Readers, company speak out on 'The fall of AT&T Wireless'

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Monday, September 27, 2004

Readers, company speak out on 'The fall of AT&T Wireless'

By DAN RICHMAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

More than 65 readers responded by phone or e-mail to last Tuesday's P-I Special Report, The Fall of AT&T Wireless, as did the company itself.

SPECIAL REPORT

See previous stories about AT&T Wireless

As of this writing, all of the reader responses were critical of the company. Most who got in touch were angry or disappointed about the fate of AT&T Wireless and laid the blame firmly at the feet of management.

AT&T Wireless is expected to be sold to Cingular Wireless, possibly as early as next month, for $41 billion in cash. The company put itself up for sale earlier this year after suffering a massive subscriber exodus, years of slow subscriber growth and several quarters of deep losses. Widespread layoffs could result.

About a third of the readers who contacted the P-I are former AT&T Wireless employees.

Most of the rest are still employed there, are former or current customers, or work in the telecommunications industry.

What follows are excerpts from a few of the responses:

AT&T Wireless' response

Your dark view of our company's history and performance does a serious disservice to the thousands of great people in the Seattle area and around the country who built AT&T Wireless. ...

Each of us gave data and perspective to your reporter to refute the story's many faulty assertions. With the exception of a single token quote, our comments were ignored -- probably because they were at odds with your reporter's thesis. Meanwhile, he relied heavily on unnamed sources who clearly had axes to grind.

-- Andre Dahan, president, AT&T Wireless Mobile Multimedia Services; Jordan Roderick, president, International, AT&T Wireless; Lew Chakrin, executive vice president, Corporate Development, AT&T Wireless

Customer service

I am an ex-employee of AT&T Wireless, and I know for a fact that customer service wasn't very good. They wanted us to hang up on the customer 11 minutes into the call. When a rep from AT&T Wireless said that the customers were leaving and flipping us the bird, it's soooo true. I know that customers are very angry with AT&T.

-- Angie Moore

I started out as a McCaw customer so long ago that I can't even remember the year (I think it was at least 16 years ago). By the time I left AT&T Wireless for Verizon earlier this year, I walked away disgusted. I could never understand why the customer service went from great to horrible -- it was like they wanted to make you mad enough to leave. So I did.

-- Pat Herd

At 67 years old, one of the most revered personal traits is loyalty. I hung on to AT&T no matter what. However, their accumulating years of customer abuse, excessive charges and hiding costs finally became too much. I stopped my relations with AT&T and now I wouldn't go back to being one of their customers if they gave their product away.

-- Gary Bloomquist

Software flaws

I tested the software for managing customers using GSM (AT&T Wireless's newest technology) before the program was installed. I told the managers it did not work at all. You couldn't have run a donut shop on it. It was released anyway. Customers got stuck for two weeks -- their callers would get a recording saying the numbers were out of order.

-- Patrick Rachel, former data analyst at AT&T Wireless

Leadership

John Zeglis' ego was greater than his leadership. He and his cohorts ... were simply figureheads. No blood, sweat or tears were ever shed by them for the sake of building a great company.

-- Sharon Levine, former employee

The article didn't really address the root cause of AT&T Wireless's fall: incompetent leadership drove incompetent decisions, which drove incompetent products and offerings across the whole company.

-- Willie Middleton Jr., former AT&T Wireless root cause analyst

Regret

It was extremely well written and accurate. Having been an employee of McCaw and AWS for nine years, it was amazing to read your article and see how well you captured what was going on behind the scenes. It saddens me to see its demise.

-- Barbara Mueller Bender

What do you think about AT&T Wireless? Share your comments.

P-I reporter Dan Richman can be reached at 206-448-8032 or danrichman@seattlepi.com

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