Posted on 02/07/2015 12:55:29 PM PST by Dallas59
Back in the days when AT&T was broken into Baby Bells, we went with Mid-Atlantic Bell [now transmogrified into Verizon.] One day, a guy I didn't even know on the other side of the mountain made a person-to-person long distance call to me for which I charitably accepted the charges, thinking it might be someone I knew a long time ago or something. He realized his mistake, apologized for the wrong number and hung up.
As a result of that call, AT&T hijacked my long distance service.
I fought with them for nearly a year. Each time I called them, they said I'd used their long-distance service and had to pay. Each time I told them accepting a person-to-person charge is not me using your service, it's some other person using your service that I'm agreeing to pay. They "relent" each time and tell me it'll be handled.
Each month, they add another $38.50 for non-payment of the outstanding bill. By the end of the year, I'm looking at almost $400 after being told each time it's taken care of. Each time, by the way, their very first offer was that if I simply agreed that AT&T was now my LD carrier, I would be forgiven my "debt" as an introductory offer.
I asked a lawyer who supplied legal services to one of my clients what he would charge to send them a letter. He agreed to charge me $30 to sign a letter on his letterhead if I typed it up. That finally stopped the dunning notices.
Interestingly, throughout this whole escapade, AT&T did not refer me to a collection agency.
So they knew what they were doing was bogus and wrong, and wouldn't take the steps they would've used to settle a legitimate delinquency, because that puts them in the tightly regulated consumer credit rights hell. I wonder how many people they convinced to just pay them off, or switch their LD service back to AT&T.
Interestingly about 10 years after this fiasco, I get fold-over card from some legal firm telling me I was the recipient of a settlement in a class action lawsuit against phone carriers for LD hijacking. My compensation? $100 worth of long distance from AT&T. WTF?! A card to use the LD service of the people who'd been screwing me? [And by then, LD was essentially free anyway.] The wicked never pay...
Having worked for Comcast, this does not surprise me. One person in the next cubicle has his TV blaring with some gangsta rap hip hop movie on Showtime (every third word the effenheimer), abusing the customers, and his noise carrying on to other cubicles where everyone else is dealing with customers. Anyone who objected was called a “Racist MFer” by the manager. That was in 2001.
I worked in the cable business. This was an issue back in the days of rushing to get people installed. Sometimes comments made by the sale people would print out on the work orders. In those comments, such things happened.
I know that they can tie back changes to the accounts to the agent , time and date.
If this is happening in one area, you have a stupid new rep working the phones.
not exactly what we learned in business school.....
but maybe I need to go back to biz school and learn these new marketing theories? (I’ve obviously fallen badly behind the times...)
My wife wants cable, but I won’t let her. We have cheap Internet service from Comcast now (due to grandfathering) and if I mess with it at all, I’ll never get that back - not to mention all these nightmare stories when they happen to “get it wrong”, always in their favor.
Mrs. JohnnyP had something weird happen when she used her iphone yesterday.
She was using the voice to text feature to send a text to someone.
I said something to her from the kitchen while she was voice texting, then she screamed and said the phone typed “f__k off” on its own at the end.
I told her that has to be a malicious software bug.
A couple highlights included a run around regarding a price way higher than we agreed. The accounting guy and his supervisor said the best they could reduce it to was about $80 per month higher than we agreed. I said as long as we can get it to the exact penny of the agreement we were on to something.
My ultimate threat was to go back to our servicing office and tell them to get their techs to my house and remove everything they installed. That was when Comcast got my price to the penny.
My premium channel is HBO. It took 2 months for them to get that right.
The thing that persuaded everyone was when we had our final agreement on day one I sent an email to the salesman detailing the entire agreement and demanded he acknowledge that. He did.
I had to forward that email on two different occasions before the supervisor or whatever surrogate they assigned finally agreed with 100% of my demands.
I don't understand a company that deliberately lies to consumers. In another thread I was told that Comcast owns NBC. With the Brian Williams fiasco, THAT makes perfect sense.
Just think how wonderful it will be when the government turns the Internet into a public utility. Soon you won’t be able to do anything and you will be charged for it. You will have to go through Comcast-like customer service to get permission to so much as make a new webpage.
Time Warner’s smaller territories are being given to Charter.
Is that good or bad?
Any service that locks you in to a contract must be avoided.
Their main goal is to piss you off just enough to enrage you and make it nearly impossible to cancel. I have a contract security service once for my machine shop. NEVER AGAIN. Those jerks just would not let me cancel. Call the number to order service and withine 5 seconds you’re on the phone. Call to cancel and you get jerked around to a “customer retention specialist” who are a most vile breed of people.
ME: I want to cancel
THEM: Why
ME: I want to cancel
THEM: WHY
ME: Because I want to cancel. I am moving
THEM: We will be happy transfer your service to a new location
ME: CANCEL!!!
THEM: We need to know why you are cancelling before we can cancel....
Anyway that went on for 15 minutes. Finally they said they would mail a form to fill out
Of course it never came. Then I call back SOS with another jerk. finally I got a letter to cancel. Then...I send it in and of course receive another bill.
Call them again go through the same crap AGAIN. They say they received in correct information and I would have to refill the forms, AGAIN.
Anyway. They tried to collect 2 more months of charges and I wasted a good 8 hours dealing with those jerks.
I imagine it is the same with any other contract service company.
If it required you to sign up to make your regular service AT&T, it was laughable. My distant recollection is that it was possible to manually place calls through a carrier of your choice by dialing access numbers, codes, etc. But it was your bother to do it, not their bother to reimburse you.
The odd part is that this has happened in several states. Apparently it’s not just one a-hole employee. Must be part of the job description.
The only way to change this is if the monopoly is broken down and there is more competition in the space.
They’re repeatedly granted government monopolies by local municipalities who want the money. Voters can make it stop.
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