The difference between Steve Jobs and Randall Stephenson
The differences between Jobs and Stephenson are Black and White.
Odds are one could find hundreds of differences between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, but the most obvious difference, as of today, is that if you email Steve Jobs with a genuine concern, odds are he’ll ignore you, but there’s a slight chance he may actually respond to you personally with one of his trademarked one-liners. Yet, according to one Giorgio Galante, if you email Stephenson you’ll be threatened with legal action.
After sending an email to Stephenson outlining his displeasure with the newly announced AT&T data plans for the iPhone (and including the requisite threat to leave AT&T forever), Galante received a voicemail from AT&T’s executive response staff (link to audio) thanking him for contacting them, but then going on to say if he continued to email Stephenson, he risks being sent a cease and desist letter.
Wow. Well all I can say is after all the wildly inappropriate things I’ve written to Steve Jobs over the years without any hint of a lawsuit, I can only say God Bless Steve for having a thick skin.
(To read Galante’s email to Stephenson, and to hear the resulting voicemail, click here).
I don’t like the new data plans either. AT&T should allow you to tether for free up to the limits of your plan. If you’re paying for metered data, you should be allowed to use this bits wherever you’d like.
Another difference between Steve Jobs and Randall Stephenson is that, um who is Randall Stephenson again? Wasn’t he in some sitcom or something?
quoting: “Another difference between Steve Jobs and Randall Stephenson is that, um who is Randall Stephenson again? Wasn’t he in some sitcom or something?”
-> Yeah, the sitcom is called: “AT&T Plans”, and it’s a total joke!
And AT&T is the ONLY reason why I didn’t get an iPhone and iPad.
Someone has to sue those idiots and teach them a lesson. What happened to freedom of speech? Typical behavior of Sore Losers.
Wow. Speechless. What an asshole.
BTW, I also sent him a friendly email.
As far a tethering, I guess we will have to stick with unlocking iPhones
and using MyWi.
After seeing this response. AT&T has officially the worst customer service. AT&T threaten a customer. Bad business… the CEO of AT&T wants to cry about a customer stating a good point about screwing their customers. Dear AT&T, I am officially going to get off your network when the iPhone is on Verizon. I smell BOYCOTT!!!! Who’s with me?
“… What happened to freedom of speech? Typical behavior of Sore Losers.”
Well, several points:
1. Free speech is a right you have, but no-one is obligated to provide you a forum for performing your free speech. If you want to start your own cellular data network and use unlimited data, have at it.
2. Free speech is only protected against government action. Private entities (people, corporations, etc) are legally allowed to suppress your speech in any way they see fit, especially when you agree to the terms of suppression.
3. What exactly did AT&T “loose”? They still have exclusivity of the Apple products in the USA, their subscribers, income and profit are rising as a result. If they lost, who won?
4. The new data plans suck, but at the same time I’m only using about 100MB/month so I may cut down to the new $15/mo plan and save some moola.
Maybe we should get on twitter and Facebook and get as many people as possible to send him an email and se how many cease and disist threats we can get.
you know… what would be a better protest… EVERYONE (all the iphone/ipad users) to send mr… what…stephenson…? a nice friendly email… no threats… just fill up his box with nonsense and nigerian price offers…
what was his email again?
-d
For all of you people who only use 100 MB a month and are happy with the Evil Empire’s new plans — more power to you….and a question. Why do you have an iPhone in the FIRST PLACE? You obviously don’t USE IT.
One flaw with the iPhone, you can’t turn off 3G consumption, except by using the “off button” or ensuring you’re always in reach of a wifi hotspot. You’re using data all the time, and have no control whether you exceed the caps or not. But that’s part of AT&T’s evil plan is to hit you with the overages.
What good is a wonderful smartphone if you aren’t going to put it to USE?
And as far as “Mr Stephenson” goes — what an a*******! Threatening a customer for emailing — it’s not like profanities were used here. A “cease and desist” letter by it’s nature has an implied threat of criminal or civil legal action — or else why send it? So they’re threatening to have him jailed for harrassment, or file a lawsuit for even MORE money of this poor guy.
Nice company — if you’re Darth Vader!
A letter I just sent to the CEO – my requests to talk to an AT&T supervisor of customer service were denied today, so I emailed the top supervisor. Now let’s see what legal action they take against me
Dear Mr. Randall,
I cannot speak to the quality of your company’s services as I have not had the opportunity to try them yet; I can, however, tell you that this is the worst customer service experience that I can recall.
A couple of weeks ago, I called to activate high-speed internet service at my new home. Unfortunately, the excellent provider that I had at the old address, RCN, was unavailable here so I decided to order AT&T.
The equipment arrived a few days later, as expected. The instructions on how to do warranty/ the $100 gift card to offset the cost of the equipment never arrived. That turns out it’s a lot more complicated than your agent (Sara, SE732Q) made it sound. She lied. Plus she never sent the info. All she cares about is getting the order and to hell with the customer and all the false promises she makes to get that order.
Today, I spent the entire day trying to hook up and troubleshoot the router/modem. I followed the instructions and ran into problems (didn’t work like it was supposed to) and spent the whole day, from 8am to 4pm, on the phone with your customer service and technical service getting passed on from one useless person to another. I got hung up on three times. Finally, one of your employees, David (DG2300) said that I needed to have a technician come over to my home to fix the problem. He said that one should come out between 4pm and 8pm, so I spent the whole day AND the whole evening at home trying to fix this.
I got a call from Cornell (CB9797) at 7:50pm saying nobody would be able to come out tonight. So we re-scheduled for tomorrow morning, and I now have to spend another day at home, not working, waiting to try to get this set up. This makes for yet another lie, another broken promise by AT&T.
You don’t care about your customers. You pass them around from one incompetent customer “service” agent to another, providing no real answers, no solutions, just more lies and more broken promises.
I asked to speak to a supervisor several times today. I was never granted that request. So I am contacting you, the top supervisor: please fix this.
At&t has more problems than the new data packages. They might want to work out their limited data capacities as I love paying $100+/month for a bunch of shitty service.
Today was the day I understood why some postal workers go bananas. After trying to have Uverse TV, home phone, internet and my families cell phones ported over to AT&T for the last 26 days, I give up. The first 2 1/2 hour conversation was tiring to begin with not to mention I later found out that ever word of the customer service representative spoke was A LIE!!!! Don’t trust them, they will tell you the winning lotto numbers if it means they are making a sale. I was told that I had to do an “address verification” before they could set up the Uverse service since our house was not showing up on their “MAP”. 7 days later I called to get the status since (of course) they never returned MY call as promised. I was told everything was good to go and we could place the service order. Now I was promised an ESCALATED INSTALLATION since I had already been waiting for them to do the whole address verification thing. (Lie #2) I was promised yet another return phone call (Lie #3) to receive my escalated installation date. Several days pass and I again spend 45 minutes talking to 6 different people to be told that my actual installation date was 10 DAYS OUT!!!! (Lie #4) As smoke was coming out of my ears I requested the status of our new cell phones…(Lie #5) I was told originally that they would be dilivered within 3 days of me accepting the “Email Service Agreement”. WRONG! The phones are actually on BACK ORDER until??? (Lie #6) No one knows when they will receive or deliver my phones. By now my current cell phone is running out of minutes because I am using them CALLING AT&t!!!! Well my installation date finally arrived. I took the day off work so I couldn’t miss him. Guess what?? He shows up an hour LATE, AFTER I had to call and find out where the hell he was!! (I think that was like #83 by then) Oh this gets better people, Now its RAINING dogs & cats and I was thinking of which kitchen object to use on the technician if he tracked mudd into my house. Never the less he gave me the GLORIOUS news that the SIGNAL IS TOO WEAK and he COULD NOT hook up the Uverse, home phone or internet. The only information he was able to give me was that a “Repair Technician” would be contacting me!!! 5 Days later never heard a word or seen the new cell phones. (Lie #92) So AGAIN I used my minutes and called AT&t to find out WTF??? And GUESS what they told me? (after being transferred to 4 different departments) That UVERSE IS NOT AVAILABLE IN MY AREA! LMAO so now I am scratching my ass wondering how miraculously my neighbors are getting AT&T UVERSE????? (Lie #107) So now that my cell phone is out of minutes and my mind is in MELT DOWN mode I tell them to CANCEL THE *#@#%$%*(& ORDER!!!!!! But it gets EVEN BETTER!! Now that they have already “CHARGED” my credit card for the cell phones that will ship SOMEDAY, my order is in “PENDING” STATUS and it can’t be cancelled. So they took my money and screwed me for the last 26 days. I have had 3 sets of supervisors refuse to give me their corporate address. And they have the nurve to tell me that they are documenting in their computer that I am not ALLOWING them to assist me!! They are REFUSING to ASSIST ME!! I am starting a facebook page for people that HATE AT&T…LOOK ME UP.
Had the worst experience ever with ATT UVerse but figured I’d still share. The service was absolutely horrendous with continuous issues regarding their equipment freezing up, shaky internet service, and pathetic customer service reps. Their business practices with regards to billing border on being illegal but definitely dishonest (at best). Tried looking up contact info for their CEO Randall Stephenson and found an article that reports that after a customer emailed him twice in a two week span, he received a warning from Stephenson’s management team telling him that if he sent another email they would serve him with a ‘cease and desist’ letter: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/02/atandt-warns-customer-that-emailing-the-ceo-will-result-in-a-cease/
Seems like the crud starts at the very top and works its way all the way down the organization. Long story short, I called ATT and notified them that they “are FIRED!” and proceeded to cancel their UVerse GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can any one tell me how i can contact Randall Stephenson? i need help with an issue and i know every job has a channel in comand.But i seem to get no we’re and i need the top man to solve my problem.
My problem is this i recieved a bill telling me i owe $405.09 cents.I swore i was in a dream.Then i tried to fix this problem with customer service with no resolvement.I then asked if i could have his first name he told me you can have my first name but not my last.I then asked him if he can give me the presidents name he said no.So then i said please let me speak to you supervisor he said you will have to wait 30 minutes for one.So i said well if you give me an e-mail or a phone number so i can have this resolved and not wait.He said mam im about to hang up on you i said if you hang up on me i will contact the president.So guess what he hung up on me,so i called back spoke to a supervisor and she told me it’s optional for customer service to give there last name.Then she said well he should have gave you the e-mail address which is on the back of your bill to complain.I still have a $405 dollar phone bill and i need help.I’m on the phone more with att than I’am at my job.Please please can some one give me advise.There is more that happen with the phone call but id prefer to share more information with the president thank you.
Bring it on to the CEO of AT&T Randall Stephenson.
As an Alaska Native and American Indian business woman, I will never back down from the racist and bigoted corporation who engages on predatory business practices with high excessive fees. I cancelled in good faith on Monday February 15th 2016.
With the 25 plus calls to AT&T, the most important call was from (I will spell the telephone number)
Four Zero Four – Nine Eight Six – Eight Two Seven Four. Translation to post 404-986-8274.
I have been raped and monetarily hijacked which is just as bad as sexually assaulted as a minority owned and American Indian/Alaska Native firm. I do not tolerate disrespect and bigoted business practices as a proud native American.
Juliet SunDesign