Consumer Complaints: If you want to stop paying us, you have to pay us
Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams, Consumer Complaints
Today, after many months of procrastinating, I finally called AT&T to tell them to take their "long distance service" off my home phone line. I don't even use the line, much less the long distance. So the idea of paying an additional $5 a month for something that doesn't cost AT&T anything to make available to me, and for something I don't ever use, is just silly.Of course, it took me many months to get around to making this phone call. (Imagine them collecting $5 a month from hundreds of thousands of customers just like me, who just ignore the issue.) I know, I know. It's my fault for being too lazy to call them. It's just that it's always so painful to call AT&T...
So I call customer service, go through several menus, and end up speaking to a live person. He tells me he's happy to remove the $5 per month charge for the long distance I don't use, if I just pay a $9 fee. Huh? I have to pay you if I want to stop paying you?
Of course! That's the way it works with so many service providers these days. I think phone companies, wireless carriers, and cable providers are some of the worst. There is a fee for everything including blowing your nose, and if you try to stop the fees, you have a pay another fee for the privilege of not paying the fees.
I told him three times that I wasn't interested in paying his $9 fee for removing a service I never use and never should have been charged for in the first place. After the third time, he finally told me that the way around the $9 fee was for him to assign an outside long-distance carrier to my account. So long as I had some long distance service associated with my account, there wouldn't be the $9 fee to take off AT&T's long distance.
Sigh. Why must we play these games? He assured me that he could assign a long distance carrier that wouldn't charge me any fees at all, so long as I never use the service. Fine. Do it. But why, oh why, must the phone company make it so hard?
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Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-24-2008 @ 3:59AM
Paul said...
This is why you should switch to VoIP - a plunge I took years ago. I would never go back to a landline.
Reply
5-12-2008 @ 4:44PM
FlipFlop said...
ATT&T And Comcast have to be the most treacherous outfits I have ever dealt with! When I moved to a new location a year ago, I spent so much time on my (ATT&T) cell phone trying to set up a house phone with Att&t and Cable with Comcast, that my cell phone bill for that month was 457.00, with hardly a call to anyone except those two. By my guess, 60 percent of those used minutes were expended on hold for a live person, most of whom spoke only broken english.
As time passes, it all hasn't improved much. Now I just pay what they bill me for, and gripe. These two companies are a monolopy in my area. It's them and their dictates, or do without. When they break me, I'll do the latter.
Reply
7-26-2008 @ 11:50AM
lisa muir said...
Same thing happened to me. I had AT&T long distance billed on my Verizon bill(about $5 per mo). I never used it since I have a cell phone. It took me nearly 6 mo to get it cancelled. I called Verizon, they said call AT&T. AT&T would say call Verizon. I ended up writing 3 letters and making many calls before I finally got the service cancelled. AT&T sucks!!
Reply
8-10-2008 @ 6:21PM
Irked@AT&T said...
I have no long distance on my phone (for specific reasons) and made that clear to Bell South. Now AT&T has taken over; to my surprise I just received a bill with close to $200.00 in Long Distance Charges. I called them and asked how this could happen and if they did not do something about it, they will be hearing from me to disconnect the landline that costs me close to $60.00 a month minus long distance. That was last week, they were given 3 contact numbers for me and still no response. I will give it another week and pull the plug.
Reply
9-26-2008 @ 1:40AM
t.r. mason said...
it is at&T and every other business.this is what we got when the government steped in and deregulated them.all for the good of the consumer. yep sure
Reply
10-27-2008 @ 9:56AM
Nobull said...
I still use the mail for bill paying. Verizon like to hold and slow process payments of people who use mail. In the meantime the financial dept. agressiviely calls people who have already paid by mail and insist they make a phone payment. Even threatening that they will interrupt service is they don't get the payment over th phone that day. This allows verizon to post two payments for one month. What a scam Verizon is running. When I dispute a past due bill or expenses with Verizon their people insert derogitory comments in the file to discredit their customers. i have written many letters and have yet to be able to reach either a manager or get verizon agree to an aribitrator to look at past indecrecion. Thier strong arm tactics remind me of the mafia. and immoral business people. I would love anybody within the sound of my voice to provide information of how I can stop verizon from their fraudulant and harrassing preditory actions. My letters to BBB and to Verizon themselves wind up in the hands of lowly first year or part time workers who decide it is better to throw a 20 year relationship away by not reading the facts than it is to demand unwarranted money for cancellation.
Reply