# 6 for September 30, 2000

Topic: mobile to mobile billing nightmare

Conf: Pacific Bell

From:

Date: Friday, September 29, 2000 07:48 PM

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I just completed my 3rd billing cycle with PacBell wireless.

I have a main account and 2 family plan members added to it.

My first bill had was overcharged by at least 30%, my second was overcharged by at least 50% and my third bill by about 15%.

This is because they do not separate the unlimited mobile to mobile calls from regular plan minutes in every case.

The worst case was a bill of about 1100.00 adjusted down to 400.00.

This took an extremely long time for me to document before they would issue the credit.

Then they told me that their computers were not always picking up the mobile to mobile calls and assigning them correctly.

My big worry now is that they do not provide phone numbers for incoming calls so unless they are from other family plan members I am not able to ascertain whether or not it is a billable call or a mobile to mobile from another pacbell wireless customer.

I have asked for a listing of the incoming numbers but they have refused to provide them.

They also refused to give me the contact info for the appropriate governmental or company offices higher up the food chain.

The last customer service rep. I spoke to said that the company tags the bill when you complain and makes sure the errors you mention aren't recurring.

I pointed out that this was patently untrue as I was now complaining for the third consecutive month about the same numbers.

Also they changed the voicemail access policy so that you can no longer check messages from another phone without paying an additional monthly fee.

And lastly, they charge for whole minute usage only, rounding up even when the call has been dropped and redialed.

I have had 5 minutes of call time charged in 1 minute because of attempting to finish a sentence and experiencing repeated drop offs.

I have 9 months to go on this contract but their service is so ghastly surely there must be some sort of lemon law or consumer fraud clause that one could invoke.

I am sure they still owe my $100's of dollars in credits if I could see a log of the incoming numbers.