.