photo by Neato Coolville

I am not happy with my recent iPad experience.

Self Serve is Not for the Faint of Heart

I am trying to enter my credit card information so that my data plan can renew automatically every month but I keep getting an error message asking me to validate my billing address.  No matter what I do, AT & T will not accept where I live.  They have cut off my service and everyone I have spoken to over the past few days cannot help me.  They cannot even take my information over the phone because this is a “self serve account”.

When I am in the supermarket with Seth, we like to go through the Self Check-Out line where we scan, bag and pay ourselves.

Sweet!

I think the idea is great but I wonder if the cashiers will become as scarce as toll booth collectors since the rise of EZ Pass.  However, you will always need to have a person standing by to help you out when something doesn’t scan properly, or if the machine cannot read the barcode.

To help you out.

So, imagine my shock when AT & T shut off my data plan because they needed 72 hours to find somebody to resolve on the problem.

Somebody?

I thought “self serve”  means that iPad users manage their own accounts.  That’s why the very nice people answering the phones could not fix the problem.  Then who is the somebody who is going to fix it?

“I cannot take your information over the phone but I would be glad to walk through the self serve process with you again.”  said the pleasant but useless AT & T service person on the phone with me.

Are you kidding?

Where is the person that fixes self serve problems?  They always have one at the ready in the supermarkets.

Why doesn’t AT & T?

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