Ive been an ATT small business customer for many years ( 35+ ) and I have
to say this is not the first time Ive experienced this type of very costly ( for us ) ATT
corporate misconduct... My small business runs on local telephone commerce and Ive been an good
ATT customer utilizing their auto-pay program where my credit card is billed
at the beginning of each month with my current ATT business telephone
charges.Sometime in November of 2011, my credit card number ( the one used for
these charges ) was hijacked on an internet site, cancelled, and was replaced by
my bank.
I called ATT to give them my new credit card charge information on Feb. 7th
of 2012 after noticing the bill was no longer correctly charged to the new
account number. I spoke with three different operators, from three different
departments at ATT, and after nearly an hour of repeating my story, I was able
to confirm that they had correctly logged the current charge information, and
had paid my outstanding charges to current status.Imagine my surprise when on Friday morning 2-24-12, the business telephone
service had been disconnected and my business customers were sending along
messages that my business telephone numbers had been disconnected...!
I called ATT, ( making a fair guess at what had happed ) and after
confirming that my bill was paid in full, and current, I asked to have my phone
numbers turned back on, to which they flatly refused. I asked why, if it had
been less than an hour since it was turned off, and their mistake and not mine,
that they could not simply turn the phone number back on. They put me on hold a
number of times for very extended periods ( 10-15 min without contact ) and I
had to hang up and call again two separate times on Friday 2-24-12 to
reestablish this same conversation , then asking for a supervisor each time. The
people who I spoke with were unanimous in their obstinate refusal to address my
simple question and each gave me the sequential run-around, person after person.My business telephone service is now disconnected even when I was assured
earlier in the month ( 2-07-12 ) that all of my telephone bills would be paid
automatically from that point on.
This is not the kind of service a California service company should be
providing their good customers and I believe the time has come for the
California PUC to think about opening the states home and business telephone
services to a broader competitive market as I believe ( after numerous similar
experiences over the years with SBC, PAC-Bell and now ATT ) the same kind of
abusive- non-response and self-serving attitude for the people who are each
claiming to want to Help you with your telephone service issues. They
invariably tie their customers into a continuous long drawn travail with
numerous departments and unresponsive ranks of middle management muddle... I
guess they are hoping most customers will simply give up and pay extra money to
restore services that had been unreasonably discontinued.
Please help us make the telephone service provider for the State of
California as fine as the State which grants it this valuable monopoly.