First, I worked for AT&T Wireless for five years, and more generally, I know how at the ground level, you can make a mistake or be limited in your ability to act by policies.
And second. I entirely acknowledge that in normal circumstances, I’d have looked over my bill at some point before I did.
So!
At the end of November, I was getting divorced and called AT&T to de-activate the phone my wife used. The rep said she’d de-activated it, and it would stop working at the end of that billing cycle (December 22nd).
What actually happened: the rep did not cancel that account, and somehow after that call I had *two* accounts: one, for my phone, and a second, for hers (at $120/mo+tax = $140/month). That there’s two plans is actually kind of important, because it meant that checking on my phone showed everything was cool, and there was the old phone showing up on its separate tab, and the only way I’d have figured it out was to say “hey, the total billed amount isn’t what my phone plan is.”
My wife calls them a week later to confirm with them that they’re canceling the line. They say “yup!”
Then because I was getting divorced, I go deal with the other stuff in my life for months, totally ignoring all my auto-billing like rent, auto insurance, and phone. I finally notice at the start of this month what’s screwed up. I call in, I get a friendly rep, he’s apologetic, puts in a case (CM20130805-70519441), cancels the phone, and says I should expect a credit of about $971.91 (there’s some tax uncertainty).
What actually happened: he submitted the case, but the second phone/plan was not cancelled.
At the end of this billing cycle, I check the bill, see it’s not cancelled, see I’ve only received a small credit.
The math: AT&T owes me ~$979.91 + $140 another month they billed me after not canceling again (and let’s assume it’s all set up so that’s the end of that).
They’d refunded $423.83 of the $979.91. No one ever contacted me to talk about what happened.
I call back in. I talk to a guy who seems more stymied than anything.
He reports the “back room team” took the case, looked at the account and said that because there was usage on it for some of those months, they weren’t going to refund those months.
Now, when you look at the usage, it’s clearly accidental. In one month, In another, they forwarded a phone call to her new phone. For the April-May billing cycle, the statement says 4mb of data used, and when you look at it, it’s 0kb. For May-June, someone sent her a text message, and there’s another couple random phone-dialed in usages.
None of which should have happened, if they’d cancelled the account. I just don’t understand this part.
I went around and around with that rep, in which he repeated the reason why they’d denied my refund, I said “look, I understand that’s not you, but this is crazy” and he’d say there was nothing to be done about it. I asked about appealing, he said I couldn’t, there was no way to escalate, if I filed another case about those three months it would just be denied. I asked him what I should do about this and he says “there’s nothing you can do”. Eventually, after about an hour, he told me he’d set me up with a supervisor callback.
His supervisor calls back! He wants to know about the call, if there’s anything (rep name) was unable to help me with. I say “no” and say it’s not really his fault, he’s clearly constrained, so I’m glad he escalated it.
The supervisor’s a little baffled. It seems like he’s calling because he saw his rep was on that call for so long, not because the rep put me in for a callback.
I don’t know if that’s a mixup or the rep told me he’d have someone call me back and then just dumped me, but if it’s the latter, that’s reaaaally frustrating.
So he walks through the whole thing with me, does a lot of math, credits me for what I’m being billed this month, puts a thing in for next month (since we’re now on another billing cycle and I still have both plans attached).
At one point, he talks to his supervisor, and comes back with a partial solution. It sounds like the supervisor’s unwilling to go back farther than three months. Through some customer service foo, he refunds ten things in varying amounts that add up to $369.50 and after talking to me for a minute about the gap, credits me $150.
I’m entirely uncertain of whether that happened or not, because when I look at my account, it doesn’t show the credits he talked about. But it’s not super-easy to figure out credits and adjustments on the online site.
Here’s where I am, then.
Best case: the zombie plan is cancelled. Next month’s bill will show up with a credit for the zombie plan. There will appear on my account a $200 credit towards this month’s bill and a $150 credit that don’t show up on my AT&T account on the site.
Math as it shows on my bill right now
~971.91 owed
+140 charged after that
-$423.83 credited by secret back room team
-$369.50 by supervisor ninja service against past bills
= I’m still out ~$319 because AT&T didn’t cancel the account back at the end of November
And next month, assuming the supervisor’s right, I get billed again for the zombie plan, but also credited for it.
Now, if you assume that the credit the supervisor yesterday is happening but just not there yet, I’m actually to the good. But you’ll forgive me if at this point having someone tell me they’re crediting $350 to this month’s bill but where that does not actually show up on my bill, I’m pretty skeptical that
a) there actually was a credit or
b) there will be a credit
Much less that zombie phone/plan is actually cancelled, or that I’m not going to be having this exact same conversation next month.
And at this point, it’s been five calls and hours on hours on the phone being frustrated, and having guarantees that something will be done turn out to almost always be entirely untrue.
The most galling thing is the back-room team dismissal based on trivial usage. Who gets a ticket like that, where it’s clearly entirely their company’s fault, and looks for the slightest pretense to deny it? I don’t even understand why, given that their error allowed that trivial usage, it’s even a pretense — is there a huge fraud problem with people who cancel, wait to see if it’s not cancelled, and then send one text message?
But yeah. From looking at my bill, AT&T’s got me for $300+.
Sigh.
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