ATT: Phone Home

I just got a new phone as my old phone seemed to “die,” dropping calls, recharging far too often, and not receiving calls/texts. Went to AT&T to get the new phone all set up, and voila! I have a new phone. Oddly enough, the service is spotty. People call me and the call won’t go through; people send me texts I don’t receive; and it is dropping calls. So much for a new phone, I thought.

Imagine my surprise when Y goes online and finds a whole slew of messages about the spotty at best cell service in my small town. All of the problems we’ve been encountering are shared with a whole lot of local users who are just as upset as we are about the poor service. Some of the complainants talked about cell tower problems, so we decided to go to one of the local AT&T store-fronts and ask them why our service is so poor.

Seems that there have been issues with the cell tower that is about a mile from our home. Vandals have targeted the tower, which is an issue—but I’m not sure how that affects service. Evidently, this problem has existed since last November, but the AT&T folks are making it a local issue, rather than doing something about it themselves. According to the rep I spoke with, AT&T plans to relocate the tower, but is dragging its process for whatever reasons. Since this issue has existed for 8 months already, I guess someone has decided that there is no urgency to serve the customers in my small community.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a new phone to replace a phone that probably did not need to be replaced. I’m lucky when I get one bar of service on the phone while I'm at home, which means I’m not able to use it as my go-to phone while I’m at home or out in my local community. I doubt that changing my service provider will solve the problem because I believe that several providers share the local cell tower, a guess based on the number of pieces of equipment on that tower.

In my world, AT&T owes me at least 8 months of free service to make up for the 8 months of poor service that led me to purchase a new phone to fix the problems I was having. In addition, I can send them a copy of the bill of purchase for a new phone and they can pay that for me, too.