How does one reach a human being at AT&T?

Wed Jan 28 13:54:08 UTC 2004

On Wed, 2004-01-28 at 00:12, Jay Hennigan wrote:
> I have an AT&T T-1 taking errors.  Their trouble reporting number dumps
> me into the IVR from hell.  It even has machines calling me back at
> intervals with status.  The status says "A test was run..."  No hint as to
> the results of the test.
> 
> One of the choices is to say or hit "2" if you need further assistance.
> 
> Doing so gets a response telling you to call their maintenance center which
> is the same machine that I used to generate the ticket in the first place.
> 
> Furrfu!  The telephone company doesn't have anyone to answer the telephone.
> 
> Even "Floyd"[1] is looking pretty good at this point.
> 
> Anyone have a secret number or touchtone sequence to share?  Swearing at
> it doesn't work.  This is a point-to-point circuit, not an Internet T-1.
> 
> [1] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/21/BU227355.DTL

The ATT TickeTron loves you!  It will open your ticket, work your
ticket, and then close your ticket for no reason.  Then you can call
back into it and open a new ticket, which will again be closed.  You can
yell and scream at TickeTron all you want, and it will still give you
the same friendly, useless service as it did the first 10 times you
opened your ticket!  

"Open the fscking Ticket, TickeTron"  
"I'm sorry Jay, I'm afraid I can't do that, your ticket has been
closed."

I have a number for "Richmond Maintenance Center", e-mailed to you
off-list.  It may not be the right group for PtP, but at least you'll
get a real person to vent at.  They will probably be able to open your
ticket and get it to a warm body without getting "HAL" involved.

Make sure you ask the engineer you speak with what the ATT techs call
that system internally.  They have their own name for it (and it's not
TickeTron), and it's absolutely hilarious...and appropriate.  For the
life of me, I can't remember what it was.  At least the engineers know
how frustrating it is.  Really though, the worst part is that yelling at
it is just no fun.  And threatening to DEADBEEF it's space in memory
won't earn you any points either :)

Adam Maloney
Systems Administrator
Sihope Communications