we must have a high pain threshold

The pain isn’t enough to make the switch

About every week someone calls us “on behalf of AT&T” to try to give us a better deal. We just hang up on them.

Why? Because it’s painful.

They’re third party resellers, and their “deals” are almost as confusing as the those from AT&T. Why AT&T seems to be actively supporting them, I have no idea. 

Getting an answer from AT&T is mostly impossible, even when you have a question on a bill. Their phones go into an automated system that limits your options. Calls are transferred from one division to another, and answers seem to be different with each person. What should take minutes ends up taking hours, and you often hang up still feeling frustrated. Recently, I went to their website, where (of course) they keep pushing phone numbers to call. Since I didn’t have several hours to kill, I kept digging until I found an email link. I clicked it, and it gave me another phone number to call.

But we must have a high pain threshold, because we’re still an AT&T customer. In fact, we have used AT&T service for several years. Why? Because the service is everywhere, and for the most part it works. There are other options, but it would take a lot of work to pull it together.

In simpler terms, the pain isn’t enough to make the switch.

Big banks have a lot in common with big corporations like AT&T.

They may be hard to penetrate when you have a problem or need an answer to your question, but they are everywhere, and their products basically work. The best long-term strategy for Credit Unions may be to focus on turning their members into prime referral sources.

For when their friends decide they have had enough pain.

Kent Dicken
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