My AT&T iPhone Billing Fiasco

UPDATE: AT&T’s Fraud Department has at least one sane person at it. I was frankly shocked. I got on and off the phone in less than 7 minutes. No menus, only minimal waiting. She actually pulled up and used prior conversation knowledge from my account. I didn’t have to reexplain everything. Apparently AT&T Reps normally require you starting from Genesis every time, as they generally lack the reading skills to read the account notes. This girl was good. Problem fixed. Like 100% fixed. I’m impressed

UPDATE 2:  Jim B from AT&T contacted me via comment on my blog. You can see the comment below.  It’s good to see that AT&T is monitoring these things. Overall, I am actually impressed with the experience to find that if you do have real problems that they can be fixed if you just find the right people at AT&T.

Original blog post:

I got an iPhone in November. Asides from a few minor gripes, I really like it. Well, that was until yesterday when I paid attention to my iPhone bill.

I’m going to be honest and say that I probably don’t go over my bills with enough detail. Rather, I just pay them generally. My only bills are rent (auto deducted), credit cards (auto deducted), and student loans (auto deducted from bank acct). Oh, and the iPhone bill. I actually work about 40 feet from an AT&T store so I just walk in there whenever I have time and pay my bill with my debit card. I don’t go over on my minutes (sometimes on texting due to Twitter), and I get the simplified bill. Nothing much to look at. I just pay it.

One thing I couldn’t figure out was why I was getting so many bills from AT&T. It seemed that I was getting two a month, but I just glanced at them, shredded them, and payed them in person. Maybe I just kept having deja-vu. I didn’t have to show the bill to pay, just gave them my information in the store. Then in January I got a really weird bill saying that my service had been shut off on Jan 5th for not paying my bill. I was like, umm, WTF?

So I went into an AT&T store and they said that it was fine. I wasn’t over on my bill and it must have just been things getting crossed in the mail. I was fine. Whatever, I did have a small balance on there, so I fully paid up and went on my way.

Then last night, I checked my mail and I had a bill of slightly more forceful nature. It made me say WTF loud enough that I read it all, several times. It said that I owed $250.44 to AT&T and that if it was not paid that it would be sent to collections and have a negative on my credit. Not cool. Not cool.

The screwed up thing about it that I noticed was that the number referenced was not my number!!! It was a 617 (Boston number) certainly, but the rest of the number wasn’t even close to mine. I couldn’t find another AT&T bill laying around to compare against, but I knew my number and that my service was fully paid and not at all disconnected. All of the rest of the information on the bill was the same.

They were closed at night when I tried to call them, so I waited until today and went straight to an AT&T store. The one that I always pay my bills at. They verified that it looked like there were two accounts with the same information on them. One was in “cancelled” status and the other was good to go. They said that sadly I had to talk to billing, and that they were unable to help there. This upsets me because I have to explain yet again to another person, and jump through another hoop. Why not empower your employees to fix things? Not that I know anything about management (except for that BS in Business Management, running a guitar pedal company, managing at a consulting firm, a recording studio and a theatre).

So I went to the betahouse to call AT&T. I called the number I had tried before. Guess what? They don’t work Sunday either! I poked around their phone system and found some “emergency after hours” number to call. It’s 866-801-3600 in case you need it yourself. I called it.

After waiting a minute or so on hold I get someone on the line. At first she’s pretty nice. I give her the “problematic” account number and information. She’s working on pulling it up and asks me what’s wrong. I tell her that I never signed up for the account that I just gave her the information for. She asked if it was a fraudulently created account. I said no, just that I think someone punched in something twice when signing me up for my phone. I give her my “actual” account information then and she pulls that up too. She’s sympathetic until right about… now.

She’s asked accusitively, “Why didn’t you call us sooner?” I told her that I had inquired about the problem at the AT&T store prior, and that I had given them my phone number and they said everything was fine. She didn’t like that and pushed me on it more. I told her that it’s as if you got two identical cable bills. You’d not notice that the account number was different. I don’t even know my iPhone’s number. I use Grand Central when I give out my number to 90% of people! She said that I should have noticed and seemed to indicate that this was my problem. WTF?

She said that this is the problem of the fraud department and that they will have to investigate it. However, they of course don’t work Sundays either. Thank you America for helping keep that Sabbath holy (it’s the wrong anyway you jackasses, as the Sabbath is SATURDAY!). Her name was Linnet Kalwaski or something like that. I got the number for the AT&T fraud department. It’s 877-844-5584. I was told to call tomorrow. I asked if there was a case number or call number to reference. She said no, but that she was putting notes in the account for me. She did say that they would, “See if they could get any of those charges or fees reversed“. That isn’t very comforting. I want to hear that the problem will be fixed. All of them should be reversed, and honestly, I’d like compensation on their part for creating this screwup and nearly reporting me to credit agencies!

So tomorrow I get to continue to waste my time in getting a problem fixed that isn’t mine. This is their fuckup, and their problem imho. I’ll followup tomorrow with the results. I’m going to record the rest of the phone calls for “quality assurance purposes” (hey it goes two ways!), and let them know of it on the phone that it could be used for such.

What should have happened: As a service to AT&T I will give them my educated opinion on what should have happened.

•  A system should have checked to see if there was a double billing problem. This isn’t a case of “two lines” on an account, but two separate accounts under one name/address/ssn. They should have flagged this.
• Before mailing customers letters that threaten poor marks to credit/collections they should have a very quick double checking of the accounts for accuracy and flags that the first thing would have thrown up.
• Lacking those two, when I go into a store, a representative should be more than happy to assist me. They would let me know that they would stay with me and help me resolve any issue prior to leaving the store and could escalate it to any management as needed, no matter how high. He saw the problem in the store, and should have been able to resolve it right there. That being said, he was a nice guy.
• Lacking those three, when I place a call to customer service I should be able to get through at all times. Always. I shouldn’t have to call an after hours number. If there’s such a number it should forward to that automatically.
• The person I speak to on the phone should fix the problem they observe as well, or escalate it immediately to a person that could. Don’t defer to another department.
• Don’t all but accuse the customer of this being their fault. This is clearly AT&T screwing up. They didn’t catch the problem until I let them know of it! Why should it be expected that I see the problem. They have people working in A/P for a reason!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 3:29 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.