Handling Mistakes w/ ISP Billing?

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)?

Comments

Dealing with false invoices

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Texas, where we are blessed with a certain entity known as Southwestern Bell. The continued tolerance of this corporation's practices is one of the main reasons I will not vote for Gov. Bush for president. I know a number of people who do without a telephone due to Southwestern Bell's fraud and incompetence, and the state officials seem to be in their pocket.

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...

[Masem]

I know it's too late to help in a situation like this, but it might be prudent to take steps in the future to avoid this, one way being to charge your connectivity to your credit card.

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

[Detritus]

If you have the choice, and sometimes you don't, sign up with a local company that has real people to answer the phones and email. It is too easy to get lost in the bureaucracy of a large corporation. I belong to a local credit union that has gained quite a few new customers at the expense of the megabanks who bought up most of the local banks. Customer service at the megabanks seems to consist of an 800 number that is routed to a customer service center in some other state.

Issues of payment

[Restil]

I know this might seem extreme. I haven't had any problems with my ISP before, but I've had problems with other companies (internet based ones included) that "misplaced" checks or forgot that I paid the bill or whatnot. Of course, it may take a month just to get a canceled check back, and even then, you still gotta fuss with them.

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

[kiscica]

My guess is that things get lost between the cracks because companies feel that lowered customer service expectations (now that we are all used to dealing with infinitely deep phone trees, etc.) mean they can get away with eliminating trained, competent customer service agents who know how to (and have the authority to) deal with out-of-the-ordinary problems and glitches.

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:

• I'd call customer service, wait on hold for 15 minutes, then get connected to a front-line customer service person
• I'd ask to speak to a supervisor right away, and be flatly refused. So I'd have to explain the whole damn story to the front-line person for the nth time.
• Front-line person would look at bill, conclude that (usually) she could do nothing, and would agree to switch me to a supervisor
• I'd wait on hold for 20-30 minutes. Supervisor would come on line.
• I'd ask for and get supervisor's name. Let's call him (usually) Supervisor X. Supervisor X would tell me that he had no private number of his own so he couldn't give me any way to reach him.
• I'd explain whole story to Supervisor X for (n+1)th time.
• Supervisor X would look at bill, decide that nothing could be done until he consulted with his supervisor, to whom I would *never* be allowed to speak myself (this was a hard and fast rule which I *never* managed to circumvent -- I never got past the second level no matter how much I pleaded).
• Supervisor X would *promise* to call me/fax me back as soon as problem was resolved. I'd reluctantly agree to leave ball in his court.
• Supervisor would fail to call back for two-three days, phone service would be shut off again, I'd call back and...
• ...ask to speak to Supervisor X. Instant stone wall. Every single customer service person I ever reached swore up and down that there was no way for them to connect me to someone I had spoken to earlier.
• Repeat from beginning.

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*

[mr.ska]

Yes, that's right. You take them to small claims court suing them for breach of contract. You paid them, you can prove you've paid them, and yet they cancelled your service. That is a breach of contract. So, you sue them in small claims court (where you don't need a lawyer, and they can't have one) for some amount, say the total cost of the service for the time that it's been cancelled, and watch them sit up and take notice.

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!