Want to get att internet but owe from old account

As this is primarily a customer-to-customer forum, obviously none of us can answer that.  I'm afraid you'll need to call the 800-288-2020 and waste hours of your life on hold and then explaining the situation (hopefully only once) so that Billing can try and find a solution.

@xyz111 you are now spamming the board with your opinion and in topics that have nothing to do with the storm outage. Your post in this topic will be removed. 

I apologize.  What I meant was that if a potential customer is contemplating dealing with AT&T customer service, it might be in their best interest to look through feedback from current customers.  Reading through this forum on all topics would be a good way to determine whether AT&T is the best choice.  I personally have not been able to find many positive posts on any topic on this forum.  As someone named "spoom2" commented:  "I'm not saying customer service isn't bad. If you'll read some of the many posts on this everyone feels the same."  

If you read topics and post for Verizon, Spectrum, Charter or any other provider you're going to find the same thing. Customer service as we used to know it is dead. So now let's leave this topic to the OP and their specific issue. 

Agreed.  However, I have dealt with Verizon and Comcast in the past - not great experiences, but nothing close to as bad as the agents with AT&T.  The agent I spoke with this morning actually told me to hang up the phone, so I would not be able to take the phone survey.  Everyone on this forum has been sympathetic and has tried to be helpful to one another - and it is mind-boggling that so many customers have spoken to so many different agents on so many different topics, and we have all received such ridiculous responses from AT&T.  I wish I had known this prior to signing up with AT&T.