SBC lacks customer service

My DSL service was down on Tuesday night, Nov 25. i tried to see if it was my local machine but i determined that it was SBC's error and i called SBC.

first, i was on hold for exactly 49 minutes! when you are on hold with SBC, they only tell you that you are on hold for "more than 5 minutes". well, every few minutes i get a message telling me that it will be "over 5 minutes" until someone talks to me.

then, i finally get a customer service person. i ask him if the internet is down in my area. he says no. i said -- "are you sure?" he said, "i have not heard anything." i said "can you check?" but then he disregarded my questions and proceeded to ask me to reboot my machine a bunch of times and reboot the DSL modem (all of which, i explained, i did in that 49 minutes while i was on hold).

i finally convince him that it is not my machine but it is SBC. then ... he finally checks the Internet service ... and ... to his surprise ... the Internet is down in my area ... and ... of course, he had no idea when it will be up again (turned out is was down for many hours).

this makes me want to shop around for a different DSL provider.

suggestion for SBC:
if the Internet is going down and you know about it, inform your customers so that they can plan something else non-internet related

if it goes down unexpectedly, you should inform customer service immediately. instead of me being on hold for 49 minutes and then dealing with a disbelieving customer service agent for another 14 minutes, all one has to do is recognize my number when i call and play a message "we recognize your phone number and we have determined that the Internet is down for you and we estimate it will be back up at 11:30 pm Pacific Time." that ... would solve everything ...

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2006 update:

i'm encouraging people to rate AT&T / SBC on Rapleaf.
rate AT&T at:
http://www.rapleaf.com/profile/Z7HlwtOO

this rates "support@sbcglobal.net"

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