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Ask and ye shall receive

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* I gave AT&T a really hard time here the other day for lousy (actually, almost nonexistent) mobile phone service at the State Fairgrounds.

I went to the Toby Keith show last night. The place was packed and Toby rocked it. A thoroughly enjoyable evening.

I could see that lots of people had their phones out, taking pics and videos and likely posting on social networks, so I decided to send a couple of test texts. They went through fine. I even accessed my e-mail and the Internet. Everything worked like it was supposed to.

So, apparently, AT&T fixed its serious problems and I’d like to express my appreciation by saying “Thanks for doing the job you should’ve been doing all along.”

Too harsh? Maybe. I guess I should be happy.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 10:57 am

Comments

When I use my phone on Verizon at the fairgrounds, ‘You can hear me now’.

Comment by BehindTheScenes Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 11:08 am
Not too harsh at all, but no one is going to mistake it for gracious either. In other words; exactly what you meant.

Comment by A guy... Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 11:10 am
A friend of mine posted that it was “country night” at the fair. To which I responded, “isn’t every night?”

I’d love to see Journey but $72 a ticket for the fair is a bit too steep for me.

Comment by Anonanon Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 11:11 am
we have had verizon for 18 mo, w great reliability. a dropped call or coverage gap maybe twice in that time. when we had ATT, it was almost a daily occurrence. call them up, and they would say, “we show complete coverage for your area”. we could expect a call to be dropped at a specific corner downtown–they were reliable that way.

so it is not too harsh to say coverage bad one day and ok the next.

Comment by langhorne Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 11:30 am
“Thanks for doing the job you should’ve been doing all along.”

That’s not an incorrect thing to say at all! LOL

Comment by Levois Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 11:39 am
I’ve noticed that service is actually available at Cubs games this season, where it was completely unusable last year.

Bigger events still throw it off, though. Notably the Pride Parade and a few other street fests this year have been blacked out completely.

Comment by Served Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 11:40 am
Some of the blame ought to be put onto the State Fair for not accurately forecasting attendance and providing the information to AT&T.

Comment by Huh? Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 12:20 pm
@Huh? 12:20

Huh?

Comment by Knome Sane Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 12:24 pm
Technical problems are very easy to solve in the opinion of the people whose job isn’t to solve them.

Source: I am in IT

Comment by Jason Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 12:24 pm
Funny, guess it depends where you are at: around here, for the most part, ATT has better coverage than Verizon. Had an employee change to ATT because he couldn’t get calls in our shop, while the rest of were doing just fine.

Comment by downstate commissioner Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 1:34 pm
At the prices of most cell plans today, I’d say you were overly polite. Are they going to pro-rate your bill? Of course not!

Comment by lincolnlover Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 1:45 pm
Maybe if you took the tin foil off of the phone….. ;-/)

Comment by dupage dan Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 2:11 pm
My point is how can ATT determine who many people are going to attend an event such as the State Fair? The fair organizers have the historical attendance figures and should be working with utilities such as ATT to ensure that there is sufficient capacity.

Comment by Huh? Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 3:04 pm
Maybe I should call AT&T about their poor service at US Cellular Field…….

Comment by justanordinarylawyer Thursday, Aug 15, 13 @ 6:07 pm
When I married my wife, she had AT&T contract and I gave up my Verizon. Big mistake!!! Even in downtown Springfield, while in the Capitol, I loose phone service. AT&T data plan was so convoluted, and the billing erratic, that after a half-dozen visits to the AT&T main Springfield office, I gave up my Blackberry, but still pay for a data plan until the contract expires in May 2013.

Americans are being ripped off with our cell phone contracts compared to Europe.

Comment by Louis Howe Friday, Aug 16, 13 @ 9:52 am