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ATT.net Can Not Restore Access to 93 year old Mothers' Email Account

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ATT.net Can Not Restore Access to 93 year old Mothers' Email Account

My Mother is 93 and I am 71. I help my Mother out with technology challenges and she recently informed me that she could no longer access her att.net email account. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on email and other technology so I thought it would be easy to solve her problem. Especially since we would be dealing with a leading company in the telecommunications field like ATT, and the email was working fine until recently.

 

I got ATT customer service on the phone with my Mother on another line to get it sorted out. To make a long story short, due to some vaguely explained absence of some account details, we got the following message when we were walked through the access recovery process.

Hmmโ€ฆ we canโ€™t reset your password

We donโ€™t have the account details needed to complete your request.

 

The problem was escalated up the support ladder and the final determination was that there was no way that the email account could be recovered. My sister attempted a separate independent effort that resulted in the same result; however, one of the higher level support agents she spoke to confided that ATT was getting a lot of the same complaints from other customers.

 

The solution is apparently to change the email address. Why on earth would anyone go through this and keep their business with ATT with no guarantees that it would not happen again?   All of your email history and addresses are gone and one of the largest telecoms in the world cannot get them back.

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Periodic Contributor

After some 25+ years with AT&T landline and their "legacy" DSL (6 Mbps down / ~384 Kbps) my wife and I ended our relationship with them. They had no foreseeable plans to upgrade internet in our area (seemingly refusing to fight Cox's monopoly in our area) and charged a ridiculous amount per month for reliable but slow service.

 

You can look into filing a complaint FWIW on the FCC website here. By law they're required to respond by reaching out to you directly and that might be an opportunity for you to negotiate for some compensation for the trouble you went through, whether updated equipment or discounts or whatever, hopefully something tangible to make up for their poor service.

 

Despite things in Florida like hurricanes and Cox subcontractors chopping through their customers' DSL lines "by accident" with a shovel (which has happened to us twice over the years), their CWA union technicians and landline service have been very dependable. However, now that T-Mobile 5G internet (with absolutely amazing data transfer speeds in comparison) has become available, we've moved on from them.

 

We really like our cordless VTech branded landline phone so we opted to sign up with Ooma and use their Teloair 2 device. Basically it acts as sort of an adapter to retrofit a landline phone into a voice over IP (VOIP) type one that can be used over an internet connection like T-Mobile 5G rather than copper Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) landline, and their basic plan has you only pay for the device itself (a bit over $100) and then only for government mandated taxes and fees.

 

Ooma has a "premium" plan that offers some advanced call blocking, caller ID, and other services landline users are familiar with, only thing is it's an all-or-nothing, like you can't pick and choose to only enable say call blocking. Still that plan is only around $10/month, still far cheaper than at the time AT&T's about $64/month landline service. 

 

Years ago in my area AT&T shuttered their large corporate office, a pattern that repeated elsewhere in the nation; nowadays they have a central corporate presence I think somewhere in Texas and while they seem to have technicians locally their focus nowadays seems more toward the cellphone market. Like last I heard we were only one of two (2) total AT&T DSL customers in our neighborhood, the rest using Cox or possibly satellite for internet. Pretty clear they decided to give up on advancing services and offering better options, and now that we're beyond it things have been great so far with T-Mobile. 

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1 comment (@bk9614 SAID - one of the higher level support agents she spoke to confided that ATT was getting a lot of the same complaints from other customers)

๐Ÿ‘‰(12/24/22) @GailL1 , sounds kind of "fishy" to me that there are other complaints. Nicole ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ‘ˆ

 

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Honored Social Butterfly

Might be some more info here - 

ATT.com FORUM - Email problems - Community forum

 

 

It's Always Something . . . . Roseanna Roseannadanna
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Honored Social Butterfly

@bk9614 

If you or your Mom have forgotten or lost her correct info on password or sometimes username, it is hard to get it back because of security issues.  She could have some security questions that she picked to which she should have the answers (or you) - donโ€™t know the answer to her picked questions and it maybe difficult to get her sign in info.

 

Thatโ€™s what it sounds like to me when you posted:

To make a long story short, due to some vaguely explained absence of some account details, we got the following message when we were walked through the access recovery process.

Hmmโ€ฆ we canโ€™t reset your password

We donโ€™t have the account details needed to complete your request.

 

 

It's Always Something . . . . Roseanna Roseannadanna
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It seems ATT cannot identify the details that are missing! So you are just stuck with no recourse.

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