A 90-year-old California man frustrated by his slow-moving AT&T Internet service pulled out two $ 10,000 newspaper ads to tell the company’s CEO that he needed to work better around his North Hollywood neighborhood to provide faster.
Aaron M. Epstein said that he has been an AT&T customer since 1960 and that he only had problems with his internet speed in the last five years when internet streaming was widely available.
He said he paid for 3.5 Mbps but it could not handle the streaming.
“When I would watch a movie on Netflix or another streaming service, it was like a slideshow. It would start and stop, start and stop, very frustrating,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.
Epstein said he was starting to call the company to ask for faster service, but he was told it was not available in his area.
Epstein said he did not want to switch to another ISP because he was concerned about his phone number and email address, so he decided to take out two ads in The Wall Street Journal to vent his frustration.
A spokesman for The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the ads appeared in the 3rd issue of the newspaper; one in New York and the other in Texas where AT&T is headquartered in Dallas. The spokesman declined to comment on how much Epstein paid for the ads.
Epstein called the ads “Open Letter to Mr. John T. Stankey, CEO of AT&T.”
“Many of our neighbors are the creative technical workers in the Universal, Warner Brothers, Disney studios in the neighboring city of Burbank and our city. We need to keep up with current technology and have looked to AT&T to deliver our fast internet service. , ‘it reads.
“Although AT&T advertises with 100 MBS for other neighborhoods, the fastest available for ATT is only 3 MBS. Your competitors now have more than 200 MBS. Why is AT&T a leading communications company that treats us like that? Shabbily in North Hollywood?”
The day the ads appeared, Epstein said he received a call from Stankey’s office asking him how they could resolve the situation. Earlier this week, he got a surprise: two AT&T technicians who arrived at his home to set up a faster internet speed.
“It’s definitely a lot faster and that’s all I expect from it,” he said of his new service.
Epstein said some people praised him for what he did, while others criticized him for the hefty price for the ads.
“I’m not a light-hearted money-spender and $ 10,000 means a lot to me, but in this particular case it was money well spent,” he said, explaining that he and his wife spent time during the coronavirus pandemic by stream TV shows and movies.
“People do not go to expensive restaurants. People do not go on vacation. My wife and I are at home watching more Netflix and streaming services. So I have no complaints about spending this kind of money,” he said.
Epstein said he received a call from Stankey and he thanked the CEO for the upgraded service. He also demanded that his neighbors get faster internet speed.
An AT&T spokesman said on Friday that the company had completed its planned expansion of AT&T Fiber, a faster Internet speed, in Epstein’s area.
“This neighborhood was already planned to receive fiber and is part of our continued expansion of fiber in the greater Los Angeles area. Nationally, we recently announced that we will bring AT&T Fiber to an additional 2 million residences this year,” he said. the spokesman said.
