[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] mty msi:
This morning AT&T Tech Support called me and stated the intermittent inability to receive calls was a random issue with their 4G/LTE network in every area of the country they have it for every 4G/LTE phone they sell, not just the S3 as the Costco kiosk manager had told me. The AT&T Tech Support person further stated this has been a known issue since 1-09-13 and was due to the Lucite (not sure of spelling) switches they use in their 4G/LTE network. Further, AT&T and Lucite engineers had tried several methods to resolve this issue but have not yet finalized what the resolution will be or what date it will be.

She stated the reason she was calling was to tell me a case should not have been opened for my phone because it was a known issue. When I questioned her as to why after my numerous calls to Tech Support no one had informed of this she said it was because all of the Tech Support people I had spoken with were not fully utilizing their resources.

Most unfortunately that call came 15 hours after I got the LG Optimus G. Last night I was so dissapointed with the Optimus in comparison to my S3 I was furious AT&T had put me in such a position. After I got that call this morning I called the Costco kiosk and got a new S3 this afternoon. But now I'll spend at least 4 hours updating to 4.1.1 and reinstalling all my business apps (having to go through all those settings is a PITA), my MS exchange, Google & Yahoo emails, homescreens, ringtones etc.

Supposedly the work around is to disable the 4G/LTE which has been done to my new S3 until AT&T resolves their network issue. I can't comment on your text issue because I don't text that frequently. I did receive texts with my old S3 after the intermittent unable to receive phone calls issue started with it last week and I also received emails on all 3 accounts so I don't believe I had any data issues. I'm uncertain how SMS text relates to 4G/LTE as far as AT&T's network issue.

One of the Tech Support people that I had spoken with 3 times previously because she called me back twice called me again today when I was at the Costco kiosk picking up the new S3 and I told her about the call I had received this morning and asked her to call me back in a couple of hours. When she did she stated she had researched everything available to her and found nothing about this known issue but when she spoke to her manager about it the manager was aware of the issue. So, after speaking with 8-10 different Tech Support people over the course of a week I can only conclude AT&T management deliberately withheld this info from the frontline people you and I would speak with.

At this point I wanted monetary compensation for all the time I'd spent talking to Tech Support, going to Costco twice to get new phones and having to setup new phones. On a sidebar, I spent four hours last night including one hour with LG Tech Support trying to set up my MS Exchange email and was unable to do it because the Optimus G's native MS Exchange mail app does not allow the choice of a TLS certificate so LG Tech Support was trying to set it up through K-9 and wanted me to call back this morning when their specialists would be available. I went to bed last night thinking to myself WTF, an allegedly high end phone that you can't setup MS Exchange email on???

Moneywise the first offer from the Tech Support person was to pay for the month's bill and after talking to her supervisor it was raised to two months. She stated that was the maximum they could offer and to possibly obtain more I needed to speak with Billing. After transferring me to Billing the first individual I spoke with refused to increase the amount which did not make me a happy camper so I demanded to speak with his supervisor who doubled Tech Support's offer. Still, for me, that pales in comparison to the 30 hours or so I've spent/will spend because the frontline Tech Support people could not address the issue. Had I been told last Friday morning what the problem was I could have either deactivated the 4G/LTE in my original S3 or reactivated my 3G Captivate and the problem would have been resolved. Instead, it brought my business to a halt, infuriated some of my clients because they could not reach me and caused me to waste a week trying to have the ability for people to call me. And who knows how many potential clients I may never hear from?

I will say the Billing supervisor I spoke with documented everything I told him and said he intended to rectify how AT&T's Tech Support is handling this known issue. He completely agreed with me that it was absolutely ridiculous for me to have to spend so much time resolving this issue. For the first time in the numerous calls I've had to make to both AT&T Wireless and UVerse over the years I felt I was actually speaking with someone that could and would make a difference.

I'm still PO'ed about having to setup the new S3 when I had one that was setup perfectly for my needs and the 6 hours I wasted yesterday picking up the LG and trying to set up the MS Exchange email.

I have a virtual PBX/efax service I purchased two weeks ago that I pointed at my cellphone and what this debacle did teach me was to point it at my landline as well. I couldn't be sure until I got the AT&T Tech Support call this morning that it wasn't causing the unable to dial through to me problem so I haven't fully set it up yet and that costs money that's been wasted too.

Shame on AT&T for not properly addressing a known issue with their customers. Is it any wonder why they consistently rank last in customer satisfaction surveys?