"Cry about it!", says AT&T agent to a frustrated customer who just seeks help

AT&T, much like T-Mobile and Verizon, tries its best to appease customers. That's not always easy and it's not always the case that the company's representatives succeed. Every so often, the user is simply too frustrated, too antagonistic and there's not much a rep can do or say to calm down the situation.

But what a telco agent should never do is take it all out on the customer. But that's precisely what happened in an AT&T live chat session recently, when Ma Bell's representative told the user, who was merely asking for assistance, to "CRY ABOUT IT". Yes, in a caps lock.

Laughing about it

Nanovirus27 (that's the original poster's nickname) tells a funny story about an extremely frustrating experience when trying to contact AT&T customer support. Calling the company meant facing a 4–6-hour wait, while online support simply redirected them to the same phone line.

When the customer expressed frustration (and rightly so) and questioned whether anyone would actually help, an agent reportedly told them to "cry about it"… but then immediately apologized. Things got even worse when the customer asked to speak with a supervisor and the agent abruptly ended the chat.

The user later clarified they had also exhausted all available self-service options, eventually reaching a page that essentially told them AT&T couldn't help. Since they aren't even a current AT&T customer, resolving the problem themselves proved particularly difficult. AT&T has since reached out, although there haven't been any significant developments.

A classic

There are almost 250 comments in the thread we've just talked about. And dozens of those admit something you were probably already thinking about: telling users to essentially buzz off is a widespread practice. The only difference is that there are internal chats where such discussions take place and employees vent their frustrations (they're human as well).

The problem is when somebody messes things up and posts in the wrong chat.

It's not just AT&T, though

It's almost all other big companies that are prone to such mistakes. Many people have had frustrating experiences with live agents or representatives from T-Mobile and Verizon, too.



This user, for example, tells the story of a really incompetent representative who was vague and seemed more interested in getting the user to refer friends than making sure their account was secure. After the call, the user submitted a negative customer service survey, explaining that the agent seemed more focused on following a script than actually helping. Just five minutes later, another T-Mobile employee reportedly called and left an aggressive voicemail berating them for giving negative feedback.

The audacity!

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