AT&T rewards that aren't rewarding

Who doesn't like a discount?   All things being equal, nobody in their right mind will say "no" to paying less.  True, some discounts require more work than others - like the ATT fiber broadband (FIOS) cashback that comes in the form of a debit VISA card.  Fiber is the most expensive residential broadband choice, but is worth it if you want any chance of being able to watch Netflix while both of your kids are streaming Youtube and Twitch. So, when the time came to sign up for fiber, between Xfinity and ATT I picked ATT because I fell for its tempting cashback offer.  I figured the process would be quick and straightforward, and the math checked out.  Done and done.

Less suck, Chapter 1

The fun started soon after.  The first hiccup was when one of the three cashback rewards didn't automatically register - I received email notifications only for two.  That's when I learned that there exists a whole AT&T Reward Center created solely to support cheap assholes like me in navigating their discount programs.  In all fairness, unlike similar programs maintained by other companies, this one turned out to have an actual phone number, staffed by actual humans.  Sucks that the program didn't work smoothly out of the gate, but big props for making it possible to quickly connect with someone to troubleshoot.  Within days, all three VISA debit cards arrived in the mail.  I activated them via the AT&T Reward Center site (which isn't great, but more on this later) and was off to the races.

Less suck, Chapter 2

I used the reward cards to make a few purchases.  Everything was great.  Until, that is, I decided to check the balance of the cards a couple of months later via the Center's website.  My "hey, how much do i have left?" was met with an impenetrable login experience.  No matter how many times I entered the valid - double- and triple-checked - card info and address, I would get the "it doesn't match our records" error message.  Luckily, my friends at the AT&T Reward Center came to the rescue (still completely blown away that these people actually exist, answer the phone, and are helpful!).  A very professional and patient customer associate let me in on a secret: turns out that somehow their systems, completely unbeknownst to customers, have been appending the 4-digit zip code extension to the accounts. Not only customers had no idea, but the Center's website doesn't even provide a way for customers to type in all these extra digits.  That's one sure way to guarantee customer frustration and a call to the support number.  Long story short, courtesy of the Center team, the offending 4 digits were purged from my account, and I was able to access my balance information.  Mission accomplished.

Less suck, Chapter 3

Since I had three - yes, three - separate cards (which, in retrospect, made me regret my decision to succumb to the cashback temptation), I figured there would be a way to access and manage them all at once.  After all, they were all issued to the same person (me), via the same transaction.  I looked around on the Reward Center website, and was excited to discover what looked like a login form - although in a very odd place, below a number of unnecessarily oversized icons, and available only on that one page.  The strange, almost hidden, placement aside, it still held a promise of easy access via a single login.

Wait, do I have a login?  A quick check of my email didn't yield any notifications.  That's OK, many services auto-generate logins, but you have to request a username or password reminder: not the best experience, but nonetheless a somewhat familiar pattern.  When I went through the "Forgot username" form, using each of the three cards in a row, I got the error "No email address on file. Please contact Customer Service at to receive your Username" every single time:

Apparently, this wasn't a self-service feature and required reaching out to the Center, which is a pain.  I did end up reaching out to them - who by now were effectively my second family.  At this point, my expectations were low.  And sure enough: the ever friendly and professional agent informed me that the login would allow me to manage only one card at a time, meaning that I would need three separate logins, one for each card.  If true, this would make the login pretty useless.

Less suck, Chapter 4

But wait, as they say in late-night informercials, that's not all!  The final, and, arguably, the most exciting adventure still awaited.  And precisely because it was so exciting, it deserves it's own separate post.

Product manager's thoughts

In hindsight, had I known about these Rewards challenges, I would probably not have selected AT&T fiber. Too rough around the edges, too much extra time required to sort out all the issues with the rewards. In addition to the ones listed above, Chapter 4 describes yet another, an even more egregious problem.

In my experience, operations such as rewards management are rarely well designed or funded. Unless they are outsourced to a dedicated business specialized in this type of work, they are not the company's core competency or focus - meaning that AT&T is in the business of managing broadband, not rewards. As a product manager, I get that organizations must be focused on their core business, and when resources are limited (which is almost always the case), other peripheral services like rewards management are less of a priority. And if the existing non-core operations work well enough, i.e., the number of issues and/or customers impacted is relatively small, it may be acceptable to the business.

Is it? I don't have access to AT&T's data on the scale and scope of the Reward Center issues. Judging by my own experience, however, I suspect that they might be non-trivial, both in terms of direct call center costs as well as risks to customer retention. All in all, the unfortunate consequence of this approach is that the customers lose, time is wasted, and the experience is tarnished.

More awesome

There are obvious things that the Reward Center can do better:

• make sure all rewards applied during the customer signup are automatically registered. This has got to be a systems / software issue... Unless ATT has staff manually copying information from the signup system to the reward system (amazingly, even in 2023 this kind of ugly workaround known as "swivel chair integration", is a possibility. I myself have not only observed this numerous times in real life, but also on occasion had to use in my own work... needless to say, it's highly vulnerable to human error)
• core features must work and there should be no surprises, period. The point of the website is to let customers manage their cards. But if the customers are completely blocked because they have no idea that additional four digits were magically appended to the zipcode, and the user interface (forms, fields, buttons) doesn't match the data behind the scenes (as in, you can even type in a zip+4 value!), the site catastrophically fails at its main objective
• finally, if you offer a user login (which is, arguably, pretty standard in 2023), for heaven's sake, please make sure it's self-administered and doesn't require calling customer service to use, and allows managing all of your stuff - rather than having a separate login for each card, which is simply insane