28-Oct-2003
28th October 2003
Dear Management,
First, let me start off by stating that I have been using AT&T Wireless since I was approximately 14 years old with an account that was under my parent’s name. I am now 22 years old and have never had any issues with my service until this past year when I signed up for an account under my own name. I shall recount the events and hopefully by the end of this letter, someone will feel some sort of sympathy for me and give me the formal apology that I am warranted.
Around December 8th, 2002 you had some representatives from your Harrisburg AT&T store come to Pennsylvania State University of Harrisburg offering promotions for your newly deployed GSM service. During that time without being on a promotion of any sort, your GSM plans were not affordable for a typical college student. So after checking out the rates, I signed up for the plan where I would pay a monthly sum of $35 and get 6% back with an additional 200 minutes and unlimited nights and weekends.
Around January of 2003, I moved to a new home. Sometime in February I noticed that I wasn’t getting any bills from AT&T. Fearing that I would get my phone service cut off, I called a representative and explained the situation to her. Apparently the person who activated my service billed my university instead of me personally. So, I had her change the bills to my name instead of Penn State University. I thought nothing of it since the representative told me that I would be back billed as soon as they sorted out the situation.
Everything was fine up until May. I was then smacked in the face with a bill for $2000 for back charges. I refused to pay it and explained to a representative that there was obviously a mistake. The person told me that he would call me back after he had someone in a different department audit the bill. However, I never received any call.
After carefully examining the bill, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t getting 200 bonus minutes, free nights and weekends, nor the long distance that I was promised. I checked with some of my classmates that I had referred to AT&T for the promotion and they were all being billed normally. A few weeks later I had someone from your company call me pretty much telling me pay. However, I did not talk to her long because the area that I was in wound up dropping the call.
Around June after finals and graduation, I tried settling this dispute with AT&T once again. I was constantly being put on hold for an hour and being bounced from department to department because of the following reasons (or at least that was what I was told):
1.) Customer service can not do large credits
2.) My account is under a corporate promotion
3.) Someone in management will have to do this since the sum is too great
What was even more frustrating was that each time I called, I would get a different person from a different office. I was never be able to talk to the person I was promised to get a call back from, even though I had his/her name and location. After playing phone tag with your company for a few days I finally gave up and decided if you guys really wanted your money, you’d contact me again.
So mid June I went on vacation to Southern California. Around that time I noticed my phone service had been cut off. Since I really didn’t have a phone that I could use, I didn’t bother too much with it. I managed to call your customer service department from a friend’s location but, again I was promised a call back and never received one. I’m sure your company keeps some sort of ticketing system to log calls but, obviously your workers aren’t doing their jobs. Every time I called I had to re-explain my situation which was very annoying since some of your employees seemed very non-cooperative at times.
July rolled around and I came back home from vacation. I called AT&T and finally spoke with someone that understood my anger and concern. The gentleman was VERY helpful. Unfortunately I forgot his name but, I am very certain that he logged the call very extensively. He promised to call me back A.S.A.P. but, I refused since I have never had a call back from your company. In any case, I was on hold off and on with him for over 5 hours because he was manually auditing every call that was made from December 2002 to July 2003. The bill had reached $3,200 around this time due to all these extra fees that you tacked on for cancellation. In any case I was overcharged every single month since I signed on with AT&T, including the months that I did pay my bill thinking nothing was wrong. To cut it short, instead of me owing AT&T $3,200, your company owed me $60.
August rolled around and I noticed my bill was around $170, as was September’s and October’s bill. I called in September and spoke with a woman that was unhelpful, rude, and kept me on hold for over an hour until I finally gave up and just hung up. Again it seemed that I did not get my nights and weekend minutes nor my bonus minutes.
Today, October 27, 2003, I called again to get this corrected. The woman I spoke with was helpful and even returned the promised call. She credited me around $600 out of the $700 that your company claimed I owed again. She then explained to me that I will get my free nights and weekend minutes unless I upgrade my plan for an additional $5/month or call in each month to get credited. Her reasoning for this is that although I am known to be part of the PSU promotion, it has since expired and there is no way to add the additional nights and weekends onto my existing plan. Then I noticed the catch, this would extend my contract for another year.
Since I was going to extend my contract for another year, I figured I might as well get a new phone as well, since the old one was getting a bit worn from use. I then asked her about the Siemens SL56. It turns out that I have to pay the full price for the phone plus add another year to my contract.
So I guess my question for AT&T management is why should I stay with your service if I have to constantly call each month to get credited unless I pay an extra $5 per month that pretty much binds me to an additional year just to get the same promotion I was promised almost 1 year ago? What’s even more ridiculous is that I can cancel my service in December and either go with Cingular for the SL56 or just resign with AT&T to get the promotion either under my name or someone else’s name and save over $100 and only be bound to a 1 year contract.
Posted in xanga | No Comments »