Telephone Service - AT&T quasilegal billing practices

Quasilegal billing practices

AT&T

From:

Date: Tuesday, July 18, 2000 06:41 PM

Shoddy best describes the quality of the work at ATT Wireless Services billing department. My wife and I have now spent some six weeks attempting to discern why our monthly bill is wrong and what happens between the time money leaves our account at our bank and is credited over two weeks later in their accounts (visible online). They blame our bank (BofA) for the delinquent payment, while our bank consistently can prove payment leaves on the assigned date. At first we thought this was just a mixup, as online banking is fairly new here in the States, and our expectations had been formed by positive experience with two wireless providers (HPY and Sonera) in Finland. Eventually, though, it was clear that the problem of getting hit with late charges and incorrect invoicing was a particular specialty of just one company. We note that unlike all other providers of services billed monthly and which have no problems crediting our payments, ONLY ATT Wireless Services does not give a bank account number on its invoice and refuses to provide such number upon request. The Customer Care people are hopelessly ignorant about the problem and keep insisting we pay by check or give our credit card number. The saving grace is that ATT's own auditors may put an end to this new form of customer abuse, because it causes gaps in the paper trail.