Why in my right mind should I stay with AT&T?

AT&T has no loyalty, AT&T has no customer service, AT&T has no avenue to actually listen to, and handle complaints.  The customer loyalty representatives have no authority to make changes... Why in the world would anyone choose to stay here?  I have been a long time customer with AT&T since 2005, and it's not like this has been the first time we've had to deal with the poor people skills of its employees.  AT&T wireless service and DirecTV are nothing I've had an issue with as far as functionality. Everything is fine once you get things the way you want it, but good lord, if you have to make even the slightest changes... Good luck!  I hope you have several hours/days/weeks to spend in the store, online with chat services, or over the phone being transferred from rep to rep, or manager to manager!  Rant over.

The short story of it all:

I have a family plan with 3 lines on it.  I want to take advantage of the buy one, get one iPhone promotion. So I was going to buy an iPhone 8, and pay the small difference to get my wife an iPhone 8 Plus ($699 bill credit) with the promo.  Good lord almighty, that has to be one of the most complex things to do with AT&T.

In the store:

We went into a store and spent over 2 hours with a representative who was misinformed about nearly every question we had. It's not that she didn't know, its that we would ask a specific question and she would give a specific answer that was incorrect.  Thank the lord she brought over a co-worker after she needed some help, and come to find out almost everything she said was incorrect... She was a very nice girl and great at customer service, so that was nice, but she literally was untrained to handle a simple upgrade. Come on AT&T train your force!  So at that point, we were almost halfway through the upgrade process when we were like, no, let's not do this because all the terms we thought we were getting were wrong... After about another half an hour on the phone with customer service in the store, and a new SIM card later for my phone, we were reset back to the way we were before entering the store.  We had to leave out of spite with the poor salesmanship and complete lack of transparency...

Online the next day:

Same issues arose using the chat services to guide us through step by step.  But of course, we would hit roadblocks when trying to purchase the 2 new phones.  This occurred over the course of another 2-hour span which again was just trying to purchase 2 phones and add a line... There is no way this is so complex for every customer. By the time I selected the first phone and entered all of my wife's Verizon account information to pull over her phone number, it then gave errors for my line to pull over another number, when I was just simply trying to upgrade my device.  At that point, they said I would have to cancel and buy the two phones under two separate transactions and then figure out the adding of the promo afterward. So I canceled the order and had to step into a meeting, so I figured I'd try again when I got out.

Online a second time

After trying to explain the situation again and going through the process AGAIN... got to the point where I go to buy the first iPhone plus while pulling all of her Verizon info AGAIN, and when you add everything to your cart and hit continue, the next screen wants to send a verification to your mobile number for "security reasons". The hilarious catch is that it has a drop-down menu to select your number (not to enter one?) of where to send a mobile code to verify it's you, and the numbers to choose from are OTHER LINES UNDER MY PLAN. How in the world is the primary account holders number not the one and only option for verification? No other options, no email option.  Chat people try to assure you, but they're like sorry, you better call customer service.

Calling customer service with chat people still online:

The people can barely understand me and vice versa, you guys know the drill. I have to explain everything again from ground zero because there are no warm transfers with AT&T. All reps just want to answer and take the call and dump it to the next pot of calls to be answered.  Ultimately they get to the point where they say that they can't help me with the verification store and suggest I go into an AT&T store for assistance... thus, start everything back from the top and continue reading this painful review in a circular process.....

Trust me when I say that this is the "SHORT" version of the events.  Finally reached somebody on the phone from the AT&T loyalty department who seemed to care, but had to explain the situation again. Obviously, they apologized and said, "the last thing we want is a dissatisfied customer" which is laughable at this point because nobody has any authority to make a simple purchase, much less make sure we're satisfied...  I expressed a lot of disappointment with the company and leveled with the guy, but he couldn't do anything from the loyalty department perspective, and basically said he could transfer me over to the line to port my wife's Verizon number over.

Got transferred to her, and it was another rep who could care less to speak to us and wanted everything over again!

WOW. EXHAUSTING! I was done. I still am done. If any human who actually cares to help a customer sees this, please respond with a text/call/email or respond to this forum. Although By the time you read this, I'll probably already be happy with Verizon with all of my lines over there.  So long AT&T. I don't think you will be missed!

Good luck getting anybody to help you here either.