Handling Mistakes w/ ISP Billing? 29
michael asks: "I am having a problem getting AT&T to find a cheque that I sent in.
According to my bank statement it was cashed on April 12 of this
year but it did not get applied to my account. I have been dealing
with AT&T about this since then and they have finally cancelled my
@Home service. I have faxed in copies of my bank statement and my
cheque. I have phoned, e-mailed, mailed, faxed many times over the
past four months trying to get this resolved. Only once have I
been contacted by a person since this issue began. They requested
the copy of the cheque - I had my bank fax a copy of the cheque to
them and to me. Almost all other communication has been one way.
I contact them, they leave me hanging. I get the occasional computer
generated bill saying that I own them money, but that is all.
What are my options here? Do I have any?" Sounds to me like all of the right steps were taken here. What else could Mike have done in this situation? Why is it, that in today's info-culture that things like this can still get lost between the cracks (and this problem is not solely limited to AT&T, either)?
Re:Real People (Score:1)
My best experiences have been with small local banks. My worst with large banks. I imagine that it all comes down to who got lucky and avoided hiring the hopelessly incompetent.
Re:ATT@home is the WORST! (Score:1)
Like most people (I assume), I take more notice of the bills that I receive and tend to not pay attention to those I don't.
Well, for about a 6 month period, ATT@home stopped billing me!
When I finally noticed, I called them up to inform them of the error. I really didn't want THEM to notice and bill me for all the back service (I had an ISP do that to me once).
I explained that I had just noticed that they hadn't billed me
The C/S rep talked to a supervisor, came back about 1 minute later, and said they would correct the billing error
I'm not a huge fan of ATT@home (really want DSL), but I have to admit
Funny thing too
david
After contacting provider go straight to the law (Score:1)
I did finally get to speak with a supervisor, then a manager, etc. and finally got tired of hearing that "it takes 2 weeks" from every single person, no matter how long it had been since the last drone told me the same thing.
In my case, they said that my deposit could not be sent until my final bill was paid, but they could not generate a final bill for some reason so I would have to wait until they fixed their "complex software problem". Sending the deposit and then sending a bill later was "impossible".
Finally, I contacted the Attourney's General office in Richmond, VA (the phone in question was in VA) and my deposit was FedExed to Tennessee immediately in TN. I have no idea where the final bill went or if they have ever figured it up.
This was about 2 years ago I think.
Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]
Re:Sue *them* (Score:1)
You probably can't actually do this. Most likely your service contract specified the court in which any disputes under the service contract would be resolved. It is likely a court in DE, since big companies seem to prefer to do business in that state, it has good tax laws or something like that. Just be sure to have a good read over your contract before filing suit, if they had any sense at all they specified a means for resolving conflicts in the contract and it's probably the one that's convenient for their legal department and not the one that's convenient for you.
________________
They're - They are
Their - Belonging to them
Re:Avoiding the problem to start with... (Score:1)
Precisely. I fell out of this habit for a while and ran into a nightmare with an ISP that "forgot" to bill every month, and then would bill for 3-4 months at a time. And they won't accept checks unless you pay a 10% service charge. I have a low limit credit card that I use for the internet, so I'm not as worried about my number being scammed. But it's low enough that if I ever charged a bit of stuff right before the ISP whacked me with a four month debit, they wouldn't get authorization...
Then about a week later, I'd get my access cut off without warning until I called and complained about it. Their standard response was "didn't you get the monthly email reminder about your payment? Didn't you get the warning email that your access was being cut off?" At which point I would have to tell them I'd never gotten one of these reminder emails... and if I lost access to my account, I couldn't read their warning...
But they never changed the way they did billing, and they never sent the "reminder" email... just continued to lump bills together and then cut you off if you missed a mass payment. Needless to say, I found another ISP very quickly, one that takes checks and has a reliable billing department.
ATT@home is the WORST! (Score:1)
4 months later, I move in with a friend into a new house, and have my phone number follow me. He signs up for internet service with ATT since they are having a free install special.
ATT does not bill him, they bill me. They also bill me $100 for install. After calls every month (when I get the credit card bill, I call them), and get assured "OK, we've fixed the problem now.", I begin to get annoyed.
After the 4th one of these, they sort of get it right--They bill him. But they keep billing me too! 8 months of BOTH of us getting billed for the same account!
I still haven't gotten it straightened out. They acknowledge that they owe me like $500, but I have yet to see it. I am so far beyond pissed, it's not funny. So, I haven't signed up for cable, internet, or long distance at my new place. I will not pay ATT one nickel until the mess gets straightened out.
I recommend to ANYONE out there using ATT@home: don't give them your credit card number. EVER! Have them bill you monthly. Otherwise they will screw you again and again.
--
Dave
Re:AT&T nightmares (Score:1)
*Someone* has to pay for airtime minutes, right? If Australia's system is similar to that which is almost universal in Europe, then the person who calls your cell phone pays a large per-minute charge (over and above what it would cost to call a regular phone) for the privilege.
I can certainly see some situations in which that might be preferable to cell phone users, and some in which it might not. (For instance, if you used your cell phone for business purposes, you might not want your customers to have to pay extra to reach you... then again, you might want them to think twice before calling your cell phone instead of the main office -- it really depends.)
In my particular case, I was quite happy to pay (once, at least!) for those incoming calls: they were virtually all calls from my fiancee, so it wouldn't really matter whether she or I paid -- it's our money either way. AT&T's One Rate service is actually very convenient for us: since my account is New York based, I get a local New York number. (Note that landline phone users generally do not pay, in the US, for calls to local numbers.) When my fiancee calls the NY number, my phone rings in Los Angeles, or wherever else I happen to be. The minutes come off my cell account whether I called her or she called me, but that's the only cost, since it's a local call for her. As for the couple hundred minutes each month that result from other people calling me, for the most part, I can write those off as business expenses
It's sort of an accident of history that the calling-party-pays system wasn't used here, by the way. From the early days of mobile telephony, mobile phone numbers have always been effectively indistinguishable in form from regular, landline numbers. Since US residents are used to paying no per-minute charges for local calls, and there was no way to distinguish mobile numbers from landline numbers in the same area code, a calling-party-pays system would have led to some nasty surprises and thus wasn't permitted.
All in all, I prefer (for my particular purposes, at this particular time) the "cell phone user pays" system common in the US to the "caller pays" system common elsewhere. I certainly don't see that one is inherently superior to the other. The best thing, IMHO, would be for companies to offer both alternatives (perhaps even on a single account): a regular number, with a normal local area code, to which the cell user pays for incoming calls, and a number, with a distinct distinguished area code (similar to the 900 prefix used for -- mostly disreputable -- pay services here) for calling-party-pays calls. I think this has been done, on a limited scale, in some areas here, but it hasn't really caught on so far as I know.
Re:AT&T nightmares (Score:1)
And then expiring the minutes you've paid (dearly) for in advance is inexcusable.
I'm sure that their customer base is almost entirely composed of people with bad credit records who are desperate for cell service, which is why they can get away with the ripoff. It's a pity -- I'd love a straightforward service, whether prepaid or billed, where I pay *a reasonable rate* for only the number of minutes I use. But cell companies are making money hand over fist with the present setup and I don't see anything compelling them to stop. (Nor, honestly, do I really think legislative intervention is a good idea here. One hopes that eventually, as network development costs are amortized and the cost of providing service decreases, companies will compete on better prices and more favorable contracts and eventually things will get better. As long as the market doesn't develop into a monopoly.)
credit cards (Score:1)
This only applies to real credit cards, generally involving a Visa, MC, Disc or Amex logo, and certainly NOT involving giving away a PIN. It does include bankcards used WITHOUT the PIN.
By US law, the Credit Card company is required to refund your money if purchases you made are not acceptable (i.e. if you bought something and it was broken, you were charged without your consent OR you paid for a service which was not delivered) AND you have tried in good faith to get it fixed. So you can deny the charge on your credit card (up to I think 60 days afterward)
I live and die by my Discover Card for this reason (and the 1% back) Everything you do is protected. You have a total recourse. It is possible for them to recharge your card, then you re-remove the new charge. (Paypal makes a point of doing this infinitely, which circumvents this protection. Read those agreements!) In fact, the only recourse THEY have is to sue you, which doesn't involve your card number at all. This protection is on all credit cards BY LAW. I personally recommend Discover, like I said, because THEIR customer service has always been very good to me about this, and it has happened.
This happens when.... (Score:1)
When these things happen, it's usually becuase the company in question does NOT use a "real" massbilling software, in which case a lot of intresting things can happen.
In my case I got an abscenely large bill from my electrical company, but no-one could tell me why I suddenly had to pay in advance for three months the amount that I usually pay in two years. So I never paied the bill. They STILL haven't come collecting, because they have no software telling them that this account was not credited with the obscene amount of money, but only the "regular" amount of money.
Now I'm not saying what I did was the right thing to do. I'm just saying that I exploited a weakness in the system, because I knew how to do so.
So when You experience things like this, then it's most often because the company have no eperience in handling these situations with their exsisting financial software, or they simply HAVE no way to handle the specific situation...
Leave it to the users to find new and intresting ways to mess up that perfect system You just made.
"How was I supposed to know I couldn't answer 'only on wednesdays' at the prompt ?"
Don't use a debit card. (Score:1)
If your card number & exp. date end up in the wrong hands, the funds in your checking, savings, or brokerage account - whatever account to which the number is tied - can be drained completely, and then you're out of luck.
At&t Horrer Stories (Score:1)
The standard answers (Score:2)
Ask for the manager. Send letters to any and every manager in the chain of command about your problem.
Talk to the Better Business Bureau. They deal with these things all the time.
As a last ditch effort, a letter to the editor of complaining about service may open some eyes.
Even though the check was cashed, see if your bank has any clout with assisting you.
You best bet is talking to the Better Business Bureau.
Re:AT&T nightmares (Score:2)
Landline to cellular is also cheap. Off the top of my head, US 10c/min max?
Then there's all the ongoing 'specials' (though they've been in place for months, if not years). Free calls between 9pm and 5am, First twenty minutes free, etc.
Australia has the highest cellular uptake per capita outside Scandinavia, last I heard.
Re:Dealing with false invoices (Score:2)
Re:AT&T nightmares (Score:2)
Sorry, I don't mean to gloat, but this is one area where AU's cellular networks have a huge vote over America's. We don't pay for incoming calls - and why should you anyway?
Because... (Score:2)
Because people who are actually good at customer service have found real jobs. This was predicted a few years ago, that the very low unemployment rates in the country would result is even worse customer service.
Companies need to start making customer service a priority. If it means more training, fine. More often though, it will mean more of the yearly budget devoted to paying customer service more. Most companies don't want to, and you're left with problems like the above.
_______________
you may quote me
Complain to you Public Utility Commission (Score:2)
I then contacted my PUC and a miracle happened. Within one day of the required dismissal period, their lawyer contacted me. Two weeks later I had a check, on the condition I would withdraw my complaint.
With the desire to get into the local and long distance markets, the phone companies do not want complaints on their records.
Try it, I was suprised by how quickly things turned around after the great run around.
Re:AT&T nightmares (Score:2)
So it is a rip-off, but you know in advance the maximum amount you can be ripped off for -- the price you paid.
Consider also that other plans, when you really look at them, usually are more expensive than advertised. If you get a monthly-fee based phone, add up your actual minutes used, and the whole price you pay, for a few months. The un-advertised taxes, "FCC connection fees" (a note on that beauty below), unused minutes which expire every month, etc, add up quickly. Before I got this one, I looked over two months of a friend's cell phone bill -- I think that sample was a little anomalous, but it's worse than you think.
As a side note, all of this pretty much extends to the land-line side of telephone service too. Where I live in Texas they claim to allowed competition in the local telephone market, but it hasn't made a difference. You can look here [consumer.org] if you care about the details, but it basically boils down to the new competition going after businesses and people with poor credit ratings; they do charge more for a pre-paid land phone than for a non-prepaid land phone, simply because those people looking for a pre-paid deal simply have no choice. A lot of the pre-paid phone service deals are something along the lines of a very low setup fee and $20 for the first month, then $40 or $50 a month after that; so they are definitely trying to rip off the desparate and ill-informed.
And finally, that little FCC Connection Fee fraud -- it isn't a tax imposed by the FCC, it is simply an additional itemized charge from the service provider; it's presence on your bill but not on the flier or brochure you saw about the service represents false advertising. The FCC "authorizes" the fee in that the carrier is allowed to charge it, but it has to be negotiated with the consumer -- that is, the carrier charges as much as they think the market will bear. Because the FCC has allowed their good name to be plastered on this, the carriers subtract off four dollars from the cost they advertise to look cheaper, and then put the money back in a form that makes it look like a government tax. The money from that doesn't go to the FCC. If you stick to your guns and don't pay it, carefully paying every bill except for that charge, and call and complain that the charge wasn't listed on the advertised service that you signed up for, then eventually they will cut off your service. I don't think they have the balls to actually go after your credit record or anything. It should be entirely illegal for them to masquerade a charge as a tax in that manner.
Re:AT&T nightmares (Score:2)
Basically, you pay $80 down for a slightly clunky but prefectly accceptable phone, and some initial starter minutes. After that you can add minutes to the phone using a plastic card you purchase with cash. It is a little expensive, I think the per minute cost comes out to around 40 cents a minute for the largest block. The biggest missing features of the plan are no voice mail, no text messaging. It works nationwide, and all calls are at that minute rate, no matter where in the country you are calling; your number is a 1-888 number with an extension.
But the most you can be ripped off for is the amount you put down up front. If AT&T stops it from working, I'm out for only the minutes I have on my account.
The cost is actually less than that of a subscription based phone for small numbers of minutes. If I don't use the phone at all for a month, I pay nothing. There are very few plans like that available in the US; most of them have you buy minutes that expire in 30, 45 or 90 days, forcing you to buy more minutes than you will use and then have them expire. But the AT&T National Prepaid minutes only expire every 6 months, and they will roll over to the next 6 months as long as you add some amount of minutes to the account. This is there to provide them with an exit from providing the service -- they can just stop selling the cards, wait six months, and then stop providing the dial tone to those phones.
Which brings me to the point that AT&T may be about to do just that. I was told by the clerks at the AT&T storefront where I go to to buy new minutes that AT&T is bringing out a new prepaid plan, and this one sounds as junky as the other prepaid plans offered in the US. The minutes expire in 90 days, you are charged a varying amount based on where you are calling, etc.
I've read in a number of places lamintations about the US "lagging behind" Europe and Japan in cell phone usage. I've also heard that in those areas most of the phones are sold in the pre-paid style; many have a place to insert a card or chip that activates the phone for a certain number of minutes. This insulates you from the telephone company's incompetent billing department, and when you buy the chips and phone with cash, provides more privacy. I think this different style of service is a major reason why the cellular phone hasn't penetrated the US market as deeply. As long as fools like most cell phone users are willing to keep putting out $100 and more a month on a plan, why should the wireless providers bother with actually billing for what they provide ?
It's a shame, really. I'm sure this area comes under the interest of more than one congressional committee, and if I were a congressman I'd have some executives on the stand and I'd be (verbally) beating the shit out of them over it. The fact that they can focus on a small segment of the population willing to be suckers means that the general advancement in that market and industry is being retarded. Since I'm not a congressman, I guess I'm limited to verbally abusing my friends who fall into the sucker class.
Re:Dealing with false invoices (Score:2)
Re:Dealing with false invoices (Score:2)
Is @home regulated in your state? (Score:2)
You need to remember that AT&T cable services is not the same as AT&T the long distance provider or AT&T the cellular company, etc. etc. in most PSC's eyes.
The key here is to get the right person's attention. The flunkies you talk to on the phone usually either don't care or don't know how to fix it.
The FIRST thing I would do is to send them a Certified letter explaining the current status and what EXACTLY you want them to do about it. If you just want the billing to go away, then tell them. If you want the service back also, let them know also. Give them a deadline to respond. Hopefully this will be the fix. A certified letter generally HAS to be looked at by a manager.
If they don't respond, the next step I normally do is to get an attorney to send them a letter. Note I didn't say write them a letter. Usually you can find an attorney willing to put a letter you wrote (or at least outlined) on their letterhead and sign and mail it for a nominal cost. CC this to the CEO of AT&T cable services and to billing. Make sure it includes words like "illegally collecting", "unlawfully terminated service" and my favorite "harrassment".
If this gets to collection state and it impacts your credit rating, you can sue for defamation of character, along with harassment and a whole bunch of other stuff. You paid the bill - they are trying to collect it illegally and this is where it gets fun. (There are times I'd just love to have my day in court with these bozos.).
Another tactic which sometimes works is to call and ask for "someone who can tell you where you need to serve papers for a lawsuit you are filing for illegal collection actions and harrassment". This usually scares anyone one the front line, as most people don't want to be named in a lawsuit, and the person answering the phone sure isn't going to give you THEIR name and contact information. And if they don't know, they're probably going to be asking someone who will want to deal with this instead of having to explain to a supervisor why the peons in the front line let it get to lawsuit stage.
There is one other option - and I mention it last because I'm not sure about this. I understand that the FCC has a similar department to handle consumer complaints as most state PSC's. And they WOULD be authoritative over AT&T. This might be worth the research.
Good luck!
Dealing with false invoices (Score:3)
Do not follow the advice of another poster here, and use a credit card or debit card or any other method which allows the company to immediately access your money. When dealing with AT&T, you need to be able to examine an itemized bill and pay only for the correct items.
And here is a way to prevent the company from falsely giving you a bad credit rating (and sometimes from cutting your service) when they try to over bill you:
Make out a check for entire amount of the bill, but to the Attorney General of your state. Send this with a letter explaining the situation, explaining exactly why you don't owe the money, and requesting that the Attorney General deliver the amount that you truly owe to the company in question. This letter should be sent by certified
mail, as should the copy to the billing party. Address the copy to the billing party to the CEO or president of the company. The copy to CEO or president of AT&T is the important one.
That check is coming back to you. Don't bother to deduct it from your checkbook balence. It may take a few years, but eventually you will receive the check back, with a letter from some deputy to the AG explaining that his office does not wish to get involved in the matter.
Or maybe the company will actually have the nuts to request that the AG hand over the funds to them. However, the company will probably have some of their more competent employees looking over any correspondance with the AG, and if you don't really owe the money then that will come to light.
The point of this whole maneuver is that it is very likely illegal for the company to seek private enforcement of the law (i.e., a bill collector) once they get that notice that the AG has your check. Under certain circumstances, such as if the company is a monopoly telephone or utility service, they may not even be able to cut off your service. That won't apply to you, and it probably doesn't apply to Southwestern Bell in Texas either, since they technically have competition in the local telephone service market. (I have been completely unsuccessful in getting a competitor's local service hooked up.)
Avoiding the problem to start with... (Score:3)
Yes, he was paying by check, which he implies he wants to stay away from credit cards. The option then becomes to get a checking/debit card (the default option at most banks now), and have the ISP charge to this. However, this advice comes with many cavaets:
Watch your account carefully. Most ISPs have enough ethics to only charge your account for what it needs and no more. But I would not be surprised if some ISP with few scruples would add a dollar or two here or there to increase their revenues. With either credit or debit cards, I do review my monthly statement; many people don't and this is where they fall into trouble. I've *heard* but not confirmed that smaller banks (the ones that issue debit cards, not those that do credit cards) give more of a hassle to cancel or reimbursed disputed expenditures, so watch these and catch any errors early.
Use your debit card number in voice only. I'm not scared of online shopping with credit cards, as I do review my statements, and I did catch one scam at least once. Additionally, if someone did get your CC # and tried to outspend it, they would hit your credit limit ceiling, and you wouldn't have to worry about any extra fees after that point. However, with a debit card, if it did get out, someone could easily outspend your bank balance (and the cards I've seen don't have protection against this), making you incure overdraft penalities, which might not be refunded after disputed claims are dealt with. You could also not have money on time for rent payments or such. Thus, you need to take a bit more security with this number, and only give it to the ISP operators via voice; don't try to send it over the net, unless the site is secured, and even then, the phone call is easier and you know it's done.
Watch your balance. Obviously enough, make sure you have plenty in your account to cover that expenditure so that you don't overdraw when the isp takes out it's share. Know when the ISP withdraws (they will usually provide this info, and you can get it from account statements from either the ISP or your bank) so that you know when the money has to be there.
Real People (Score:3)
Issues of payment (Score:3)
I have become somewhat pragmatic in my approach. I quit using checks alltogether (and credit cards for the same reason). Instead, I spend 2 hours once a month paying all my bills. I simply drive to the business establishments and pay my bills locally in cash and get a receipt.
I however am lucky that I am within driving distance of everywhere I need to pay bills to. This might not be the case for everyone, but most places the option is available to you.
Once you have a written reciept in hand, usually signed by someone at the company, a person who physically took the cash from you, its REALLY easy to dispute claims that you haven't paid your bill, especially when you have the ability to go walk in there yourself. Difficult to put someone on hold when they're standing in front of you.
I use one ISP for my actual connection. I use another for the newsserver account. I had paid in person (with money order) for a year's subscription, and had gotten a signed receipt for the transaction. I had previously paid for this service with bank drafts, but had closed that account due to excessive balance problems.
Anyways, a few days later I get an email claiming that I had not paid for the account yet, and that their attempts to draft my bank had failed (for obvious reasons). Of course, having the reciept in hand, I simply wrote them a terse reply informing them that I had paid the bill already and had subtly implied that their attempts to draft my bank without my permission bordered on attempted theft.
They promptly apologized and went away.
-Restil
AT&T nightmares (Score:3)
I had the mother of all run-ins with a different division of the same company, AT&T Wireless Services. Last year around July, I suddenly stopped being able to receive calls on my AT&T One Rate cell phone. This was actually a big inconvenience for me since I don't have a landline phone. My fault for listening to their 'it may be the only phone you'll ever need' propaganda...
For about a week the company maintained alternately that (1) that's impossible so it must be my fault, (2) it must be a technical glitch but 'cellular service is not guaranteed so there is nothing they can do about it', or (3) the problem has been reported, and no, they can't tell me when it will be fixed. Finally after one week without being able to receive incoming calls, I was informed that this was a known problem for people with New York AT&T phone accounts who were using the Los Angeles AT&T network (like me at the time -- note that this isn't 'roaming' under the one-rate plan). Fine. And that there was no estimate about when it would be fixed. Sorry, no, they couldn't give me any more information.
Somehow, for my $150 a month (closer to $200 with taxes), I had expected a little more.
Well, a few days later, I started receiving calls again -- everything seemed OK. I called customer service and requested a service credit for being effectively without phone service (most of my calls are incoming) for almost two weeks -- they were happy to oblige. So far so good.
Then my real problems began.
My next bill was for about $400 -- after the $50 service credit. That was a shock, to say the least, since I was always careful to keep track of minutes used and virtually never went over the 1400 minutes allotted to my plan. In fact I *knew* that I hadn't even gotten close in the previous month, on account of being virtually unable to use the phone for a week and a half!
Cursory inspection of the bill revealed the problem. Every single incoming call I had received since the problem was solved had been billed twice. AT&T charges a lot, $0.25, for minutes over your plan. Since my fiancee calls me at least once a day and we often speak for an hour or more, I had some 1000 minutes of incoming calls that month. Because of the double billing, I was over my allotment by about $250.
'OK, no problem,' I thought. It's an obvious error. Each incoming call appeared twice on the bill, once at, say, 3:17PM and once at 6:17PM. Presumably related to the three hour time difference between NY and LA. All I have to do is call AT&T up and point out that there's a bug in their billing system, and they'll fix it. End of story.
Ha ha ha.
Thus began one of the most frustrating seven-month periods of my life. It's still painful for me to think back on it! I don't want to go over every little detail, but before it was over, I had spent more than eight hours on the phone with AT&T customer service (I know it was more, because I only started keeping track in the second month) -- sent fax after fax and a couple of registered letters -- and received two more bills with incorrect charges totalling over one thousand dollars.
I was told repeatedly that there was no problem and that the bills must be correct. When this happened, I would ask the customer service rep whether he/she believed that I had purposely requested every single person who ever called me to call back three hours later and talk for the same amount of time. No? Then how did they explain the fact that every single incoming call was duplicated on the bill? They didn't know but they were sure there was no problem.
I didn't pay the disputed part of the first bill, but when the next bill came with some $200 more in phantom calls, plus late fees on the initial amount, plus charges for my calls (including being stuck on hold for more than an hour at a time) to the AT&T offices to deal with the problem -- I started to get pissed. By that time, they were admitting that there was a known double-billing problem that affected 'a few customers.' In order to get credit for the double-billed calls I would have to fax them a copy of the bill with the disputed calls circled. I did that.
The customer service supervisor reported back to me that he had indeed found double-billed calls. About 100 minutes of them. Considering that the overbilled total at that point was something like 2500 minutes, I was surprised, to say the least. Turned out the guy had used a rather stringent definition of double-billed calls: the calls had to be the same amount of time, appear next to each other on the bill -- and be billed at the same time. Since all of my double-billed calls appeared three hours apart (presumably a consequence of my being in LA with a NY phone) he caught only a couple of calls I had received while I was in New York. Never mind that I had already pointed out the three-hour difference issue and circled every single one of those calls in my fax. They weren't double-billed calls by his definition.
I received one more bill with double-minute calls before they straightened the problem out. At this point I had something like $800 in disputed charges, which I of course refused to pay, and naturally AT&T shut my service off (big problem since, again, I don't have a landline phone) and, incredibly, placed a negative entry in my credit rating (despite promising me that no such action would be taken before the issue was straightened out).
I was told over and over to just pay the disputed amount and it would be refunded if they determined that a mistake had in fact been made.
I would have loved to tell AT&T to go to hell at that point, but there were several things holding me back. First, they still were dunning me for almost $1000 in erroneous charges. Second, when I called another cell phone company (GTE), I was told (despite my otherwise spotless credit record) that because my cell service had been shut off by AT&T for $1000 in 'unpaid bills,' I would be required to pay a $800 deposit (!) if I wanted to establish service with them. Finally, aside from the week-and-a-half of unexplained non-service, I hadn't had problems with AT&T's One Rate service itself -- having a cell phone with a NY local number and no roaming charges was awfully convenient for someone like me who travels between LA and New York and mostly needs to stay in touch with people in New York. I still maintained some hope that this could all be straightened out.
Well, ultimately, of course, it was. It took four more months, during which time my service was repeatedly turned on then shut off again. It became a monthly ritual with me to be told that 'my bill was being reviewed' and that all the overbilling would be credited to my account within a month -- of course it never was, so the service would get shut off once more, and I got to spend another hour on the phone with the idiots. Eventually, though, they paid it all back -- all the overbilled calls, all the late fees, all the 'reconnection fees,' the calls to and from customer service that I wasn't supposed to be charged for but was, and so on and so on -- some $1000 all told.
What sticks in my mind most from the whole affair is this: AT&T's customer service policy was cut out to make it as difficult as possible for me to get through this ordeal. For one thing, I was virtually never allowed to speak to the same customer service rep twice. The typical sequence was this:
So part of their tactic, I believe, was to try to wear me down by forcing me to start over each time I tried to contact them. The only good side to this was that, each time I called, I maintained a faint hope that maybe -- this time -- I'd be lucky enough to reach someone who would recognize that there was indeed a problem here, and do something about it. Never happened.
Now, it's simply impossible for me to believe that all of those customer service people could be that dense. It doesn't take a genius to realize that there is a problem with a bill in which every incoming call appears twice, to recognize a simple pattern of X-minute call at time Y followed by X-minute call at time Y+3:00. Most of those customer service representatives (supervisors all) didn't sound that stupid. So I am forced to believe that they were all being wilful 'know-nothings': that is, it was AT&T company policy to stall, to not admit, as long as possible, that there could be a serious billing error. I firmly believe that, had I paid the $1000 in extra charges, which was what AT&T seemed to believe I was obligated to do, and then tried to get my money back, I'd still be waiting today. I would not be surprised if AT&T profited significantly from this error: presumably some of the erroneous bills were paid sans complaint (I'm thinking of corporate accounts here).
Sue *them* (Score:3)
If this doesn't work, you can try something my mother did many years ago. She had started a small stock portfolio for my brother and I when we were kids, and our dividends were supposed to get re-invested into the stock (a program offered by the company). But we kept getting cheques for $1.52 or $0.34 and other ridiculous amounts. So she finally send them a letter that started, "Dear Computer," and went on to say that the humans using you are obviously confused, and could you please correct this matter. Not derogatory, just different.
Either way, good luck!