If you own AT&T stock, sell it now. My dad has been with the company nearly 35 years and all I hear about is how AT&T has become “money hungry” since they bought BellSouth. The company is focused on money only–not on serving customers or even their own employees. From my own personal experience, I can now say the same.
Most of you know that we spent 12 hours on the phone with AT&T last month trying to get our iPhones activated and working properly. That is 1.5 WORK DAYS. At the end of this ordeal we finally had working phones.
Then comes the ultimate smack in the face, the $2,000 bill. Do these people not have quality controls in place? Do they not have an automatic flag that says, “Hey, these people have NEVER paid us even 10% of this amount. Perhaps we should investigate it.” Of course not. When I called to get the excess charges removed, they told me it was MY RESPONSIBILITY to see that these charges are removed before my due date comes.
I have been a customer since the Suncom days back in 2000. In 2004, the week after we got married, we started a joint account. That is over 8 years of service. Because of my longstanding status with AT&T, I emailed them to ask if they would forgive the entire bill–both the regularly monthly charges and the excess bullcrap charges that jacked it up to over $2,000. Did they really think I needed to pay them a monthly service charge for the type of service that I have received? Here is their reply:
Our records show that credits totaling $1923.35 have been issued to your account Mr. Finney, and the remaining balance of $133.16 is due on or before 08/25/08. As there were a total of 565,472 kilobytes of internet access used by your mobiles, in addition to the 1247 minutes of airtime used for your voice calls during the previous billing cycle, although we do apologize for the problems that you experienced Mr. Finney, we will not be able to issue additional credit to the account. (Emphasis mine)
So, there you have it. Even though they apologize and acknowledge the problems that I had, they will not compensate me beyond the excess charges. (By the way, half of those 1,247 minutes was TALKING TO THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE.)
What do you think? Should I have asked for the free month of service? Should they have given it to me?
2 Comments
August 13, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Perhaps I’ve been beaten into submission by poor customer service, but I’ve always had this view: it’s fine to ask for the free month, but it’s also fine for them to ask you to pay what you legitimately owe. Where they pay for not forgiving the entire month is when your business is taken elsewhere. So crediting you $1923.35 brought things back to even on the “who owes who what” scale, but tipped things way out of their favor on the “customer feels appreciated and will give their returning business” scale.
September 3, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Yeah, ATT sucks. I live in Washington and i call my friend in California and he got changed his normal ($200 something 3 users) and a $80 over charge, so i went over his bill (i have T-mobile mind you) and he said i racked his bill up. So i asked him why he didn’t add me to his Fav-5 (or whatever it is called) he said they don’t have that. i said OK I’ll call you after 7pm because you get free night time, nope his starts at 9pm. my bill is $140 (three total users) and i get to talk to 5 people for free and i have 1000 minuets a month with roll over. Ok i said hmmm this is good enough reason to change to something else, he said yes….but i am locked in for 2yrs and if i leave early i get charged. Yeah ATT just sucks