Thanks to happenstance, making the Tournament of the Worst bracket lined up calendar-wise with moving our internet from our old office/apartment to our new office/apartment, a task that fell to me because my roommate’s the one who pays the rent. Predictably, it was a pain to get through to AT&T to get them to move the internet service across town (a couple hours searing their hold music into my brain), something they attributed to the pandemic, and while I understand their staffing is legitimately affected, it’s also a convenient excuse for terrible customer service departments to continue being terrible. It’s like me telling you all, “Due to COVID-19, this NIT blog is not making money.”
Anyway, I had a moment, when constructing the bracket, of wondering whether AT&T was really that bad, or if I just had a bitter taste in my mouth from a couple experiences of upsell attempts. So, I turned to the people. I googled “Comcast or AT&T which is worse.” Or something of that nature.
The end of the story (we’ll circle back to the middle, which is the actual good part) is that other people too have problems with AT&T, but that the consensus is that Comcast is on another plane, which held up in our voting.
Now, the good stuff.
I am not the only person to ask the question online of whether AT&T or Comcast is worse. This question stretches back years. Five, at least. Five years ago, SF-Jeff logged onto an AT&T Community Forum and entered a nearly identical query to my own. Here’s what happened, as well as SF-Jeff’s heroic struggle with the shadowy figure known only as “Sandblaster.”
Jeff has entered the chat.
Sandblaster has entered the chat.
What possesses somebody to post upwards of thirty thousand messages on an AT&T Customer Service Forum is beyond me, but one thing is clear about Sandblaster:
Sandblaster is a narc. A hall monitor. Probably not an AT&T Employee, but possibly an AT&T Employee. Sandblaster’s getting off on Sandblaster’s power here. Sandblaster is linking to JD Powers Rankings in a category in which Comcast doesn’t participate.
Sandblaster is the enemy.
Jeff concurs.
But.
Jeff seems to doubt that Sandblaster is an AT&T customer, which is hard to believe given Sandblaster’s fealty to AT&T.
Sandblaster strikes back. It’s a strong argument—playing the percentages—but again, it doesn’t address the question Jeff asked, and it doesn’t actually mean anything because even if there are only hundreds complaining on the forums, that doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands, or millions, upset but not channeling their anger into forum posts. Also, possible they don’t have internet. Because, you know, AT&T Customer Service.
In case anyone is wondering, I think CS stands for Customer Service in the Sandblaster Universe. You may have figured that out faster than me. I hope you did. It took me a while.
I included the “AT&T Community Forums” header at this point as a reminder of where this is taking place. Anyway, Jeff seems to think Sandblaster’s an AT&T Employee, or that AT&T’s got employees actively monitoring the forums. Since this happened in 2015, it’s possible either of those things was true at the time, but it seems doubtful that AT&T would switch Sandblaster’s account from “employee” to “unwaveringly loyal fanboy” when Sandblaster left the company. More likely, Sandblaster was and is simply the biggest AT&T fan in the world.
Anyway, Jeff now issues a decree limiting this particular thread to customers. To our knowledge, that means it’s just him from here on out.
Is Sandblaster a rep? There is no way to know. Jeff thinks yes.
Power move by Sandblaster to mark the conversation as solved. Again, no proof Sandblaster was the one who did that, but now Jeff’s bringing cell service into this. What a day. Meanwhile Comcast is over here getting away with it. Amazing. Does Sandblaster work for Comcast? Is this misdirection?
One last salvo from Jeff, then Dmitriy comes in to shut things down. Was Dmitriy really Sandblaster the whole time? We’ll never know. But we might have to circle back to SF-Jeff another time. I’m looking at his account now and he made quite the mark on AT&T Forums back in 2015.
For the full forum conversation (though we screenshotted pretty much all of it), click this link: https://forums.att.com/conversations/wireless-account/whos-customer-service-is-worse-att-or-comcast/5deff99dbad5f2f606b78f54
