AT&T Universal Card - cancelled charge with Colorado Prime Meat - charged still appeared on credit card - long, terrible hassle getting charges addressed properly by AT&T Universal

# 16 for August 21, 2003

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on August 20, 2003:

From:

RE: AT&T Universal Card - cancelled charge with Colorado Prime Meat - charged still appeared on credit card - long, terrible hassle getting charges addressed properly by AT&T Universal I have had an att universal card for many years and never had trouble until recently. I am thinking it must have something to do with citibank's buyout. Here is what happened: I made the mistake of letting Colorado Prime Meat give their presentation at my house. After two hours of listening to their garbage I decided to try some of their product and put it on my att universal card. I checked out their credentials on the web that day and found out I didn't want to make the purchase.

I immediately cancelled the contract as stated in their contract by registered letter and email. Several days later they charged my att account anyway. Here is where the problem starts. I immediately disputed the amount but ATT allowed CPM to add and subtract various amounts from my account without my approval. ATT and CPM messed up my account so bad that even the ATT people could not understand what was happening. Even though I won the entire disputed amount, ATT said I still owed CPM more than 1,000 dollars. Over the next nine months I had at least 40 conversations with ATT Universal Card Dispute Resolution department. I have never talked to so many incompetent, arrogant people in all my life. Every response from them was "if it's in the record it must be correct". Every time I asked to speak to a supervisor the phone suddenly went dead. When I tried to explain that I could prove ATT was wrong, I was told to send them the documentation by mail. Twice I sent the complete documentation by registered letter. Three weeks after I sent each letter I called the dispute resolution department asking about the status of my letter. The response was always that there is a notation in the record of my letter but no one looked at them that I could find out. ATT Universal Card - why do you tell people to send in documentation and then completely ignore it? AHHH, now I get it, a business black hole for complaints so that maybe they will go away. Another problem I ran into is with the att dispute resolution. I had many, many, many instances of their employees telling me things like the accounting department would call in a couple days to go over my numbers or the dispute had been resolved and the account fixed, and they didn't call.

When I called back in a week I was told that I must have misunderstood. I may have misunderstood the first or second time but this happened time and time again. I even resorted to repeating back to the person what I thought they said just to confirm it and they would confirm I heard correctly. Fortunately, one day I became so frustrated with the incompetence of the dispute resolution department that I called and spoke to 15 people, one after the other. Thank God the sixteenth person did not ascribe to the att universal card dispute resolution department doctrine. This wonderful person took the time to review the numbers and discover that I was in fact correct and proceeded to fix the problem. I am in the process of switching to a new charge card company. Please don't make the same mistake I did.