AT&T, AT&T Wireless, mLife
(UPDATED with response! Well, it was kind of a response)
The above is for the benefit of search engines. Anybody who's considering switching to AT&T Wireless, here's a solid recommendation that you should choose somebody else instead.

When I get frustrated with a big monolithic company, I dash off a letter. It accomplishes little other than making me feel better; but a company can't fix a customer service issue unless it knows about the issue. And, I have received some interesting responses, often in the form of gift certificates or rebates. I once received a very nice letter from the Missouri Secretary of State after I sent him a letter ripping the customer service at the Department of Revenue.

Anyway, in somewhat edited form, here's what some poor minimum-wage schlub at AT&T Wireless is forwarding to his her or supervisor, who will read it and delete it:

To whom it may concern, if anybody:

My mobile life hasn't been made better. In fact, my mobile life pretty much sucks.

We chose AT&T as our wireless services provider when we lived in the Dallas area. We're long-time customers of AT&T Long Distance, which has a pretty solid customer-service record (we've tried the others, and we've always come back to AT&T.) Our trust in the AT&T brand led us to AT&T wireless.

When we moved from [Very Large Metropolitan Area] to [the Edge of America], our service took a turn for the much, much worse. Our service in our home area is spotty at best; it's at its worst in our own home, in a suburban area 15 miles from a large city. Our friends in the area who have other wireless services -- Verizon, Sprint, Cingular -- don't seem to have this problem. One friend who has Sprint uses it as her only phone. There's no way we could do that with our current service, even if we wanted to.

We signed a contract, however, and we believe in living up to our end of an agreement. to our end of a contract. We've questioned it, but we've lived up to it. Now, we're questioning why we would want to live up to it.

My wife has spent the week at an event near Cleveland. She's rooming with a Verizon customer and a Cingular customer. To reach her, I have to call one of them. Her AT&T phone is useless, less than 20 miles from downtown of one of the nation's largest cities.

I understand the aforementioned contract guarantees us nothing, except that you'll charge us and we'll pay. That said, at the current level of service we're receiving, we're certainly not going to renew said contract when it expires, and we certainly can't recommend AT&T Wireless to anybody [on the Edge of America] -- or to anybody who travels at all.

I wish we had known when we signed the contract that the "m" in mLife stands for "mostly static."

[our names and cities here]

The good folks at "AT&T Wireless" respond, thanks to the wonders of cut and paste:


Dear [Unrepentant Ex-Texan]:

Thank you for contacting AT&T Wireless regarding coverage reception. Wireless service is normally available to your telephone, when it is within the operating range of our system and it may be available outside of that area in other carrier service areas. However, the quality of your service is subject to transmission limitation or interruption caused by natural conditions such as atmosphere and topography. Also, there may be other limitations such as capacity limitations, system repairs/modifications, and/or other conditions.

Please note that coverage concerns or equipment related inquires are not currently supported via e-mail inquiry due to the number of factors that can affect your service. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

In order to troubleshoot the issues you are experiencing with your equipment and/or service in the most effective manner possible, we will need to have you contact one of our Customer Care representatives by calling 1-800-888-7600 between the hours of 6:00AM and 1:00AM CST, 7 days a week.

Please click on the link below to take a short survey about your AT&T Wireless email Customer Care experience. Your opinions will help us improve our service to you.

[link to survey]

If you are unable to click on the link above, simply copy the link and paste it into the browser where you enter web addresses, and press enter.

Thanks for choosing AT&T Wireless. We appreciate your business.

That was a lot of words to say, "blah, blah, blah, sorry, but whatever." Of course, if they'd called me on my cell phone to tell me that, all I would have heard was "blah ... bl ... ry ... er."