"We are installing, hopefully, a new service," the reader wrote. "It is a new full T3 carrier system that will replace our existing technology and give us a nice bump in performance to remote sites. However, AT&T has so many people involved that no two of them have a clue what is going on."

The reader started getting mixed signals from AT&T early on in the project. "Early in the planning stages I asked for details and was given generalities. As the project progressed, I asked my leadership the same questions when I was directed to order the hardware for our side of the new circuits. My concerns were 'on the table' and 'to be discussed' at the next meeting/conference call. Skip ahead to two weeks before the first circuit is to be turned up. I nearly had a heart attack as I envisioned $30,000 worth of improperly optioned routers when the AT&T documents stated the previously identified frame relay circuits were to be ATM. A few panicked e-mails and phone calls later I'm assured it is frame relay."

"So now jump ahead to yesterday -- test and turn up day for the first T3 port," the reader continued. "I dialed the appropriate number for the conference bridge and sit on hold as the first participant. I sat on hold for 15 minutes until the bridge dumped me for being the only participant without a chairman ever joining the call. Doesn't a T3 get any respect these days? Later that same day we were going to test and turn up another port. It was documented as a T1 frame relay port. After sitting on hold for 20 minutes waiting for a tech -- since T1s are first come, first served status -- I finally got a tech who couldn't access the system. He kept calling back periodically to update me. Finally, at almost 5 PM, they call to tell me that the circuit should be up but it isn't showing the protocol active. We start going over parameters and guess what? It isn't frame relay after all. It, too, is PPP -- even after the many, many times I've requested confirmation on all aspects of this project."

A few days after that disaster, the reader took stock of where the project was. "Part of the new service is up. It is an MPLS network so each node represents another point of meshed connectivity. I currently have three nodes of 16 turned up. I've have VPs and every one of the dozen order handlers, techs, account managers, account specialists, high speed account specialist calling to apologize for the problems but they seem unable to correct most of it."

Getting everybody on the same page when dealing with big vendors seems to be getting harder and harder to do. "AT&T let us down three times that day if you count a cut to a new circuit that didn't go so well on a completely different project," the reader wrote. "But it's not just AT&T. IBM contractors are giving me the same types of headaches -- six people on a conference call and none of them actually DO anything. They are all project managers that don't really get it."

Have you run into a big vendor who doesn't get how to communicate with its customers? Tell us about it -- post your comments below or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.