Want to hear a good AT&T customer service story? I’m not promising this compares with some of those classic Comcast bits, but it does have the value of being personal as well as depressingly familiar to everyone who has lost hours of their life complaining about extraordinarily bad service and Big Corporate charge-gaming.

Long story pretty short:  A few days before a dozen or so of us flew down to Panama for our son’s August wedding I was directed to an AT&T store that I was told specialized in setting up international calling plans. Twelve miles and 20 minutes later the clerk is walking me through the options. $60 month gets you 50 cents/minute calling. $30 gets you $1/minute.

I tell him all we really need is texting ability. Just to keep track of everyone and not waste a lot of time sweating on tropical street corners for people who are lost and/or delayed. No problema he tells me. Texts are free. “Free”, you say? Well then we’ve got a deal. With no further qualifications, warnings or cautions, I sign up and leave fully expecting to text or call (for a buck a minute) to my heart’s content as we mill around Panama City.

Damn, I think, I am one seriously high-tech bastard.

Morning #1 in Panama. Nothing works. Calls to my wife’s phone on the desk next to me. Nothing. My sister-in-law downstairs. Nothing. Brother-in-law at a hotel. Nothing. To AT&T tech support back in the States … something. But they have no idea what the problem is. They promise to take it up to their super double secret tech squad and call me back. Which they do … to say they still can’t figure it out, but I should maybe try adding the 1+ international code … or just a 0 … or nothing at all … every time I try to make call.

This goes on for over two hours until they promise to call back again … and of course never call.

Although I’m unable to contact anyone in our travelling party I am able to contact the rental condo-owner in Texas and a cab driver in Panama City. Texting is about the same. Nothing to anyone we’re with, but a couple cellphone shots make it to a sister in Ohio. Did I mention even my AT&T voice mail is in accessible?

Point being, it’s a fiasco. Since I was quite proud of avoiding precisely this kind of mess by signing up for AT&T’s international plan prior to leaving Minnesota, I’m enduring a lot of jokes at my expense. Along the lines of, ‘Yeah, you’re the go-to for tech, Brian. You da man.”

Eventually we all download WhatsApp which promises to connect everyone via data service … which of course starts the meter spinning on AT&T’s international data-use rates.

Service so erratic as to be useless. We lose hours unable to connect with people who are waiting to hear from us, and on and on.

Cut to a week after we return. I call AT&T customer service to walk them through the farce, demanding explanations for why this was so appallingly bad. On the Richter/Comcast scale of my customer service rants I reined this one into about a “five”. No Joe Pesci-like swearing and threats of violence. But enough pitch-of-peeve so they know I’ll cancel service if they don’t offer some kind of compensation.

Eventually the AT&T agent, out of the blue, offers a $100 credit. This catches me mid-rant, spittle still forming in the corners of my mouth. “$100?”. Uh, okay. How are you going to do that?

“We’ll credit it on your next bill,” says the voice of the person whose name, e-mail, phone, blood-type and next of kin I fail to get before I hang up, a bought-off, calmed-down customer he personally will never speak to again.

Thirty two days later I get a text notifying me that my latest bill from AT&T is both ready to view … and has been paid, thanks to auto-pay. The total? $314 and change.

I feel blood in my nostrils and I’m on the phone with AT&T customer service within five minutes. Several versions of “WTF?” and, “Where’s that $100 credit?” later and I’m informed … you guessed it … there is no record of the promised $100. But what they do have is a very long list of calls proving that I had all the service I needed in Panama.

“You can download the bill from our website,” they say, which may be true except that of course the website isn’t accepting/recognizing either my number or AT&T’s four-digit pass code.

Back in the car. Twelve miles and 35 minutes later (rush hour traffic) the clerk at the “international specialist” shop prints out four pages of calls, texts and data. I tell him that just eyeballing the thing we’re looking at easily four or five times the number of calls and texts that we ever used. “You’ll have to call customer service about that,” he says.

Back home, after 10 minutes of magnifying glass and annotation work it’s pretty obvious that I’ve been charged for dozens of calls to people in Panama with us that never went through. Texts too, most likely. And better yet, while the out-going calls to AT&T tech support, to complain about the lack of service we had paid to get were “free”, the calls back from AT&T’s super-duper techs, telling us they had no explanation or solution for why we weren’t getting any service … were billed to us at the rate of $1 minute.

But finally, and only at this point, after literally a dozen or more interactions with AT&T retail/customer service/tech support do I get the two clarion trumpet “full disclosure” moments that explain everything.

The agent matter-of-factly tells me, “Well, we don’t ever promise [international calling] will work”, and, oh, by the way, “Yes, you are charged for placing the call or text.”

Excuse me, what? Are you saying you’re charging people for calls that you don’t even connect? That we’re paying simply for dialing the number?

“Yes, and you were told that when you signed up for the plan.”

By this point the sarcasm in my voice was dripping, kind of like the hideous space monster in “Alien”.  “Uhhhh, no. No one ever at any point, until this moment, ever told me that the system might not actually work, much less that I’d be charged for the act of dialing the number. Moreover … mam … what fool would ever buy your international calling plan if those two key details were disclosed to them upfront, in their friendly neighborhood ‘AT&T international specialist’ shoppe?”

“Well,” she said, and I loved this, “they should have told you.”

(Because I’m into an OCD-psychotic episode with this crap, I’ve since walked in to three other AT&T stores in the Twin Cities and “inquired” about international calling plans, specifically asking if I’m charged only for calls that are connected. The response each time: “Oh yeah, of course. Only if you’re connected, of course”.)

When I tell her that as (damned) annoying as all this is, I’ll let it go for the $100 credit I was promised a month earlier, she puts me on one of those holds to talk to yet another “specialist”. Most likely she just hit “hold” and filed her nails for three minutes. But she comes back to inform me that after “carefully reviewing” my account the specialist will not agree to the $100 credit or any other credits of any kind. Basically, it’s my fault for not knowing how the game is played.

A friend visiting the house while I’m going through this says, “You have to get to a supervisor in their retention department. Customer service has no authority to do anything.”

The next … and final call … is back to customer service, or almost. After going through the whole ID, pass code and reexplanation thing … I’m disconnected. (And despite calling, you know, a telephone company, which has my phone number, do you think anyone calls back? Hell, what was the last time any customer service, other than Apple, called back after you were disconnected?)

Back again … ID, pass code, re-tell the story and demand (demand, I say!) to talk to a supervisor, pronto! I’m put on hold until “Daunte” gets on the line. Now, knowing that it reflects badly on low-level customer service reps when they have to call in a supervisor, and considering every other facet of this tale, I don’t think it’s cynical to imagine the first rep hitting “hold” and turning to his buddy “Daunte” in the cubicle next to him and asking him to “play supervisor with the nutjob on line 8”.

The finale:  “Daunte” carefully reviews the file notes and declares AT&T to be utterly blameless in this incident and under no circumstances will the company offer any sort of compensation.

“Do you, Daunte,” I ask, “want to keep me as an AT&T customer?” fully expecting him to say something like, “Oh god, man! Yes! If you leave, our stock price will disintegrate. Me and Abner here in the next cubicle will be out on the streets, living in cardboard boxes, or worse, taking customer service calls for Comcast! Shit no! Don’t go, man! I beg you! Have mercy!”

In reality “Daunte” says, “That’s your choice.”

My choice, two hours later, was to switch back to T-Mobile and run down to the bank and sign papers putting a stop/disputed payment on that last auto-pay to AT&T. When, not if, they make a principled stink about not being paid for services rendered, I’ll take them to small claims court where one of their “assistant regional junior VPs for international special-ism” can explain with great clarity and a straight face how, without prior disclosure, AT&T charges customers for services they fail to provide.

… where are my pills, dear?