Our Phones

It's not trendy, but we have fallen in love with Windows Phones. The Nokia 1020 phones have 41 megapixel cameras. The voice recogniation system in Windows Phone is more advanced than competitors. Try telling Siri or Android Voice, "When my wife calls, remind me to tell her to get peanut butter." Cortana (the Windows Phone's personal assistant's name) can handle a whole bunch of IF, THEN commands that others can't.

AT&T Hasn't A Clue

My wife has been an AT&T wireless customer for a decade. It was time to get new phones, so we took advantage of a nice offer on Amazon to order two new phones on November 8, 2014. The phones were supposed to ship from AT&T with SIM cards, within two days.

Then we received the confirmation letter from AT&T, which said the order would ship between November 14 - 18. So much for Amazon's promise, but we chalked it up to Amazon and figured we'd get our phones in a bit over a week. They have a page (pictured below) where we can check on the status of our order. So when the 19th rolled around, I checked. Hmm. Still showed the 14 - 18 ship date but nothing else. So I called. You have to listen to quite a bit of repeat information and enter your phone number and zip code, but eventually you can talk to a human. She was very nice. She said "Sorry for the trouble. We will credit your account with a $25 credit for your trouble and ship the phones out via expedited delivery for tomorrow or day after at the latest." OK. We all make mistakes. Nice customer relations to be that upfront.

But after FedEx delivered at the office on November 21, two days later, but no phones arrived, I called and jumped through all the hoops yet again. Things got a bit strange. After searching around for half an hour, getting the supervisor involved, they finally told me that the phones had been delivered on November 17 at 2:33 PM. Very strange as four of us had been in the office at that time and didn't receive anything. They gave me the tracking number and I called FedEx. FedEx said the package had been left on the doorstep at 2:33, but when we checked the address and person, it was clear that this wasn't our package or address. Back to AT&T.

The next service rep said that they don't do expedited shipping and I would receive the phones by Monday, November 24. Yes, she said she was sorry, but wasn't all that reassuring, which turned out to be warranted. When nothing had arrived on Monday, I called on Tuesday only to have the customer rep say their computers were down and could I call back in 3 hours. When I did, things got worse. They are having computer problems. They don't know the status of any order. They can see that I was supposed to have my phones shipped between the 14th and 18th and they weren't, but they had no further status and didn't expect to have any status any time soon. "Probably, you'll receive them unexpectedly one day soon." He suggested that I could purchase the phones elsewhere and then ship theirs back when they arrived, but agreed that I would need SIM cards which wouldn't arrive until the phones did, which would make the additional purchase a waste of time. Unfortunately, he couldn't offer anything more helpful.

So, two weeks after ordering phones from AT&T, we have been charged for two phones, we do have a $25 credit, but no phones. And we don't know if the phones will be delivered tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. And, as nearly as we can tell, neither does AT&T.

I spent 25 years as a stock broker. Can you say "short?" I knew you could.

Update 11/26: My daily phone calls are getting shorter and less hopeful. They barely say "sorry" and just say that when the order ships, we'll get an email. But, no, they don't have any idea when we might get the email or the phones. Support staff really sounds demoralized.

This is the status page showing on November 26, 2014. Note the Order Date on the top says 11/11 while the Order Date on the bottom says 11/8.

At last some results. Our daughter, Jessica, who was to receive one of the two phones started posting in the AT&T Business Support Page about our problems. A business support person stepped in on December 10 (more than a month after the initial order), determined that the 1020 phones are "end of life," are not in stock and never will be. There is no new 10-series model to replace them. Did we want to order the 1520's? They are quite large and the camera has fewer pixels, but they are a later model, so we said OK. We ordered the 1520's and two days later they arrived. They shipped with Windows Phone 8.1, so all we had to do was perform one update, which was nice. The 1020's would have shipped with Windows Phone 8, which would have necessitated quite a bit of updating. The family really likes the 1520's so it all might have turned out for the best.

Well, except for the sour taste AT&T's customer service left in our mouth. Heaven help us if we have problems.