Once upon a time I was an AT&T customer, but not by choice. Several years ago, I went with Bell South’s “bundle” offer for phone service, cell and landline, and satellite tv. Not long after, Bell South sold out to AT&T. To me,  that spelled trouble.

 Everything was fine for a while. With the rollover minute feature, I always had a surplus of minutes. In January of 2007, I nearly had a heart attack when I viewed my bill. After years of having a cell phone, I had NEVER gone over my allotted minutes. But now, AT&T was telling me that I had gone WAAYYY over my allotment, to the tune of $500+ dollars.

I immediately requested a detailed copy of the bill. At first they sent the bill for the wrong month. I maintained there was a big mistake but AT&T would not hear of it. After finally receiving the correct bill, I spotted error after error. The first one was on Christmas Day. The bill reflected five calls between my daughter and myself between 4:15 and 4:30pm. At that particular time, we were both in my truck travelling west on Interstate 20, on our way home from my mother’s home in Dallas, Texas. Why in the world would we be calling each other on the phone when we were sitting in the truck together? Other mistakes I found were text messages to and from numbers I did not know at 2:00 and 3:00 am. The bill showed that the texts were sent from xxx-xxxx to zzz-zzzz. If these messages were from my phone, my number should have been listed in the spot where xxx-xxxx was listed.

I made phone calls to customer service, sent emails and wrote letters. NO ONE would talk to me. I practically begged someone, anyone, to go over the bill with me. Over the next couple of months, the amount of the bill gradually decreased, until I stopped trying to contact them. Then the bill jumped back up to over $500.00. This trend continued all year. I made dozens of attempts to contact AT&T about my bill. Every month I found instances where I was over charged. I also began recording the length of my calls. It was no surprise that when the bill came, every call was listed as being several minutes longer than what the timer on my phone said it was.

I even went so far as to scour AT&T’s website searching for all the email addresses I could find. I sent messages to executives, heads of departments, etc. Still, no response. Finally,  I spoke to a woman by the name of Ruth. She was extremely rude and told me “AT&T does not make mistakes and no one is going to go over this bill with you“.  That did it!  Screw AT&T!!

I have spoken to numerous people who went through the same experiences that I went through. One even asked if I would like to join in a class action lawsuit against AT&T. Damn right I would! I figure I over paid this company around $2,000-3,000 in 2007. At the end of the year, I went back to Alltel as my cell phone carrier and left a balance due of $958.00. I did not hear a word from AT&T about this bill until this month, more than two years after terminating my service with them.

They have had a collection company harassing me about payment. I have absolutely no intention of giving them another penny. I made extreme efforts to contact them and try to resolve this matter but they are the ones who refused. Now they can take that $958.00 and eat it.

I would like to hear from anyone who has had a similar experience with AT&T. I would love to sue them and get my money back. They are just  a big bully company with no concern for their customers. I believe that they padded people’s bills to pay Bell South for the purchase of the company. Let me hear from you!!

©SharonSoileau2010

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