When our mother had to move into a senior living community we hoped that she would be able to remain independent. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that she needed more care, so she was moved into the memory care wing (dementia, Alzheimer's, etc.). The pain of that move will never leave me. Still, we hoped we would be able to stay in contact with her by getting an AT&T wireless home phone for her new room. Simply put, the phone never worked. I spent long hours in her room on the line with AT&T, but the best we could get the phone to do was to make calls, not receive them. First, there was the difficulty of getting Comcast to allow her long-time home number to be ported over to AT&T, which AT&T claims happened, although I never was able to call that number. AT&T claims to have continued to send bills to the senior living center (ATRIA), but Atria returned the bills as if our mother had moved out! All she had done was move fifty yards, from one side of the facility to the other. So we never saw any bills. AT&T had an e-mail address on file, but the person on the other end of the line misspelled the e-mail address by one letter, so we were never communicated with via e-mail either. And since we were setting up our mother's account separately from our own long-time AT&T accounts, we were not contacted via our own phones either. In the end we had a useless device and an account balance owed of $261, all due to human error, none of it ours. But AT&T wants their money, and despite the HOURS spent explaining this unfortunate situation to a number of managers, the only way our mother was going to hear her children's voices was for the bill to be paid. She can't remember numbers any more, so even a phone that can only make calls is of no use to her. Bottom line? The people at AT&T to whom you complain are being paid to listen to you rant. In the meanwhile, you ARE NOT being paid while you spend hours on the phone with them. It's a game of attrition, and the all the odds are in their favor. Have a parent with Alzheimer's? They won't care. But you do, so you'll pay. Just like we did. read more
