So Long, ATT: KISS MY $85-a-month Goodbye -- your corporate policies are THE WORST

After many years on autopay, this will be the last month I give ATT $50 prepaid for my single line phone plus $35 for a tablet dataconnect pass. 

SO MANY REASONS -- none of them related to my fellow human, mostly nice, ATT CS and Tech Support reps. They try so hard but are following scripts designed to end badly for customers. 

1) I am not going to pay ATT lots more $$ 8 gigs of data a month than new prepaid customers pay for unlimited data/ TV/media. 

2) ATT's prepaid ghetto: I get it, you want customers on the hook, so postpaid gets more features. But there is not now, nor has there ever been, a mechanism to convert a prepaid account to a postpaid account. I don't mean extra consideration in terms of who qualifies -- I mean any way at all, besides signing up like a completely new customer. ATT: If you want it, put a ring on it! . 

3) Clearly, not every employee can know about or service everything, but they should at least have an easy way of transferring customers to the correct person/department for help.

There are online only plans, such as the dataconnect pass, that can only be purchased through the buyasession website. There is NO customer support for them. No 800 #. No online help. Nothing.People in the stores don't know these accounts still exist and if you show them the site and plan on your phone, they can't help you (In fact, I helped a store guy buy a plan for his iPad!)

When you call regular phone support for Dataconnect, every person you get asks for a four digit code. Guess what? No four digit codes are issued for dataconnect.

I spent hours two days in a row with phone support getting transferred from one area to the next when dataconnect stopped connecting.  I was told my  request had been expedited and connectivity would be restored within 24 hours. In fact, I should have been told 24-to-48 hours -- not including weekend hours -- but in any event, no support was ever provided or even contact made a week later. Connectivity was never restored. No partial refund or any other reimbursement offered.

4) In January, apparently, prepaid subscribers could no longer use their four digit codes to login online. Ever heard of emails/texts to let us know? My CORRECT username and four digit prepaid password were rejected, stating info didn't match any account on record. Another opportunity to let me know your  security system had changed and I needed to phone home, but did you? Nope. After making several temp pw requests, and getting texted back messages without any type of password -- just the ATT weblink I couldn't access -- I dialed 611. 

5) The 611 rep did, in fact, send an actual temp password. Could I make my new password whatever secure combination of letters and digits I chose?. Nope. It must start with a capital letter and can't contain most punctuation marks and other special symbols except for a pre-approved few. Why should my password be less secure than it could be? Why, in every instance, is ATT  differently-abled? Just make things work! 

6) When I get access, and go into payment information, I get an error message stating payment options are not available at this time. 

I am not a fussy customer. All I wanted was a good signal at a competitive price and NOT TO BE SCREWED AROUND. I didn't expect a free knapsack or a taco. But where is the competent management to integrate many different wireless offerings in such a way that if a given ATT rep doesn't  know the details of a particular product or plan they could facilitate putting you in touch with the right person or department who would then ACTUALLY HELP YOU, instead of following a script intended only to placate.  

I couldn't even get ATT to release my tablet from dataconnect so I could fork out another $35 and buy a fresh dataconnect pass using a new sim. Because there was supposedly nothing wrong with the existing plan,  I couldn't buy a new one for the same device!

ATT CS knows all this and they're sorry for it. But ATT is actually worse than Comcast because they don't even have a retention department. No matter how much you may have been denied the services you paid for, ATT employees are helpless to offer any conciliation. 

So yeah, off I go to TMO, land of streaming binges and free knapsacks and cs workers who love their jobs because they're provided the tools and policies to perform them! 

The difference in signal strength used to be marked in my area, justifying my loyalty, but nowadays it is rarely -- and barely -- perceptible, whereas the upgrade in goods and services provided could not be more marked. .