Gruntled Customer

While I was in Scotland, I had data roaming turned off on my phone so as not to join the huddled masses who get back from a trip abroad with ridiculously high phone bills (thanks huddled masses for taking one for the team and showing us that data roaming is bad!). I was little withdrawn when there was no wi-fi around, but mostly ok.

Except for VoiceMail. No data means no Visual VoiceMail®. Fine, I can live with that, Apple thoughtfully put a "Call VoiceMail" button right in the middle of the VoiceMail dialog. Sadly, it didn't work. When I had a VoiceMail message, I pressed the button and nothing happened. I ended up calling my own number, etc to get my messages (no, pressing/holding "1" didn't work - I tried that too).

Today I got around to calling AT&T to complain for support. Not surprisingly, it was a waste of time (initially). The call went like this:

Me: I had data roaming off so that I wouldn't get charged, but the "Call VoiceMail" button didn't retrieve messages
AT&T Guy: With data roaming off you can't use Visual VoiceMail
Me: I know, but the "Call VoiceMail" button should have worked, right?
AT&T Guy: Does it work now?
Me: I don't know, I'm not in Scotland anymore
AT&T Guy: You need to take it up with Apple, it's a problem with the phone
Me: Thanks

And so I called Apple. Their phone menu asked a bunch of questions, the last of which was "are you having problems with VoiceMail?" - I thought "score, everyone has problems, they have a team dedicated to helping us!" I answered "yes" with just a hint of excitement in my voice. The system responded by telling me that it was an AT&T problem and transfered me back to them.

I think not. I hung up, and called Apple back, and lied to their phone menu (but I had my fingers crossed when I did it) and said I was having a technical problem. I rationalized it internally, telling myself that I was calling because the "Call VoiceMail" button was broken, not VoiceMail, strictly speaking.

A nice guy came on the phone, and after I explained the problem, he asked me to press and hold the "1" key to see if that tranfered me to my VoiceMail. I did, it didn't. Then we debated whether we heard one or two tones. I said there was one, as the customer I was right (though really it was two - the "DT" in DTMF means dual-tone - sorry Apple guy).

Since the "1" key trick didn't work, he said "it's an AT&T problem" and offered to transfer me to them. I explained nicely that I had just spoken to them, and they sent me to him, and if I was going to end up in the middle of them pointing fingers at each other, I would just live without the "1" key and find some very public place to post my experiences. I might've also mentioned that I knew Steve Jobs. Does seeing him shopping at Whole Foods count as knowing him?

Rather than send me to AT&T on my own, he offered to conference them in and go through things with them (i.e. he knew what was wrong with their system and could help them fix it). And that's exactly what he did - we sat on hold for ten minutes or so waiting for someone from AT&T to come on, look at my phone's settings on their end, say "it looks fine, wait, no, let me tweak this" and magically my "1" button now calls my VoiceMail.

And that's why I'm a gruntled customer rather than my usual disgruntled customer. Because some random guy at Apple wasn't sure whether I really knew Steve Jobs or not went out of his way to help me fix my problem even though it wasn't actually his problem to help fixing.

(by show of hands, how many people knew that 'gruntled' was a word?)