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AT&T apologizes to customer warned off emailing the CEO: 'This is not the way we want to treat customers'
AT&T's Executive Response Team certainly caused a little controversy yesterday after it warned reader Giorgio Galante that sending another email to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson would result in a cease and desist letter, but apparently it was all just a mistake -- Giorgio tells us that he's received a sincere apology from an AT&T senior VP, who took responsibility for the mixup. Apparently the cease and desist warning came about due to bad reading of AT&T internal policy -- Giorgio was told the rep who made the call is "not having the best of days today" -- and AT&T tells us it's reviewing its procedures to make sure it doesn't happen again. As for Giorgio, he says AT&T's rep sincerely listened to his concerns about the new data plan pricing schemes and that he's accepted the company's apology, but ultimately he's decided to switch over to Sprint and the EVO 4G anyway. That's to be expected, we suppose -- and we'd say next time Randall might do well to use up a few bytes of his 2GB limit and write back to a dissatisfied customer. Here's AT&T's official statement on the matter: We are apologizing to our customer. We're working with him today to address his questions and concerns. This is not the way we want to treat customers. From Facebook to significant customer service channels, AT&T strives to provide our customers with easy ways to have their questions addressed. Because of this incident, we are reviewing our entire process to ensure a situation like this does not happen again.
AT&T warns customer that emailing the CEO will result in a cease and desist letter
Sure, Steve Jobs might be a one-man email PR machine, but his pal Randall Stephenson at AT&T doesn't appear to be quite as gregarious -- as reader Giorgio Galante found out today, sending AT&T's CEO two emails in two weeks results in a phone call from AT&T's Executive Response Team and a warning that further emails will result in a cease and desist letter. What did Giorgio's emails say? The first was a request to bump up his iPhone eligibility date and a request for a tethering option, and today's outlined his displeasure with AT&T's new data rates and ultimate decision to switch to Sprint and the EVO 4G. That prompted "Brent" to call Giorgio back and thank him for the feedback, but also politely warn him that further emails would be met with legal action. Ouch. As you'd expect, AT&T just lost itself a customer. We've followed up with Ma Bell to find out exactly why they went the lawyer route instead of oh, say, filtering Randall's email -- we'll let you know what they say. P.S.- Amusingly, Giorgio says he emailed both Randall Stephenson and Steve Jobs last year about offering tethering and actually got a response from Steve -- maybe these two CEOs need to talk about more than data rates and service quality the next time they meet up.
