They claim to have greatly increased their staff since the debacle of
last fall. Perhaps they aren't fully trained.

I too had great service until I was routed to India to the warrantee
exchange department. April 12 I called to get an exchange for my 2 week old
phone that was defective, and I was given the number to the warrantee
department. After speaking to "Penelope" for over 1/2 hour...they can't
deviate from the script, I was told that they will ship a replacement phone
with a return ship label for my defective phone. Generally when I order a
phone from ATTW I have it the next day. Friday comes, and still no phone,
but I did get the return ship label. I called them again, and the next
Indian, "Sue"  I believe, tells me that the phone had shipped, and I should
receive it the next business day. I ask for a tracking number, and she gives
me one. The number didn't seem like a fedex number to me, but since I wasn't
near a computer I couldn't check. I was right...checking with fedex later,
it was an invalid number. It turns out that the outsourced employee gave me
my original order number! What a moron.

So finally, on the following wednesday (yesterday) I call them again, and I
get the sincere pleasure of talking to Penelope again. She tells me that I
needed to send my defective phone back with the label they provided, then
they would ship the new phone! I was livid! It was *SHE* that told me more
than a week before that they would ship the new phone with the label, and
charge me for the new phone. Once they received my old phone, the amount
would be credited to my account "in 2 billing cycles." She went into the
same script reading again, and I said, "within two billing cycles" right
along with her! I asked her how I would know that if I hadn't heard it
before. I was screaming mad at this point.

So...she asks me to hold the line "for not more than 90 seconds" while she
transfers me to another rep. This time I'm connected to a nice gal (that
someone downthread calls white trash), obviously in the US, and I explain my
situation to her. She apologized, fixed the problem, and said the phone
would ship immediately, and I'd get it within 24-48 hours. I received the
phone within 18 hours of talking to her. Now *that's* service.

Sorry for the long post, but I had to vent. I'm really upset about this
outsourcing stuff.

--Mike