Qwest Communications Bundling Disaster Denver Colorado
We've had bundled services through Qwest (DSL, DIRECTV, and recently Verizon), and until we moved into our new apartment about 45 days ago, we hadn't had too many problems.
However, once we decided to cancel our Qwest service over a month ago, we've had nothing but headache after headache trying to unbundle everything.
DIRECTV and Verizon, both online and phone support, keep directing us to Qwest to pay our bills and unbundle. Qwest keeps directing back to DIRECTV and Verizon. The only bill showing on Qwest's site is from November, which we have already paid. No one seems to know where our bills are or how much we owe. No one seems to know why the services are still bundled.
Today we called Qwest again trying to sort things out. Initially, they tried to tell us we hadn't paid our November bill. After that was sorted, we was informed that we owe $300 on a DIFFERENT ACCOUNT NUMBER that no one has ever told us we have. We've never received any online or paper bills for this account number, and we haven't received any bills for ANY account since the November bill. Yet somehow, we're expected to pay them $300.
After over an hour of being transferred between different people, we asked to be transferred to a supervisor. We were told that no supervisors would be available for at least 24 hours.
So here I am, owing $300 on a mysterious account I didn't know I had, and my services are still inexplicably bundled with no one seeming to know how to unbundle them. We requested a paper bill and are still waiting on a response from a supervisor, which will hopefully sort things out, but this has still been an atrocious mess.
Nic
Sterling, Colorado
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Dishtsrii
Lakewood,Colorado,
U.S.A.
I agree... bundling is generally a bad idea.
#2Consumer Suggestion
Mon, April 06, 2009
Bundling is just a bad idea. What seems like will be simpler billing actually gets WAY complicated. One bad move on someone's end and everything is screwed up.
I actually work for a totally different company, but we have bundling issues all the time. The worst is when the main company which handles the bundled billing as a whole (usually the telecom) unbundles the customer in error. This starts a chain reaction... since the customer didn't DISCONNECT their service with the other provider (like say Satellite Tv), but the telecom is no longer accepting their debits/credits for satellite tv service, because it was unbundled by mistake, the Satellite Tv provider has no choice but to create another account number so the customer can continue to get and be billed for (directly) their tv service.
Then, after the unbundling error is recognized and rebundled again, often this includes a huge cleanup of being double billed, one directly from the tv provider and one from the telecom on the tv provider's behalf, two seperate accounts. Sometimes these 'new unbundled' accounts have new contract terms automatically added to them. Mind you, this is all done via the computer system, not actual live people. The people have to clean the mess, which often involve escalation to higher up authorities in the company authorized to make such changes, and you have to spend forever on the phone getting it fixed.
This is only one bundled billing problem. You also have instances where one company will give you a credit (say the tv provider, for you being without service for a week or whatever), but that credit never shows up on the telecom bill. Telecom and Tv provider pass the buck back and forth, both blaming each other for the missing credit.
So, my advice, just stick with direct billing from each company. It prevents headaches like this.