Telephone Service, AT&T collect calls billing practices by AT&T

Complaints.com received the following e-message on September 3, 2001:

From:

RE: ATT complaint In April, 2001, my husband, a full-time student with part-time

employment, was served an arrest warrant from 1998. (It was later determined

in court that he be released due to an error). He was transported to the

L.A. jail where he stayed for eight days, missing work and school. Also, he

takes several medications which were not given to him as required by law. It

was necessary for him to keep in touch with me, particularly concerning his

medications, because only I, from the outside, could contact the right person

to ensure the medicines reached him until his release. The only way he could call home was to call collect. The only choice

given was AT&T. He made a total of 23 calls, adding up to a total of 289

minutes, and we just gritted our teeth and expected to pay maybe $80 to $125.

We all but forgot about the calls because we never received any billing until

nearly four months later. In August we received an AT&T statement which

announced that our Long Distance Provider was now AT&T, ant that the charge

for the change would be $10. In addition, our long distance bill was

$327.31!!! I immediately contacted AT&T, expecting that there ust be some kind of

mistake. The customer service representative told me that collect charges

for operator- assisted calls (although there was no "live" operator assting

with these calls) is a $2.50 surcharge + .50 per minute. THEN, she asked me

to hold, returned, and stated that, no, the rates had since gone up. The

rates were now $2.80 surcharge + .89 (almost double) per minute! I couldn't

believe it. This is not all. When I applied these rates, (both the first and the

second) to the charges on my bill, I could not find one call that adds up

according to either of these rates. Clearly, neither of the rates given are

correct, nor could I make heads or tails out of how they were figured.

Further, in our situation, there was no disclosure of AT&T's rates when the

calls were made, and no option for alternative billing, giving AT&T carte

blanche to charge whatever they please. We normally use Vartec at home (10-10-811) which is .05 per minute 24

hours per day with no surcharge. Our last Vartec bill consisted of calls

totalling 428 minutes, costing us $21.40. We have never had a problem with

Vartec, and as you can see these rates are very good. With this kind of

competition, how can AT&T possibly justify charging such ridiculous rates and

seriously expect people to switch to AT&T long distance? Needless to say, I

told them to immediately remove me from their long-distance service (and $10

switching fee). I have now written letters to AT&T asking them to adjust my bill to a

reasonable balance, and I will be glad to pay it. I am not naive enough to

expect this bill to look like my Vartec bill; after all these were collect

calls. However, "reasonable and fair" seems to be beyond the understanding

of AT&T, and judging from the number of complaints with complaints.com (81

presently, compared to half as many of much less for anyone else), I am

apparently not the only one having problems with AT&T. It's a wonder that

they manage to keep any customers at all, as people wise up to their

unreasonable billing practices and terrible customer service. I am still waiting for a reply to my letters or an adjustment of my

bill. Meanwhile, I don't believe I can be required to pay a bill that cannot

be deciphered by a person with a college degree much less someone of average

intelligence, particularly when two different (outrageous) rates are given

and neither makes sense when compared to the bill! Sandra K. Bynum

Marina, CA 93933

Email User