This Verizon iPhone clearly has AT&T all hot and bothered. And the company that used to be too terrified to say anything about the iPhone is now taking their battle to places like Twitter. That includes people pretty high up the food chain, and now even customer service reps. One such worker took to Twitter this morning to tell us how she really feels about our opinion of her company.
“This is bullshit,” Rachael Pracht says in a tweet directed at us. Specifically, she’s responding to my post last night on my long, arduous journey from AT&T to Verizon. “I am an AT&T customer care rep & if I credit every crazy person who called in I’d get fired,” she continues.
First of all, she’s apparently calling me crazy. Which is fine. But what’s not fine is that she’s also calling others who call in with complaints about their AT&T service “crazy.” What was my “crazy” complaint she was referring to? Dropped calls. The nerve!
More specifically, I lay out the idea that AT&T should automatically credit customers for dropped calls when they occur at an unreasonable rate. You know, just like Netflix does when you can’t watch a movie. It’s a fantastic policy that is worth its weight in gold from a customer service and loyalty perspective.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect Pracht or any single rep to credit every single person that called in to complain. I’m sure they would get fired if they did that — because god forbid AT&T would want their customers happy (and that also seems to speak to the level of complaints AT&T gets). I want her AT&T overlords to implement that policy. Which they won’t, so no worries, I was just throwing it out there as one potential solution that could have helped avoid the shitstorm they’re now seeing.
But Pracht had more to say, “This entire article is garbage because it’s all based on an opinion of someone who assumes everything. Thanks anyway,” she follows up with in another tweet. It’s true that some of that is my opinion, but what exactly am I assuming? That my three year history with AT&T has been plagued by a massive amount of dropped calls, failed texts, and broken data connections? And that AT&T has not been able to fix any of that all these years later? Not only is that not an assumption, I’m hardly alone in the experience. It’s the butt of jokes on things like the Daily Show at this point. And we’ll see it even more when the numbers come out for how many customers jumped ship from AT&T to Verizon.
And while I understand that Pracht’s Twitter account is her own and not controlled by AT&T, she’s clearly coming at me as a stated AT&T rep. And nearly the entire rest of her tweet stream is the same type of thing directed at others who dare speak poorly of her beloved company. Or worse, actually have the nerve to call her! Again, a customer service rep.
“If I get 1 call about Verizon’s announcement tomorrow I’ll lose my shit. CALL THEM YOU CRAZIES. It’s a phone, it’s not like they cured AIDS,” she tweeted the day before the Verizon event.
“No 4G. No special features. Just a simple shitty CDMA iPhone. Big. Freaking. Whoop,” she wrote in an unprovoked response to someone who tweeted his excitement for the Verizon iPhone launch.
On one hand, you have to respect Pracht’s loyalty to her employer and her willingness to speak her mind. On the other, if this is really the mentality of these customer service reps for the company, it’s no wonder their service is so poor. Complaints are not valid, they’re filed by “crazies”.
“I’d rather get a root canal then go to work.. Anyone have a root canal? Please tell me it’s worse than talking to idiots all day long,” she tweeted earlier today. Crazies. Idiots. It’s all us. Not AT&T.
But I do feel for Parcht as well. Clearly, she’s under a lot of pressure by customers calling to complain and ask about when they can switch to the Verizon iPhone. If someone trashes your company while talking to you that often, it has to be rough. “Today was insane. People are fucked in the head, I swear! You embarrassed of AT&T? Psh, I’m embarrassed of you…,” she wrote last night.
You go, company woman. And I promise you’ll never hear from me again.
Update: Parcht’s account has been suspended by Twitter now. We do know that AT&T is looking into the situation, and will update when we know more.
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24217628117565441
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/25405704365932544
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24882368850427904
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24881067668283392
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24875645167214592
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24862253945720832
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24861971228659712
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24861807646605312
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/24477660054822912
http://twitter.com/#!/rachaelchesnutt/status/25568695027765248