AT&T Brand A Little Muddy? Ya Think!?

Watching what has been happening to AT&T has been like watching a mob beat a dead horse, only the horse never cared in the first place. Sporadic outages nationwide, voicemail being delayed weeks and no support for MMS or tethering…still!  AT&T’s brand is driven through the mud on Twitter on an hourly basis.  The disturbing part to me is they just don’t care.  Take 5 minutes and check out the hashtag #attfail on Twitter.  All the negative tweets, explicit blog posts and constant complaints really isn’t making a dent.   That begs the question, why not?

AT&T really isn’t too concerned because they are raking in cash by the truck loads off their exclusive contract with Apple.  Between increasing text message costs (that you must have on the iPhone) and those annoying voicemail instructions with an ever increasing customer base, they are sitting pretty.  How pretty?

AT&T said itself the exclusive contract won’t last forever.  Do they plan on doing damage control for their brand once people don’t care because they can get the iPhone elsewhere?  It doesn’t make sense!  Maybe they will just wave a shiny new toy in our face to keep us happy for awhile. $99 8gb iPhone 3GS anyone?

I guess AT&T is happy getting fat and rich for the time being and letting their brand be bashed into oblivion.  Here is a tip AT&T, making the upgrade  to the new 3GS after you ripped so many customers is not going to help you, your network still sucks and that is the real problem. Customers often will forget their mistreatment if you wave a new shiny toy in front of them and run a few commercials.  This customer however, will not!

A little off topic but very important!  David Pogue, a columnist for the NY Times has been leading a ground swell against wireless providers who put on those ridiculous voicemail instructions (To page this person, press 3.  Please leave your message and hang up when finished).  Those 15 seconds are earning wireless companies millions of dollars at their customers expense.  Please read his blog here and contact your provider!